faith

Faith
4/23/06
Often when I am learning about faith, the scripture about the widow pleading her cause before the judge comes to mind. After telling her story, Jesus asks “Will not God bring about justice for His chosen ones, who cry out to Him day and night? Will He keep putting them off? I tell you, He will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” (Lk 18:7,8).

I admire the widow’s tenacity, and have often thought that is why Jesus tells this story; so we would not give up praying. But then, I didn’t fully understand the reference to faith. What was it about this widow that I was supposed to emulate?

I noticed a few things today which are very simple, but help me in my prayer life.
She believed in her cause.
She believed the time for her answer was “now”.
She believed that she was the right person to make the request.
She went to the right person to grant her what she requested.

We also believe in our cause when it lines up with God’s Word and His revealed purposes for our lives. What then stops us from praying in faith? One thing I stumble over is God’s Sovereignty. It’s not a bad thing for God to have. But it means He can have a timing I am not aware of. Is it possible to know God’s timing concerning our requests? Not always, but He can give us an answer of “wait”. If we don’t ask, we’ll become passive and stop asking.

Another thing that hinders us from asking God to intervene in a situation is when we think we may not be the right person, or righteous enough. Our enemy loves to accuse us so much that we withdraw from petitioning our requests, when the truth is that our righteousness comes from Jesus. If He accepts us, then the Father will hear our prayers.

And the last thing (though there may be others) that stumbles faith is when we take our request to someone other than the Father. Trying to work out our own solutions to problems just gives us more to pray about later, and a headache.

The widow did not give up, and one thing which fuels determination is believing you are right. Though this may not agree with our concept of humility, it is important to think you are right for many reasons. One is that satan will try to topple us from our stand, and will be successful if we waver. We need to be firm in what we believe. Another reason to be firm is that our flesh is weak and gets weary in waiting. Setting our minds on what is right helps us to endure. If we don’t think we can know when we are right or not, then we will be double-minded. Being single-minded on what is right is a strength we all need for our prayer life.

One more important point from the story about the widow was that she asked. I have repeatedly asked for things also, and sometimes gotten them. One interesting answer I received was from a request I didn’t expect to have answered. But it was the result of a conversation I had with the Lord a few months ago in which He helped me determine why I felt sad about good things happening to other people. I know this shouldn’t be, and had repented of it, but God wanted to get to the bottom of it, for my sake. The problem was that I saw a discrepancy between the Word of God and the actions of God in my life. That doesn’t mean there was a discrepancy, but that is the way I saw it. He kindly let me state how I felt about having a relationship with Him based on faith. I said, according to the Word, that words without actions seemed dead, and that a relationship needed more than words; it needed acts of love. I felt like I was supposed to take by faith His words as love, but hadn’t seen His actions in a long time. This was the discrepancy I saw between the Bible’s depiction of God’s character, and what I was experiencing at that time in my life. I then prayed for Him to show me His favor, and not in the past (as if I had missed it somehow). Here is what followed;
· A loving couple gave me a lovely Swarovski crystal broach
· My husband gave me a CD which re-kindled my love of worship
· A good friend gave me an expensive diamond ring
· An acquaintance brought over a bouquet of flowers
Not only did the Lord show me favor through the gifts I received, He honored me in my floundering talent of song-writing. My father is a conductor and composer and is putting on a concert next month, featuring 3 songs I have written. He invited me to attend and is paying my way to fly there. I have never had so much favor poured on me and am astounded. When I prayed my prayer I expected to hear how selfish and blind I was. But no, God loves to show us that His nature is good, exactly like it is written in those very Words He speaks. And that we can be “right” about.

We can have more than Words, though God’s words have been the love of my life (sorry Dave). Faith is awesome. I’d like to encourage you to pray in faith for a manifestation of God’s nature in your life today. I believe He will do it.