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Friday, August 1, 2014

Pastoral Pings ~ When Everything is About Grace Through Faith

          God’s word is very clear that the most significant transformation known to the human heart happens “by grace through faith”.[1] It is by God’s grace operating in our lives through the gift of faith that we are “saved,”[2]and “made alive.”[3] It is just as clear that “without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”[4]
          On the negative side, God says that, “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.”[5] On the positive side, he has written to tell us that, “The righteous shall live by faith;”[6] that “we have been justified by faith,” so that now “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ;”[7] and that we have “a righteousness that is by faith;”[8] so that now “we walk by faith, not by sight.”[9]
          This morning I was led to another consideration of what the work of God looks like in our lives. There are so many ways of looking at situations and experiences we go through, and so we must seek to have discernment of what parts of those circumstances are of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and what parts are the work of God.
          We must know this difference because God can use good experiences to bless us, and Satan can use good experiences to lead us astray. God can take us through trials to purify our faith, while Satan pounces on our trials as a time to fill us with fear, doubt, and discouragement. With all that running in the background, today there was an increased clarity of the work of God in relation to faith.
          There are many times when we pray about something, only to find that circumstances seem to get worse. This happened to Moses when he went and told his fellow Israelites that God had come to deliver them from their Egyptian slavery.[10] At first the people worshipped God because they believed that he heard them crying to him in their troubles.[11]
          However, when Moses went to the Pharaoh and demanded that he let God’s people go, the Pharaoh doubled their workload so that they people of Israel were all angry with Moses, and wished he had never come to them with his “good news”.[12] Moses was shocked by this turn of events and went to God with his complaint, “you have not delivered your people at all.”[13]
          God then led his people through months of experiences where they saw him display his glory through signs and wonders that clearly showed him as supreme over all other gods. His lesson to his people of all ages is that when he says he will do something, he will do what he says, but often through means we have not even considered.
          Our faith is not in ourselves imagining how God will answer our prayers. Our faith is not in a particular plan of action where God has to do things the way we tell him to (usually meaning our way and as quickly as possible).
          Rather, the grace of God is working in our lives to lead us to have faith in God as God, satisfied that God will do things the way God does things. He will let us struggle through our determination to conform him to our image, to our plans, to our choices, only to bring us to that greater experience of knowing him.
          The way this work of grace shows up in my life, quite regularly, is in the discovery that I am trying too hard to do something for God, rather than experiencing that soul-rest that keeps in step with him and what he is doing.[14] I find myself frustrated because a lesson is not coming together, only to realize (because grace just opened my eyes and mind) that God doesn’t want me going into that opportunity so fully prepared with my words that there is no room left for his.
          I have come to truly love this aspect of the Fatherly, Shepherdly, work of God in my life, that his loving grace, and gracious love, compel him to withhold the satisfaction of my childish whims and wishes until I feel that true blessing of poverty of spirit. He does this because only when he awakens my soul to hunger and thirst after the righteousness that is in him, that I can only experience by faith, can he truly satisfy me with a greater satisfaction than my sarky desires can imagine.
          And so, I return to this wonderful exhortation to my soul, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”[15] How did I arrive here this morning? Grace led me through the gift of faith. I now have faith that I can join God’s work of keeping me here all day long.

© 2014 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)







[1] Ephesians 2:8-9
[2] Vs 8
[3] Ephesians 2:5
[4] Hebrews 11:6
[5] Romans 14:23
[6] Romans 1:17
[7] Romans 5:1
[8] Romans 9:30
[9] II Corinthians 5:7
[10] We are introduced to Moses in Exodus 1
[11] Exodus 4:31
[12] Exodus 5:20-21 (read whole chapter for context)
[13] Exodus 5:22-23
[14] Matthew 11:28-30; Galatians 5:16-26
[15] Psalm 37:4

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