Lack of faith

P3444 Eyes to see and ears to hear.

/ DVH

“But we are certainly not those who are held back by fear and perish; we are among those who have faith and experience true life!” Hebrews 10:39 TPT. Most of the time what I write on this blog is about my own learning curves. This one in Hebrews has been a real challenge to me, because fear smacks me upside-the-head quite a lot. I have had to discipline myself with His help, to put aside what I feel, or even the very real negative experiences I have had, and press on regardless. Trust me … I can come up with a lot of good reasons why I don’t have to do such and such! 

Here are a few: I have whiny ones …“but I’m s-i-c-k!! They will be mean to me, they are always mean to me. I might even get more sick!” Rebellious ones … “why should I help those people? They never did anything for me but hurt me. Why should I be nice to them?” A-n-d … a … complete lack of faith … “I’ve prayed and prayed for them and they are still the same grumpy nasty people they always were! I can’t see any possibility at all that they will change.” However, the Lord says this in Galatians 6:9 (ESV) “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up.” 

OK that’s enough fault finding …  we both know I’ll get an inferiority complex! You get my drift. The author indicates in the verse in Hebrews, that we can be held back by fear and fear can easily take the form of excuses. Things that sound reasonable to other people, but what does Jesus think about them?

I am greatly comforted by the fact that God Himself sees us as ‘those who have faith … who experience true life.’ He’s like that, always positive. But what does it mean? I think it means this – what we know here and now, about this life, is extremely limited by our own way of looking at stuff. But people who use their faith, experience the depths this life in Christ can have. Here’s one of my merry metaphors!

Right here and now, without my glasses on I can see fairly well. Before I had cataract surgery my unaided vision was extremely limited. After that surgery my eyesight was vastly improved, and consequently I have better vision. But I still need glasses … just not the bottom-of-the-bottle-ones I needed before! … Before we chose to follow Jesus, we were all a bit like me before that cataract surgery. I saw men as trees walking – just like that guy Jesus prayed for twice! After the surgery, I can now see well enough to identify what is in front of me. But you probably wouldn’t want me to drive you anywhere, because I still have myopia. 🤣

My point is this …using our faith improves our spiritual eyesight. When we take that first giant leap of faith and ask Jesus to be Lord of our lives, it is as if a veil is lifted from our eyes, and the things we couldn’t see before are suddenly so much clearer. The bible makes sense. Faith makes sense. What Jesus did for me makes sense! And as I choose to walk with Him using my faith, day by day, my spiritual vision will become clearer and clearer. The key to seeing well, spiritually speaking, is to stay focussed on the bible, and go out and do what it says – using our faith to do it. The Holy Spirit gladly comes with us – whether we feel anything or not – and life becomes an adventure.

If we choose what to believe and what not to believe, we can end up with spiritual myopia. The bible is not a Pick and Pay … it is the Manufacturer’s handbook. Solomon agreed with me, he says this in Proverbs 14:12: “There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.” Our ideas can be so limited by our viewpoints we can end up dead! We need to be rewired, or in the case of my dumb illustration, we need those cataracts to be removed, otherwise things get cloudy and we can’t tell the truth from a tree stump. 

It is the same with our spiritual hearing. Someone I know had trouble with their day-by-day hearing, and it was becoming so evident it could no longer be ignored. I suggested a hearing test. They were not thrilled with that idea because the idea of hearing aids made them feel old. But then they went and had the test and lo and behold, they had wax in their ears impeding their hearing.

We too can get wax in our spiritual ears when we listen to stuff that is not “good right and profitable…” Paul tells us that. Have you ever deliberately blocked your ears when you didn’t want to hear some terrible sound or other? Ignoring what God says in the book, just because we don’t like it, blocks our ears. However, this is what faith can look like: right now, because of the way the economy is going, hubby and I can’t afford to buy a new car even if we need one. (We don’t.) But if the Lord told us to buy a new car we would take whatever money we have, and follow Jesus to the new car lot!  It is ‘impossible to please God’ if we don’t use our faith. 

Doing what we have always done, day after day, means we are not using our faith! Let’s be bold and courageous like our brother Joshua said in Joshua 1:9 – and start acting on the things we’ve been carefully avoiding. Don’t start with picking a marriage partner or buying a house! Let’s start with getting rid of every place in our lives where we are angry, or walking in unforgiveness, and begin to repair broken situations, and stop expecting other people to make the difference.

