Hosea 4:6 tells us that God’s people are destroyed because they lack knowledge. This can sound very harsh to an untrained ear, but it shouldn’t seem harsh at all. Society places a great deal of emphasis and priority on education, so much so that we put our little ones in an educational environment almost as soon as they can walk. We place a high value on the discipline of learning and discovering information. This is engrained in our makeup. We’re wired to pursue the thing that increases us, and nothing will increase us like the right knowledge. God tells us continually throughout His Word to seek Him specifically for His wisdom, and to work with this wisdom in our minds until we’ve reached a point of understanding it. For the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, nothing is more important in this hour than increasing in God’s Word. Many of us are at a crucial point in our spiritual walks, and a piece of right knowledge is the difference between leaping to the next level of faith and staying right where we are.
Romans 10:17(NKJV) tells us, “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” All of us are given a measure of faith, even the person that hasn’t yet believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith is required to do anything, but one of the lessons we learn very quickly in life is that our human faith isn’t going to be enough to remove blockers and elevate us spiritually. It’s not going to take us where the Lord wants us to go. We need HIS faith to do that! We need the faith that comes from putting on the mind of Christ. This is the only way to keep ourselves on the path of God’s purpose.
Many of us have desires that we’ve been praying about. Whether it’s better health or relationships, meeting your future spouse, or how you’re going to hold things together financially, you feel it’s urgent to see some movement in your circumstances. You might feel as though things haven’t been that great for a while, but now you’re feeling as though they’ve really got you on the edge. When we’re feeling even just a little bit hopeless or helpless, God wants us to know that we can count on His love and strength. He told the Apostle Paul in 2Corinthians 12:9(NLT), “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” God will help us, and we can count on His strength to hold up us, but our faith in Him through Christ must be unyielding.
My father was a military man, and it developed or brought out in him a love for discipline and order. As kids, we knew not to waste our time asking to do anything fun until our responsibilities around the house were taken care of first; and we couldn’t rush through them. He drilled in us that if we started something the right way, this is the way we’d finish. Life taught him this lesson, and he tried his best to pass it on to us because it works. If you sacrifice a little pleasure, stay the course and stay on task, and do things to the very best of your ability; the pay-off will exceed your expectation. It’s a foundational principle of God’s Word.
Doing things the right way means following God’s directives. Heavenly Father is a God of order. Everything He does comes out of His divine order. Knowing this about God’s nature is foundational for us. It sets a pattern for our believing and faith that we can rely on wholeheartedly, because when we are diligent to follow God’s Word, we will always be pleased with the results.
Wherever you are in your faith in God, through Christ God demands that you go further. Many of us have been praying for God to do some things in our lives, but we want Him to do things our way. We want the blessing without the sacrifice. We don’t want to pay the cost of obedience and surrender that is required. It is true that our Father tells us to come as we are, and He will accept us, but this is the very beginning of the transformation that must occur. He tells us in Romans 12:1-2 that we must present to Him our bodies and everything in them. We are to let them be a living and holy sacrifice that He will find acceptable. He then commands us to let Him transform us by changing the way we think. Changing the way we think is the first step in the transformation process.
Right now, we think in a way that keeps us tied to treacherous habits and negativity. Our God is a God of order. When we give ourselves to Him through Christ, and ask Him to lead, guide, direct, and bless our lives, we don’t get to dictate to Him how to accomplish this transformation; that would be out of order. Jesus Christ is LORD! He leads, not us. We don’t get to say, “God, take this part and do what You will, but I’ll handle the other part.” Some of us are not letting Him take control because we truly don’t have faith that if we release it, He’ll strengthen us. If we release it, He’ll protect us and place an impenetrable wall of protection around us. If we release it, God will give us the thing we were meant to have all along. It will not be based on our agenda, but on His infallible, incorruptible Will. We can’t keep going back to past sin and faith-sabotaging habits. And we are not going to be able to operate on yesterday’s faith. The times are going to demand much more of us, and we must set aside the baby bottle, and chew on the meat.
Our Heavenly Father is a Faith God! Hebrews 11:3(NKJV) says, “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.” Faith is a part of who God is. His faith is the explanation for the things that are not apparent to our natural eyesight. His Word is truth, and as He spoke the truth of His Word, things came into being. We can physically see a chair, table, house, or car, but if we break these things down scientifically to their raw material, they are made from particles and atoms that are not visible to the naked eye. And if we go deeper than this, we know that God created these particles and atoms by speaking them into being. He created everything through faith. This is what He used to create, and there is no substitute for this supernatural substance. He has ordained that our relationship with Him should be built on our faith response to His love. We must trust Him, and we must believe wholeheartedly in His goodness.
Faith in Jesus Christ is our connection to God. Again, it is a part of who God is, and He has woven faith into us as His children. We must demonstrate it through our emotions and thoughts, and through our actions as well. 1John 5:4(NLT) tells us, “For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith.” Do you see this? It’s so exciting that Heavenly Father has given us a part of Himself that guarantees our victory in Christ! Don’t let this slip by you. Have faith in Him! He is our God and He cannot fail. He will never leave us or forsake us. Cling to God in faith through the Lord Jesus Christ, and be at peace as He supplies all your need and covers you through His protection and care. ■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
“Set Aside the Baby Bottle and Chew on the Meat” written by Reverend Fran Mack, edited by Kim Times for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2020. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.