Called Out By My Savior

Recently my wife, Heather, wrote a thought provoking blog entry about our interesting Thursday last week. I appreciate her honesty about what God taught her that day. I love reading about what God is doing in her. She encouraged me to do a write up to express what God is taking me through right now, especially as it relates to last week. God is doing mighty things in our lives right now and we are very thankful that He is. However, it doesn’t make the time any easier. It is often “hard” on all of us when God is teaching us. Humanly speaking we don’t want to go through trials and tests to grow our faith. We want a life of ease and a faith that is rock solid. But, that rarely happens. I am becoming more convinced that a “life of ease and a faith that is rock solid” doesn’t exist. The two are at odds with each other. Those that have rock solid faith are those who have gone through the fire and have had their faith confirmed, sharpened and strengthened. James is very clear when he writes:

“Count is all joy, by brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (James 1:2,3)

It seems that God has been doing that very thing in my life as of late, especially last week. And I have a strong feeling that I asked for it.

The story starts about 3 weeks ago. I found myself giving in easily to the temptation of being anxious and worrying about several things. I think it all started when the stock market started to plunge and banks started to announce their financial troubles. My heart was burdened with the prospect that our family could be negatively affected by all of this. This quickly turned into anxiety and worry over what would happen to us. Would I lose my job? Would we lose our home? Where would we go? What would happen to my extended family?… Sin started to dominate my heart and it manifested itself in a depressed attitude. That attitude had an impact on my relationship with my wife, my kids and how I did my job. I found myself living under a cloud of doubt, uncertainty and a bit of fear.

Praise God that the Holy Spirit quickly revealed my sin to me. After a few days of prayer and meditation on Scripture I realized that the sin of anxiety and worry was grabbing hold of my heart. I confessed my sin to God and searched out the truths of Scripture to replace the sins I just put off. The Spirit led me to a very familiar passage of Scripture in Matthew 6. I began to study Jesus’ words on the issue of anxiety and found myself very encouraged. We have a God who loves us and values us. Not because of anything that we have done or because we deserve it, but because He is a God of love, of mercy and compassion. He is a God who is faithful to provide for His Children.

The encouragement from Matthew 6 soon turned into conviction as I studied the passage further. Jesus makes it very clear that our Heavenly Father loves us. He also makes it clear that the reason that we (I) get anxious over things like food, water, clothing and our bodies is because of “our little faith.” Wham! I have been a Christian for a long time now and I have just been accused of having a “little faith” in my God. This accusation would be easy for me to dismiss if it had come from any other source. "He brother, take out the plank in your own eye before you address the twig in mine." But this was coming from my Savior. Jesus, who is God, who is never wrong, who never tells a lie, has just blasted my faith. He didn’t destroy my faith, He just revealed it for what it really was, small.

What do I do now? My Savior has just called me out. Can I ignore what the Bible clearly says? I don’t think so. I got on my knees and asked God to forgive me for having such a small faith after being a Christian for so long and asked that He would increase my faith. I need His strength to do that. In my own strength my faith in Him would only shrink. In my own strength my faith in myself would only grow and that would bring me only more anxiety and more worry. He and He alone is the only one who can build my faith.

The question naturally comes: How does God go about building our faith? Going back to James 1 gives us the answer to that question. James clearly says that the “testing” of our faith is the way that God goes about growing, maturing, and building our faith. God is going to put you into situations where you are forced to trust yourself or trust Him. He will bring circumstances into your life that will cause you to need to lift your eyes above yourself and to look to Him to bring you through. Does He do this to be cruel? Let it never be! He does it because He loves us. He does it so our faith in Him will be proved true. He does it so our faith in Him will grow stronger and stronger. And I asked Him to do it. I asked Him to grow my faith. I asked him to bring into my life trials to grow my faith and He did not turn away my request. Why would He? He is my loving Father, why would He ignore a request to build my faith? So He brought difficult situations into my life to do exactly what I asked.

With all this in mind the circumstances last week were painful. Having a vacation cut short is not what I would have planned. Sleepless nights with Brenton, our 3 month old son, is not what I would have ordered. Someone breaking our car door, costing nearly $1,000.00, and 4 days of a rental car, is not what I asked to happen last week. But it is what God had planned for me to honor my request that He build my faith. These times are painful. They are not fun to go through. But, I will not ask God to stop doing what He is doing. My faith in Him was small, it still is. For it to grow, I need to go through these trials and am very excited about my faith will look like on the other side.

Jason