"The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd."
Hebrews 11:1-2 The Message
I would encourage to read the rest of Hebrews 11 as you have
time. It talks about many people you
have already heard about many times, I
simply point out that the reason those people are people you know thousands of
years later is their faith. Their faith
is what enabled them to do what they did.
But I also want to point out that what they did is not what
pleased God. What God celebrated about
them was their faith. They chose to
trust God in spite of what they could not see at the time.
If I could pass only one thing on to you in my time as your
Pastor, it would be that you would learn to trust God no matter what
happens. Work hard - yes. But learn to
trust God for what you don't know and can't make happen on your own. A Bishop in 4th Century Africa, St.
Augustine, put it like this:
"Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as
though everything depended on you."
Learning to trust God is like learning to do anything
else, You keep doing it and and as you
keep doing it you get better at it. As you get better at it, there is a comfort
that comes. You reach a level of trust
that feels sufficient. That is, until it
doesn’t. Many times, a crisis comes and
it seems like your faith is no longer sufficient. A lot of people are in one of those times
right now. I heard someone say the other
day, “I want to believe things are going to get better, but I just don’t know.”
Here’s the hard truth about that. Faith is not believing things will get
better. If you did read Hebrews 11,
things didn’t get better for some of those heroes and She-roes of the faith
before they died. But they exercised
their faith even in the midst of “things not getting better.” That’s the kind of faith we need right now. And in addition to faith, the Apostle Paul
suggested two others that are of utmost importance – hope and love:
“Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love. . . “
1 Coritnthians 13:13
We’re going to spend the month of August talking about those
three everlasting things because it is everlasting things that we need right
now.
I hope you’ll join me on this journey. I also hope you’ll invite others to join us
as well. They can go to our website and
sign up to receive these daily devotions each morning around 10. If they want to receive them, but can’t get
to the website, send me their emails. I’ll put them on the list. Thank you for your help. Until tomorrow….
Prayer: Eternal
Father, teach us to nurture eternal
things in our souls. Allow our Faith,
Hope, and Love to grow this month.
Prayer Focus: Pray
for people who don’t have a relationship with God today
Song: Faith, Hope,
and Love, Repeat (Brandon Heath) This is
a song that Brandon wrote for his newborn son.
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