Confidence in the Faith
Hebrews 10:35-36
35So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. 36You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.
*How is Your Faith doing in Everyday Life
The true test of a person’s spiritual life and character is not what he does in the extraordinary moments of life, but what he does during the ordinary times when there is nothing tremendous or exciting happening. A person’s worth is revealed in his attitude toward the ordinary things of life when he is not under the spotlight (seeJohn 1:35-37 and John 3:30).
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Hebrews 11:1
Where does Faith come from??
God grants us true faith by His Spirit at regeneration (when we are "born again")
"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." Galatians 2:20
"I count all things but loss for the Excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death." Philippians 3:8-10
"Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him. " Psalm 2:12
After we become a Christian we need to remember the consequences of turning our eyes back to the world and doubting our faith!
Because of the warning contained within Hebrews 10:35-39, chapter 11 places the virtue of faith in direct contrast to the sin of unbelief by exposing what unbelief caused to occur. The Israelites drew back in fear rather than trusting God and boldly going forward. Thus, the main point of the epistle of Hebrews is that they will be destroyed who, by failing to put their trust in the living God, shrink back from this Christian war we have been called to fight, whereas those who believe will be saved. Maybe these never really believed in the first place. It doesn’t mean we won’t feel weak in our faith. He uses our weakness to remind us that we need Him!
He uses our weaknesses to prove His strength & establish our faith:
"And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God." 1 Corinthians 2:1-5
"...we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia: that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead..." 2 Corinthians 1:8-9
"Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, 'Why could we not cast it out?'
So Jesus said to them, 'Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you." Matthew 17:19-20
Apart from God's moral law, we wouldn't see our sin and weakness
"...the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor." Galatians 3:24-25
"'Woe to the rebellious children,' says the Lord,
'Who take counsel, but not of Me,
And who devise plans, but not of My Spirit,'" Isaiah 30:1
"Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength,
Whose heart departs from the Lord.
For he shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when good comes,
But shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness....
"Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope is the Lord.
For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, which spreads out its roots by the river,
And will not fear when heat comes; but its leaf will be green,
And will not be anxious in the year of drought....
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?
I, the Lord, search the heart; I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings." Jeremiah 17:5-10
Preaching builds faith among those who will believe
"And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: 'How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things!' But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, 'Lord, who has
believed our report?' So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." Romans 10:14-17
"For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." 1 Corinthians 1:22-24
"He who formerly persecuted us now preaches the faith which he once tried to destroy. And they glorified God in me." Galatians1:23-24
"Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, 'In you all the nations shall be blessed.' So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham." Galatians 3:7-9
True wisdom or victory comes through genuine faith:
"By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible." Hebrews 11:3
"...whatever is not from faith is sin." Romans 14:23
"And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight, if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard..." Colossians 1:21-23
"Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, 'In you all the nations shall be blessed.' So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham." Galatians 3:7-9
The reality here is that we have to stay in contact with Our Lord and Savior. To be one with Him means that we seek to walk to the beat of His drum, not ours.
*It is a painful business to get through into the stride of God, it means getting your second wind spiritually. In learning to walk with God there is always the difficulty of getting into His stride; but when we have got into it, the only characteristic that manifests itself is the life of God. The individual person is merged into a personal union with God, and the stride and the power of God alone are manifested.
It is difficult to get into stride with God, because when we start walking with Him we find that His pace has surpassed us before we have taken three steps. He has different ways of doing things, and we have to be trained and disciplined into His ways. It was said of Jesus - "He shall not fail nor be discouraged," because He never worked from His own individual standpoint but always from the standpoint of His Father, and we have to learn to do the same. Spiritual truth is learned by atmosphere, not by intellectual reasoning. God's Spirit alters the atmosphere of our way of looking at things, and things begin to be possible which never were possible before. Getting into the stride of God means nothing less than union with Himself. It takes a long time to get there, but keep at it. Don't give in because the pain is bad just now, get on with it, and before long you will find you have a new vision and a new purpose.
"Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world." John 4:41-42
"For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know Whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day." 2 Timothy 1:11-12
*Excerpts taken from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. (c) l935 by Dodd Mead & Co., renewed (c) 1963 by the Oswald Chambers Publications Assn., Ltd., and is used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566, Grand Rapids MI 4950l. All rights reserved.
