Faith as a Way of Life

The church often views faith as something which has happened. When did you come to faith in Jesus?

It is true that faith has a beginning but you see it continues. It has an end listed in the bible when we meet God face to face in heaven.

You see we live life day by day by faith. What does living by faith mean?

You see it is trusting in things we do not see and always clinging the promises of God.

Why is living by faith relevant? Primarily because it makes us humble and open to opportunities. You see we do not know as much as we think.

The tendency of mankind is to always see oneself as someone who knows things and has capabilities. This hinders our mission because we rely on our own strength not on God.

To realize that we do not know and we do not see God but through a glass dimly allows true ministry and a more faithful following of God.

You see we are all pilgrims on a journey and we are all lost and needing direction at times. Some pilgrims on the path of faith are more lost than others and some are mainly on the right path and some very far astray, but we all are on a path and there is murkiness to it and we are not always sure what is right or wrong.

Often ethics and the Christian life is made very simple. You see in the bible that ethics and the Christian life is very difficult.

Usually the disconnect is that we have simplified faith to make it easy to fulfill. We like things that are achievable.

Christianity is inconvenient in that it demands the unachievable, to be sinless, and then simply says look you cannot achieve this. Go have faith in Jesus – he has achieved what you cannot.

The great achievement of the Christian, faith, rests outside of himself. And as he lives out faith the works flow from his connection to Jesus.

The bible has an ethical sense which is terribly difficult. It is impossible to fulfill. But God knows our frame and says have faith I have already fulfilled the whole law for you and go and live in faith.

And as we live in faith we fail but by God’s grace it has no effect on our standing since the cross is final. It is finished. Salvation is won or lost at the cross.

We are free to live out obedience to God while resting in the fact that victory is won. You see the path we journey on is fully under the shadow of the cross where all of our sin has been blotted out and we are already clothed in Jesus’ righteousness.

We can have the freedom to fail because the battle is won and the freedom is liberating because we are asked to live in faith and what is requested is that we live in faith and not that we have any success.

You see success in many aspects of life is given by God. It is not a result of the quality of faith. That we fail often has no relation to the quality of our faith or efforts and more on God’s will.

And you can see that there is often no relation between the success God gives and how he views his children. He may give one child great success and another very little, but it often has no bearing on his view of them.

Many wicked man have been given by God a short ephemeral success and many children a long and hard path, but you see we need to look by faith at things and not judge as the world judges.