This is a guest post by Richard Morgan. Two of his goals in life are to love his wife and two kids, and spend time in the Word of God almost every day. He writes at Digging the Word, where his purpose is to encourage his readers to read the Bible daily. You can also contact him on Facebook and Twitter.
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Easy Faith
I wish that it could be said of me that I have amazing faith, but I doubt that my faith is anything truly amazing. How much faith does it take to believe when everything is going so well?
It is easy to have faith that God will supply all of my needs when I still have a good paying job. It is easy to have faith that I will wake up tomorrow when my health is good and so I make my plans as if I will be here for tomorrow. It is easy to have faith that posting this blog will not get me thrown into prison.
My point is that few of us are ever pushed to the limits so that we have to exercise our faith.
A muscle man can sit in the gym constantly talking about how strong he is but you will never know unless you actually see him working out. It is easy for us to talk about how much faith we have but until the difficulties of life require us to flex our faith muscles, it is impossible to know how great is our faith.
I want to have the faith that is unnatural, a hall of fame type of faith, but I do enjoy the easy life. None of us want to go through the hard times when you have to take out the faith muscles and use them.
Great Faith
In Luke 7:9, Jesus says this about great faith: “When Jesus heard this, he was amazed. Turning to the crowd that was following him, he said, ‘I tell you, I haven’t seen faith like this in all Israel!'”
The only other time Jesus was amazed at something was when he observed the lack of faith among the people of his hometown in Mark 6:6.
How can we be people of great faith, rather than people of little faith?
It begins with remembering that God doesn’t need our help. Faith remembers that no matter what we can do or what we have accomplished, we are not in control. While we can control the outcomes of some things for a while, ultimately God is in control.
Faith rests in this knowledge, knowing that God will guide as he sees fit.
No Blind Faith
God isn’t asking us to have blind faith. His track record throughout the ages has proven that he is worthy of our faith and trust. All of the promises he has made have come true and his history of taking care of people is spotless.
As we persevere and allow God’s plan to take control of our life, we will see that when the hard times come, we will have great faith that will amaze even Jesus.
When you say “God is in control” it brings up a problem.There is stealing,murder and rape going on in the world and if God is in control then he is responsible for the evil that is happening. The bible does not teach that our loving God is to be blamed for evil.
Yes. This is an old post, and I have recently backed away from talking about God that way.
Can I ask what caused you to change your mind? For the most part I was not raised in the orthodox christian church so that doctrine was never much of a problem for me but it is standard teaching for the Baptist, Penetecostals ect….
Here is my recommended reading on the subject Don’t Blame God by John Schoenheit