Crisis is not God's best

Crisis is not God's best. It's definitely a motivation and gets our attention quick. I've never heard of a believer who experienced crisis while waiting on God for something revealed to be received. Every crisis we experience has this central theme: it's a situation in which we have to believe in God for one thing or believe God for something. Rather than go from crisis to crisis, we can go from faith to faith.

The just shall live by faith. There's an adventure of faith waiting to be discovered in the life of the just. It's a place of consistent wonder and awe as we realize the blessing and joy of the things God can do in our lives and wants to do. When we close off our capacity for faith, although God wants to do something new, he can't. That's because we have no new expectation from him. This is what opens the door of crisis into our lives. Here's how the Scriptures put it:

HEB 2:3 (NLT) "So what makes us think we can escape if we ignore this great salvation that was first announced by the Lord Jesus himself and then delivered to us by those who heard him speak?"

The just is suppossed to live by faith. But when faith is not rightly understood, we practice all kinds of weird behavior. To understand faith in its original context, we have an excellent example in the life of Abraham. The man God did things for.

First, Abraham was already consencrated to God. When in Genesis 12, he was asked to leave everything behind and follow God, that's a picture of consencration. Faith doesn't work in our lives unless we are living lives committed to him. When we attempt to practice faith without this first initial act, things get complicated, and we can get into serious errors.

Second, Abraham had already received a specific promise. At the start, the promise had been vague, "I will bless you, and you will be a Blessing....in you all the families of the earth shall be Blessed." That promise was vague regarding Abraham's personal family. After a while, it seemed Abraham himself would have no natural children. God promises fruitfulness by having him count the stars. Then Ishmael was born, but that was not the promise either. It was specifically meant to be a child born to him and Sarah.

Finally, faith involves our speech and thoughts. When it became apparent that God wanted Isaac to be born through Abraham and Sarah as the unique fulfillment of their promise, He changed their names. It was not only to involve their speech, but their attitudes had to be changed as they began to be called by new names. With those conditions met, God's promise manifested. The process will be the same for us.

#Grace

#Faith

#Love

#Gospel

#Goodworks