:: To Worship Him ::

 

   “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”  (Romans 4:3)

 

   C.S. Lewis said that you never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death.  It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong as long as you are merely using it to cord a box.  But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice.  Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it? 

 

   I surely think so.  Do you know that you can be a believer in God yet act as though there is no God?  People do it every day.  It’s not hard to find people acting that way.  In fact too often we can actually look in the mirror and find one.  Hard to admit, but true too often.  Anytime that we fret over life’s circumstances we immediately demonstrate unbelief.  Whenever we respond out of fear or anxiety, we believe a lie about God’s ability to be our ‘defense, a present help in time of need.’  Fear always responds out of unbelief.

 

   Each day our actions affirm or convict us of our belief system.  Each day reveals who the central focus of our life really is.  It reveals who we place our ultimate trust in.  Unfortunately it is difficult for us to remain constant.  One day our faith is high and we can believe God to move every mountain for us.  The next day we have to search and search to find any faith, much less great faith.  I don’t know about you but I want to have great faith every day.  I want to have constant ultimate faith in God every minute.  We read the testimonies of people with great faith,  the Canaanite woman who believed for the freedom of her demon-possessed daughter,  the lady who touched the hem of the Lord’s garment for her healing,  the faith that caused Peter to walk on the water,  David’s faith to slay the giant. 

 

   Question is, in what circumstances do we act as unbelievers?  Once we know, then what are we going to do about it?  God will let us know, that is,  if we really want to know.  Once we know, then we must ask God to increase our level of trust so that our actions will match our faith and belief.

 

 

   “God blesses those who are gentle and lowly, for the whole earth will belong to them.”  (Matthew 5:5)

 

   Don’t you just love being around gentle people?  There seems to be a calming and peaceful demeanor that effects their surroundings.  I can see why the Lord promised that there would be a special reward to the meek or gentle person.  Strong’s Lexicon says that meekness means “mildness of disposition, gentleness of spirit; the gentle person is not occupied with self in any way.  This is a work of the Holy Spirit, not of the human will.”

 

   Meekness in the Bible does not show weakness.  It means the opposite.  The meek person has their power under control.  Jesus is our example of the meek person with power.  He had total, and unlimited power, yet He was kind, considerate and thoughtful.  He laid down His power or else He kept it in control.  He could have administered enough power to kill every soldier in the Roman Empire, but instead His power was under the control of the loving purposes of His Father. 

 

   In our lives, meekness reflects being under the control of the Holy Spirit.  As we grow in our confidence and faith in our relationship with Him, then we can release more of our lives to Him.  A surrendered life that is totally sold-out to the will of the Lord will experience the same testimonies as the Lord.  We can be trusted to operate in the power of the Holy Spirit.  We can expect those signs and wonders to follow us as they did Jesus.  We can operate in the victory that Jesus envisioned for us.  We can truly be the blessed when meekness is our character, and when we can be trusted by the Lord; then the whole world will belongs to us as Jesus said.

 

 

   “Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has brought trouble upon this people, and You have not rescued Your people at all.”  (Exodus 5:23)

 

   Here we see the unhappiness of Moses.  In the course of Moses’ lifetime, he experienced many opportunities to learn lessons in life.  He learned that God’s promises are true, but God’s timing is not the same as ours.  God wants all the glory in every circumstance.  Certainly more than we want to give Him.  God also puts obstacles and adversities into our lives, and life in general has its share to pass on.  These are stepping stones to bring about and build perseverance and faith in our lives.  Maybe we will never know why we face certain mountains.  I believe when we face them in faith and confidence in our God, we can speak to ‘that’ mountain and it has to move.  God loves it when we demonstrate His power in our lives.

 

   Sometimes it seems the more obedient we are to follow God, the more adversity we experience.  In the above Scripture, Moses had been instructed to go to Pharaoh and tell him to release the people of Israel.  God had said He was going to deliver the people through Moses.  The only problem is that God did not tell Moses at what point they actually would be released.  When Moses complained to God, the Lord told Moses that He had to harden Pharaoh’s heart in order to perform greater miracles.  God was behind hardening Pharaoh’s heart.  We forget that every ruler’s heart is in God’s hand.  And,  He has a specific reason for bringing about plagues and delays.  God has a reason for everything He does.  When the people were freed, God again hardened Pharaoh’s heart to go after them.  This set the stage for an even greater miracle: the parting of the Red Sea. 

