Forged By Faith

Galatians 5:4 NIV Yesterday we discussed the undeniable fact that each of us are in fact innately errant. We have all been born into sin and spent our lives crawling deeper into that pit chasing after our selfish desires. And we're in a world that considers such a task to be enjoyable and commendable. Folks down here can't get enough of what's evil, wicked, and wrong. That's pretty much been the topic we've been hammering for several days now. There simply is no such thing as good in us because we gave the good away. But we don't want to admit that. Not a single person wakes up in the morning all excited about confessing their flaws and humbly seeking out their weaknesses. We all have egos that try everything possible to keep our pride built up so that we don't feel like the lowly scumbags that we really are. But try as we may, the fact remains that our best is utterly worthless. We can find a way to mess up just about anything through rash decisions, words ...

Mark 10:18 NIV Continuing yesterday's line of thinking a little bit, one of the biggest hurdles that humanity must find a way to get over in regard to a life of faith is our understanding of good. We've managed to get it in our minds that there are good people. The idea of that sounds wonderful. To believe that people are all inherently good. Problem is that Scripture tells us otherwise. Scripture points out the reality of original sin and how mankind has been born into that burden ever since Adam and Eve. So our entire understanding of what's good has unfortunately been corrupted. As we discussed yesterday, this whole idea of good and evil requires a perfect version of good by which we can compare everything else. Without that unblemished standard we have no way to judge and determine how good or how bad something really is. Without a perfect gauge, we're all just left to guess and make our own determination based upon what we each personally think and believe and pref...

1 John 1:5 NIV Yesterday we talked about that all too common question that people outside of our faith love to ask: Where is God? People seem to have a plethora of questions that they think will undermine our beliefs and cause us to admit that we're wrong in having the faith that we have. I guess that since they've closed their minds and hardened their hearts to the possibility of something bigger than themselves, they need to attack those who live by faith in order to bring us down to their level where we give up and accept defeat. But I have a question of my own for those who don't choose to believe in God: How do we determine what's right and what's wrong if we don't have some kind of supreme moral foundation by which to gauge good and evil? Which, having typed that out, I guess we should address whether or not people even believe in good and evil. I reckon that's an assumption on my part. Do people believe in the difference between righteousness and evil...

Psalm 94:14 NIV Hang onto your hats my friends, this one's been on my mind for a while. We've been talking about the assurances that we have in our faith, but we've been approaching them from the common misunderstandings that humanity often has about them. From whether or not our prayers are heard to this idea of faith being easy to the promise that one day all the trials and challenges we experience will finally make sense, we have so many assured promises in our faith. But still, the world tries with everything it has to tear them down and cause us to question those assurances that we have in Scripture, in our faith, and in our Father. The promise that I want to talk about today is the promise that God will never leave us nor forsake us. God has never left us. He will never leave us. He will never stop caring about His people. He will never run out of love for those who live according to His will. But how many times have people asked the question, "Where is God?...

Proverbs 28:9 NIV Here's another assurance that we have in our faith: God hears our prayers. We're told that very thing in 1 Peter 3:12, 1 John 5:14, Proverbs 15:29, John 9:31, and the list goes on. There are verifications all throughout Scripture that tell us that God hears our prayers. But there remains a large portion of our world that doesn't believe so. I contend that they don't believe in prayer because they also don't believe in the God to which we pray. And yet they shout and ridicule and blaspheme and throw stones at the idea of prayer when the world around them isn't changed. I guess since they haven't read the passages that testify to the fact that God hears our prayers, then they obviously don't know the other half of those verses I listed above that point to a possible reason that they’re ideas of what prayer should be aren’t fulfilled. 1 Peter 3:12 for instance: "For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive ...

