Hope that endures in a world full of darkness sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s vitally important that we as the Body of Christ remain focused on the hope that lies within us. Taking our eyes off Christ, the one who has supplied our victory in every area, can lead to depression, victimization, and hopelessness. Regardless of how dark things may appear, in Christ there is abundant hope. Our Savior lives! He will make right all wrongs. We have His Word on it!
Our mysterious God has placed the nutritional substances we need for spiritual growth within Himself and His Word. The fact that we will never know all there is to know about Him forces us to live by faith. It forces us to trust Him. Both faith and trust are born out of not knowing. The next time your senses are deprived from proof of what you need, want or desire coming to past, know that the mysterious side of His Word is the catalyst for your growth and development.
Our confidence in God and what He has spoken to us in His Word comes from meditation. Meditation on His Word. Biblical meditation is quite different than what the world terms “meditation”. In the world, meditation is emptying ourselves. For those of us in the Body of Christ, meditation is filling ourselves. Filling ourselves with the thoughts, principles, and ideas contained in scripture. Our confidence in God is at it’s height when we are filled with the knowledge of His Will for our lives.
Faith in the unseen is what makes us believers. If we could see that which we hope for we would be knowers. Seems simple enough. God our Father is the epitome of the word / concept of trust. He said in His Word that He cannot lie. If God’s Word has failed in your life, the person in the mirror is where the breakdown occurred, not with God. Therefore we can approach the unseen world of hope with an absolute assurance that we serve a God who will never let us down.
Be it unto me according to thy Word are words of surrender. They are words that say, “Not my will, but yours be done“. Faith in God and in His Word is born out of submission. Submission to a higher power, a better plan, and a loving Father. Mary had no ideal what was happening to her. An event of this magnitude had never occurred before. Yet, in the face of embarrassment. In the face of ridicule, and in the face of ostracism she submitted herself and uttered the words, “Be it unto me according to thy Word” in Luke 1:38. I pray we submit ourselves, and incorporate those very words into our lives on a daily bases.
Truth will stand the test of time. It’s the bedrock of life. Truth is unshakeable. We live in a world where voices are clamoring extremely loud to be heard. Yet truth doesn’t need to compete for airtime. Truth can calmly wait in the background, knowing that it will remain forever. Truth, if stood on long enough, will outlast any lie. God’s Word is truth. No matter how bad things may look in the world, trust in the truth of God’s Word. His Word will have the last Word in your life, in this country and in this world.
Trails and difficulties in life are sent to dislodge you from your faith in God and in His Word. In football, a defensive back has two responsibilities (1) – to prevent the receiver from catching the football. If he can’t do that (2) – to dislodge the football after the receiver catches it. Your enemy’s goal was to prevent you from hearing God’s Word. However, now that you’ve heard it (caught the ball), his job is to dislodge you from the Word. He does this through the trials and difficulties of life. Don’t fumble the ball. Hold on to God’s Word until you experience the victory that is yours in Christ.
Trust in the Lord with all thy heart and lean not unto your own understanding…(Proverbs 3:5). There is no greater expression of faith than trust. Particularly trust when you don’t understand the circumstances. Think of a literal child. Young children are vulnerable. They must trust their parents for everything. They don’t sit up at night worrying about food, clothing, or housing. The ideal situation should have been a shifting of that same childlike trust over from parental trust to trusting our heavenly Father.
Romans 10:17 says faith comes by hearing. However in order to hear from God, we must surrender to what His Word has to say about any given situation we find ourselves in. Surrendering to the Will of God stimulates faith. Submitting and aligning my will with His is faith in action. When I became a Christian, I surrendered my life to the Lord and the process of surrendering my will to His Will is an ongoing process. That’s what living by faith is.
The Peace of God ruling and reigning over our hearts and minds gives us the courage to face any adversity in life. But how is such peace obtained? The key to experiencing the Peace of God is anchoring our minds on God and what He has spoken to us in His Word to us…the Bible. According to Isaiah 26:3-4, the result of tethering our minds to God’s Word is called “Perfect Peace“.