Faith Is Different—And How!!!
At the end of yesterday, I had the opportunity to teach a literature class, one filled with students who worked full-time jobs and attended the university at night.
I can so appreciate their dedication.
I can so honor their heart and their willingness to pursue an education in a not-so-traditional way.
I can so desire to serve them well, as their teacher.
Thus, at the end of yesterday, I began class with a devotion that centered upon God the Father, a most Holy God who is faithfully a God of second chances. As I spoke, these students leaned in physically, a bodily sign that they were listening, really listening.
Yet, what were they hearing?
What were they taking into their minds, hearts, and bodies?
The Word of God.
Earlier in the day, I had shared this same devotion during my composition courses, but this final time (yesterday night), the reception was different. The atmosphere, the location, the “feel,” and the timing were all so mindfully different, and as I just said, the way these students responded was different, so amazingly different.
Today, I would like to consider how.
Let me explain by sharing a verse from the Bible, one that spoke to me this morning of the jealousy God displays when we forget we are His, when we forget we belong to Him, when we forget we are to be set apart, to be different from the others, from those who have not yet become a child of God.
Let us remember that when we gave our hearts to God, once we became His children, we were required to give Him our whole being: mind, soul, and body.
SEE WITH ME.
“You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
Or do you think that the Scripture speaks no purpose: ‘He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us”?
But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, ‘GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE.’
Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.
Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.”
(James 4: 3-10)
- Faith Is Different—And How!!!
- Faith is seeing, not with our physical eyes but with our spiritual eyes.
- Faith is believing in the person of Jesus, the resurrected Jesus.
- Faith is accepting the love of God—fully—that which we cannot fully understand this side of heaven.
- Faith is walking with Jesus, daily, even when life is difficult.
- Faith is talking with God, even when the pain is so great and no words will come.
- Faith is knowing that once God has taken us by the hand, He will never leave us, or forget us, or leave us behind and alone.
- Faith is placing our total trust in the highest power of all—in Almighty God.
- Faith is trusting the Bible at its word when the passages tell us to walk by faith and not by sight.
- Faith is trusting the Word of God 100%, when Scripture reminds us how we must be ready for Jesus’ return, for He could come—this day.
- Faith is standing out—being DIFFERENT—from the world around us, being SET APART, being the hands and feet of Jesus Himself to the world around us.
- Faith is believing God when He says that He wants no one to perish, to die without hope.
- Faith is actively witnessing, actively telling the world about our Savior Jesus.
- Faith is sharing a devotion with students and sensing that they are not listening to my voice but to the voice of God through His Word—the Bible.
- Faith is as our Lord Jesus spoke to His disciples, words recorded in the book of Matthew, words we need to read and apply to our present world today.
“Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming.
But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into.
For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.
Who then is the faithful and sensible slave whom his master put in charge of his household to give them their food at the proper time?
Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes.”
(Matthew 24: 42-46)
Faith is standing out—being DIFFERENT—from the world around us, being SET APART!
Faith Is Different—And How!!!