 

   Our response is to daily put our trust in God.  Get out of the way and allow Him to bring about the miracles and the ‘moving of the mountains’ and ‘Red Seas’ in our lives.  We must never murmur and complain even though the timetable seems long.  We also must respond by giving God the glory, telling of His awesome works on our behalf. 

 

 

   “I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who trusts will never be dismayed.”  (Isaiah 28:16)

 

   What a promise!  The one who trusts the Lord will never be confounded or dismayed.  Because, belief is in the Lord Jesus Christ  When we turn our lives over to Him, it is often compared to building a house.  First comes the foundation and we know the foundation must be strong like a rock.  In the spiritual realm that foundation is none other than Jesus Christ Himself.  The Word tells us that any other foundation will not stand.

 

   As we enter a walk of faith with God, He allows us to experience trials, testings, miracles, and challenges in life that are designed to provide “faith experiences’ that demonstrate tangible evidences of His work in our life.  Moses’ burning-bush experience, Peter’s walk on the water, Joseph’s testing, Paul’s perils are among some that we read in the Bible.  These experiences built the faith of these people.  The depth and width of our calling is directly proportional to the faith experiences He allows in our lives.  The broader our calling is probably a sign that we will have to experience more testings.  Paul’s ministry called for more believing faith than say the average Christian.  Actually, we should all have the depth of Paul’s faith, but with that depth also comes greater responsibility.  We must train for that position.  I do not want someone in the medical field to operate on me if they haven’t been properly trained.  That doesn’t let us off the hook.  Every believer in the Lord should be in training.  Time in the Word, actually studying and meditation upon God’s Word, learning and sitting under anointed teachers and preachers, fellowshipping with the Lord in prayer and fastings, and actively attending a good Bible teaching church are ways in which we develop that firm foundation.  I also will add that we must give away our faith.  Sharing what we have learned, and testimony of what the Lord has done in our lives, is vital to a strong victorious Christian.  The stronger we are in faith and foundation, the less likely the storms and trials will effect us.  Not a bad place to be in this day and age!  

 

 

   When we think that we have been violated in some way, out natural inclination is to fight back.  To get even with the one that inflicted that wrong.  Most always, to react in that way is the wrong approach.  Forgiveness is always the better route for ‘love never fails.’  Forgiveness is a sign of a forgiving and humble nature. 

 

   A dramatic example is the experience of a Hungarian refugee, for privacy sakes we’ll call him Joshep Kudar.  Kudar was a successful young lawyer in Hungary before the uprisings in that country in 1956.  A strong believer in freedom for his country, he fought Soviet tanks in the streets of Budapest with his friends.  When the uprising failed, he was forced to flee the country.

 

   When Kudar arrived in the U.S. he had no money, no job, no friends.  He was, however, well educated; he spoke and wrote several languages, including English.  For several months he tried to get a job in a law office, but because of his lack of familiarity with American law, he received only polite refusals.

 

   Finally, it occurred to him that with his knowledge of language he might be able to get a job with an import-export company.  He selected one such company and wrote a letter to the owner.  Two weeks later he received an answer, but was hardly prepared for the vindictiveness of the man’s reply.  Among other things, it said that even if they did need someone, they wouldn’t hire him because he couldn’t even write good English.  Crushed, Kudar’s hurt quickly turned to anger.  What right did this rude, arrogant man have to tell him he couldn’t write the language!  The man was obviously crude and uneducated.  (His letter was chocked full of grammatical errors.)

 

   Kudar sat down and, in the white heat of anger, wrote a scathing reply, calculated to rip the man to shreds.  When he’d finished, however, as he was reading it over, his anger began to drain away.  Then he remembered the Biblical admonition, “A soft answer turneth away wrath.”  No, he wouldn’t mail the letter.  Maybe the man was right.  English was not his native tongue.  Maybe he did need further study in it.  Possibly this had done him a favor by making him realize he did need to work harder on perfecting his English.

 

   Kudar tore up the letter and wrote another.  This time he apologized for the precious letter, explained his situation, and thanked the man for pointing out his need for further study.  Two days later he received a phone call inviting him to New York for an interview.  A week later he went to work for them as a correspondent.  Later, Joseph Kudar became vice-president and executive office of the company, destined to succeed the man he had hated and sought revenge against for a fleeting moment–and then resisted.