Believe

Oh, how I love cliché Christian phrases. Those statements that we may casually throw out so often that any meaning or significance they once carried may be lost.

God has a plan for you. Wait for God. When you are weak, He is strong.

Behind these words do we have the belief necessary to live what we speak? Do we possess faith that we will go as far as it takes to see God’s kingdom reign in and around our lives?

I question if I do at times, but man, do I want it! To live Christ, and nothing but. What a life that would be!

The only way that the truth of Jesus spread to the world as it has today is because of the early Christians who LIVED Christ. They lived exactly what they preached: the gospel. Their faith was worth DYING for.

Peter and John in Acts faced threats from the Council in Jerusalem after having healed the lame man and preaching the gospel to those who witnessed it. They were commanded to no longer speak or teach of Jesus.

Their response: they could not stop speaking about what they had seen and heard. They left, prayed for confidence and boldness in their message, and continued to preach Christ in Jerusalem.

And we say our lives are hard. Compared to the early church; our lives are a walk in the park at the very worst. The world they lived in was the same as our world in this respect: it is a fallen world.

How many times have you looked around and thought this is not how the world was meant to be? We cannot remove the world from its fallen state. We can only change how we live in it. Yet, to change how we live in this world, we need Jesus and to follow after Him.

He, who died to save us, is the one who makes up capable of living true faith. The faith that we live for. The faith that brings us to pray for others. The faith that reflects that we believe God has a plan bigger than our own. The mustard-seed sized faith that moves mountains.

Savior. He can move the mountains. Expect big things from God! Expect that He will move mountains in your life. Nothing is too big for Him.

Expect God to DO big things. Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”

We need that faith! The faith to draw near to the throne of God in our time of need and know He will be there. Believe that He is. God is the great I am. The eternal, unchanging I am. God has no identity crisis. He KNOWS who He is. “I am the Lord, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another.” (Isaiah 42:8.) Nor should we give to another the glory due to God. Our praise should be directed upward. In everything. In good times, in bad times. In rejoicing, in mourning. When we see, when we do not see.

A.W. Tozer said, “The unbelieving mind would not be convinced by any proof, and the worshiping heart needs none.” Nevertheless, we often doubt without visible, tangible proof. We lack the strength to live passionately devoted to the one through whom the price was paid.

It comes back to clichés.

God has a plan for you. He does! We all know Jeremiah 29:11, “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”

BUT, do we live what God tells us in the following verses?

“Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you.” (Jeremiah 29:12-14.) This is where we should start. Wholehearted pursuit of God. Holding nothing back. Go.

“There is only one relationship that really matters and that is your personal relationship to your personal Redeemer and Lord. If you maintain it at all costs, letting everything else go, God will fulfill his purpose through your life. One individual life may be of priceless value to God's purposes, and yours may be that life.” (Oswald Chambers.)

Wait for God. If we are seeking God with everything we have, immediate results are never promised. Wait. Expect to see God. He will answer. “But as for me, I will watch expectantly for the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me.” (Micah 7:7.)

Then Isaiah 40:28-31 says, “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired…He gives strength to the weary…yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength.” Wait. Gain strength.

When you are weak, He is strong.

God is always strong. That is the amazing thing about our God is that an absolute word like “always” holds true. There is no exception. Such a standard of consistency is impossible for us. We have weak moments. A lot of them. When we find we are weak, we know the power of Christ fills us. Paul declares himself content in whatever may come his way for the sake of Christ, “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Yet as Isaiah 40:28 suggests, we so easily forget this. Do you not know that God will never grow weary? When we forget this, we turn to rely in and of ourselves. We neglect that our focus needs to be on God, the source of all good things. Our strength spiritually is related to where our focus is. If our focus is on things of this world, our life will reflect that. If we lift our eyes to Him, that is what people will see in our lives.

So often we find ourselves lacking this focus, but we are human, we have shortcomings. We are wired to live by what we see, not what we do not.

“Our insistence upon seeing ahead is natural enough, but it is a real hindrance to our spiritual progress.” (A.W. Tozer.) True faith is epitomized by the times we do not see and we find our faith tested, and our focus remains on God. Faith has no on/off switch. It is a process of learning and growing and trusting. Coming to understand even when we do not see why God is doing something, in His omnipotence we trust that He is working for good in our lives. We draw strength from faith in the one who created us. We draw a boldness and confidence to live in a manner pleasing to God, worthy of our calling, and holy and blameless before the One who gives us life.

Knowing the true character of God to be faithful, we gain a confidence that wills us to put stock in His promises and His truth. “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope, for He who has promised is faithful.” (Hebrews 10:23.) Can we hold so securely to whom God is that we find ourselves with the devotion of the early church? Can we find the depth of passion to not be able to contain the joy of Christ in us?

So the question remains: Behind these words do we have the belief necessary to live what we speak? Do we possess faith that we will go as far as it takes to see God’s kingdom reign in and around our lives?

This almost sounds like Christianity in a perfect world. It was anything but that for those early Christians. Nevertheless, they DID it. God DID it through them. They were hungry. They were willing. Let’s be those things!

Still, this sounds more like utopian Christianity than like American Christianity. Maybe that is the problem.

Maybe we need to believe God has a plan for us, a plan to change lives through us and perform His will through us.

Maybe we need to trust in waiting that God is preparing something big around us. While we wait and pray, His work can be bigger than we even imagined or asked for.

Maybe we need to draw our strength from the God who cannot be weak. It is not in His nature. His strength can carry us to believe in all these things.

Maybe we are forgetting that God can do everything. Maybe we should expect big things, bigger things.

God is bigger. God will do bigger. There is no maybe about that.