This is how we nurture eyes to see and ears to hear. If we ignore the things He has already told us in His book, how can we expect to hear Him in our everyday lives? Food for thought. Bye. 👋. PS. Simply praying about faith actions, and doing nothing, will give us nothing. This is not a time to wait on God, this is a time for action.

P 3349 Real life.

/ DVH

I have a question —  how do you handle the everyday difficulties that frustrate you? When we get back from a mission trip, all kinds of not-so-nice things can happen. Instead of floating about on a cloud of victory, praising God for His goodness in our travels, we suddenly need to cope with unexpected illness or some frustration or other. I like to be truthful about this life, and that’s because our faith needs to be realistic, not glamorised. Trust me, nobody needs to feel a failure for being human – Jesus took man’s humanity in His stride, and kindness and compassion flowed out from Him. 

Let’s remind ourselves that whatever happens that is good, right and profitable, it is the Lord doing what He loves to do, reaching out to people. Personally I definitely need that kind of spiritual exercise!  The deliberately renewing of your mind when you’d rather have a hissy fit … kind. When there are day-to-day difficulties and challenges, it is easy to fall into the trap of over-emphasising the good, diminishing the bad, and deliberately losing sight of the ugly! But we can’t afford to live in the beautifully, hand-painted land of one glorious victory after another, either. That’s not reality … not where I live! 

We are no less His kids just because we can’t cope. Living in victory every moment of every day is just a happy story we tell ourselves because we are desperately longing for  brighter days. We we really need is relief from pain and we’ve forgotten our true hiding place is in Him. “God is close to the broken-hearted,” Psalm 34:18 …But when our feelings are fierce and we’ve been stabbed through the heart, or we are afraid, we don’t often remember verses like that. If you have a friend who will remind you – cherish them.

Today I want to talk about something so simple, sensible, and clearly thought out, it thoroughly blessed me in the middle of a difficult time. I was listening to a very ordinary little old lady (Yes I know I are one!) She was briefly speaking in a YouTube clip. She said this: “Why do we think everything should always be wonderful in our lives, and work so hard to achieve it, when we are actually living in enemy territory?” … … I was poleaxed. She blew my mind. What a wise older lady! The Lord sure has His precious gems hidden away in secret, and when you discover one like this precious saint, they bless you. When I find someone like this I want to adopt them! 

My point is, we need balance. We can’t make excuses for our behaviour when it is less than what we are aiming at,  but we mustn’t beat ourselves up either. Our response is to increase our faith in what He did for us – that’s the renewing our mind bit.  Blame is the enemy’s sharpest tool of discouragement and distraction. The only Person we can ever safely invest in is Jesus – everybody else suffers from harassment, trouble and strife just like we do.

Here’s a verse that doesn’t always suit our version of theology … Romans 5:3-5: “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, Who has been given to us.” Almighty God does not see our hard times the way we see them. I can become very concerned when Christianity is driven along by our desperate need to be positive. We sometimes try so hard to make gold out of straw! The only Person Who can do that is the Lord … and it is our joy to watch Him do it. 

Every single Christian needs the Lord’s help to manage what comes at them. You and I are not exceptions. When we cannot cope, we need to remember for ourselves, and also remind others that we are human. Let’s remember where our help comes from  – “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, Who made heaven and earth.”  Psalm 121:1, 2. Find a hill and look UP! I’ve found that doing something He asks me to do for someone else, cheers me up when my spirit is flagging. Meanwhile, we need to allow the Holy Spirit the freedom to do what He loves to do – redeem situations. 

Our favourite tiler came and finished tiling our main bedroom floor yesterday, which means we might be moving back into a bigger, more comfortable bedroom soon. We are a bit squashed in a single room. But at the same time, we were able to share the gospel with our tiler friend and his beautiful wife, and they responded so well. They are a Muslim couple, and the very sweet young wife read parts of the bible out loud, to practice her English! I still get misty eyed thinking about it. 

My point is, we all suffer. Sometimes with niggly, messy irritations, disturbing interruptions, or even some sort of unspeakable agony, when life turns into a nightmare. So we pray and pray because we want it to stop; we can pray and ask for His help, and remember that we are living in enemy territory and bad stuff will happen. There is no need to punish or deride yourself for failure, or missteps, or a lack of faith … right when you most need it. This is real life and some days it can be hard to take. Bye 👋