Daily Devotional

If you are going to have faith, have faith!  Quit messing around!  You were saved by faith (Eph. 2:8).  If that is true of you, then you know what faith is, and how to have it.  Our salvation is an introduction into a life of faith.  Paul said we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Cor. 5:7).
 
Early in my walk with the Lord, I lamented more than once not knowing what to do to please God each day.  I was already daily in the Scriptures, and in prayer.   I was standing in front of my garage one day, and I said to myself something like this: “I wish God would send me a paper, floating down from heaven, instructing me what to do today.  I would do it all!”

No heavenly paper floated down anywhere near my house!  But some days later I decided to quit crying about it all.  I determined to start believing that Jesus was speaking to me, as written in John (John 10:3-4).  I started listening for His voice everywhere as I went about life.  I started looking for His fingerprints on everything, in faith.  I was soon shocked to discover a whole new world of understanding by faith, and being led by faith, had opened up to me!
 
I have always rejoiced over Jesus’ instructions to His disciples as He directed them to prepare the Passover meal for them: “Go into the city, and a man will meet your carrying a pitcher of water” (Mk. 14:13).  It helps me understand that the life of faith is the most exciting life there is on earth.  Encountering God by faith, all day long!

But some would say that if you live like that, your will be open to making many errors.  This is true, they are right.  I was one time sure that God was speaking to me through a cloud formation.  He was not!  Another time I was sure He was speaking to me while I was looking at a city with skyscrapers, at night. I imagined there was a message for me in the pattern of the lighted windows on the buildings.  There was no such pattern!

But if there is no risk, neither is there any faith.  Paul said, “Who hopes for what he already has?” (Rom.8:24).  So there is risk, but I learned a lot through things like clouds and windows about what was not God.  I learned much pressing forward in faith, and watching the handiwork of God come alive before my eyes!

Elisha made an ax head float, by faith (2 Kings 6:5-7).  Jesus said that we could, by faith, even a small bit of faith, tell a mulberry tree to be uprooted and planted in the sea, and it would obey us (Lk. 17:5-6)!

It may seem risky to walk by faith like this.  But we are told to, over and over (2 Cor. 5:7).  We are even told that it is impossible to please God without faith (Heb. 11:6).  And that if we have started by faith, that if we shrink back from living by faith, that God’s soul   will have no pleasure in us (Heb. 10:38)!  But the writer to the Hebrews encouraged his readers that they were not among those who shrink back (Heb. 10:39).  I encourage you in the same way.
Again I will say, the life of walking by faith is the most exciting life on earth, nothing excepted!  Imagine, participating in a living way, day to day, with Jesus!  Hearing His voice.  Seeing the man with the pitcher.  Seeing Jesus and following Him.
So I recommend a renewal.  If you are going to have faith, have faith.  Quit messing around!