John 16:33 NIV Yesterday we talked about how hope and trust and this unwavering belief in something bigger than us is often all we have. This world is crumbling. It's unbelievably broken and getting worse by the day. And in the midst of so much hurting and darkness and anger, all of us are desperately seeking something good. We're all looking for something to keep us going and keep our spirits up when the world inevitably brings pain and disappointment and frustration. And it’s left me thinking about the assurances that we do have in our faith. This one from John chapter 16 was the first that popped in my mind. In this world, we will have trouble. We will face hardship. We will endure trials. We will witness horrible tragedies. We will feel this impossible pain that we simply do not understand how to handle. We will go through times when it seems that nothing makes sense and everything is spinning out of control. We will hurt. We will fear. We will doubt. We will be angry. We w...

Hebrews 11:1 NIV There are days when I sit down to write these posts and the words just seem so much harder to find. It's not that I can't think of something that I believe needs to be said or talked about, but things happen around us and seem to have this stopping power that makes us slow down and reconsider everything. Events unfold that seem so meaningless and painful and it's hard for our minds to find a grip on reality for a moment, let alone write out those thoughts and feelings. But still we try. We have to keep trying because hope is sometimes all we have. The horrible fact of the matter is that our world is full of evil. Sin and darkness are in a million places and in a million different forms. Many of them go overlooked or unnoticed. But then something senseless happens that brings that harsh reality back to the forefront of our minds. Sin is often easy to ignore because acknowledging it requires us to admit our guilt. Admitting that there are so many things that ...

John 13:7 NIV There’s this common misconception about faith where people think that it’s just simple. We expect a life of faith to be easy and always make sense. We go into it expecting some kind of over-night change where we wake up the next morning and everything is perfectly lined out and we can simply coast the rest of our lives and slide right into Heaven unscarred and unscathed. But that’s not at all how any of this works! So if we go into it expecting ease and comfort and understanding, then we’re headed for a seriously rough transition. One of the biggest things we crave in life is understanding. There's this fear of the uncertain and of things that we can't comprehend that leaves us uneasy and worried and even filled with doubt. Maybe it's a lack of control or a simple realization that there are things happening around us that we may not even notice let alone understand. But whatever the reason, we all prefer things that we can wrap our minds around because if it m...

Philippians 1:6 NIV Unfaltering. Unwavering. Unyielding. Our God will not quit. He will not stop. He will not give up on the work that He began in us. But we will. We try to quit all the time. We look for loopholes that allow for our desires and wishes to somehow fit into God's plans so that we don't have to change all that much or endure the radical transformation that leads to us living very different lives than the ones in which we've grown to find comfort. But still, through all our doubting and angling and trying to find the easy path through life, God is there to get us straight and reel us back in when our wandering hearts have started to wander a little too much. As we've been discussing for a couple of days, God's plans for us are always for our good. But the problem is that we have a very distinct inability to always see them that way. How can illness or injury be for our good? How is it for our good to be hated by the world in which we're living? How ...

Romans 8:28 NIV Completely letting go and trusting in the unseen is arguably one of the biggest challenges when it comes to a life of faith. We've been talking quite a bit about how we instinctually want life to go our way. We become consumed with our dreams and desires, and we reach this point where we think we have to stay in control of our lives in order to make those dreams come true so that we ensure those desires are fulfilled. And letting go just won't work because then who's to say that we'll end up getting everything we've always wanted? That's where push comes to shove in a life of faith. Are we going to go all in or are we going to stand at the outset and wonder what could have been? Are we going to actually surrender everything we have, everything we are, and everything we want to God's will that we can in no way influence or alter? Is our version of perfection really worth missing out on what God could lead us to instead through our willingness ...

Colossians 1:10 NIV Yesterday we talked about giving thanks in all circumstances. Yes, that really does mean even days when life is miserable, nothing is going our way, and our dreams seem to be drifting further and further away from where reality is taking us. Hard thing to do. What has sadly made it even more difficult is this wacky world in which we live that tells people to follow their hearts and chase their dreams no matter what and to never let anything or anyone hold you back or keep you from doing what makes you happy. Now when all of that hogwash meets face to face with the often more narrow and controlled reality of God's will overriding our own, we're often left upset and aggravated. Being thankful in all circumstances has become a near impossibility for some, if not most, in this place because we've grown to think that the only road to happiness is paved with the fulfillment of our every desire and has us in the driver's seat deciding where we selfishly wan...