Do I Really Believe What God Says?

In class today with Troy, we were going through chapters 5 and 6 of True Discipleship by William MacDonald, I was reminded of what I wrote about in a previous post. We were in chapter 6 where William writes about faith, and how it’s based on promises from God’s Word. Here’s the section that really stuck out to me:

“Now true faith is always based on some promise of God, some portion of His Word. This is important. The believer first reads or hears some promise of the Lord. The Holy Spirit takes that promise and applies it to his heart and conscience in a very personal way. The Christian becomes aware that God has spoken to him directly. With utter confidence in the trustworthiness of the One who has promised, he rekons the promise as sure as if it were already fulfilled, even though, humanly speaking, it is impossible. Or perhaps it is a commandment rather than a promise. To faith, there is no difference. If God commands, He enables.”

How awesome is that?!  It seems like every message that I hear, and every time I read from the Word, this message sticks out to me. Last Saturday, I led a house devotion in James chapter 2 where it talks about “Faith without works is dead.” How true is that? If God tells us to do something, and we trust and believe that He will enable us to do what He’s asked, then it’d be almost like slapping God in the face if we don’t do it.

I’m not saying that I don’t do this every day, because I do, I’m just asking…. why?  Why do we let our flesh get in the way of acting on our faith in God? Is it because we don’t have enough faith in God and don’t trust Him?  Do we find what He’s asking us to do foolish? I hate how I usually fall into that trap of not trusting or putting my faith in God, but more on my own human understanding and perspective of situations.

God knows all, sees all, loves all, and has the most perfect plan for us if only we would believe and follow without question. I’m glad that God is convicting me of this personality defect of mine, and I pray and know that He will continue to drive it out of me. I’m just glad He doesn’t give up on me when I say “I know that you’ll be with me God, and I know that with You here I can do this, but I just don’t feel like it right now, how about later?”

God is good, patient, gracious, and merciful, and I love Him so much for that. He is awesome!

Anyway… thanks for letting me rant for a bit 🙂