Jan. 8--Devotional

Folks, this is from a pile of devotionals I wrote a couple years ago for our men's accountability group.



GOSPEL FAITH

Habakkuk 2:4--...the righteous will live by his faith...

Hebrews 10:10 tells us we are made holy by the will of God.

This is foundational. If God hadn't chosen you to be holy, you probably woudn't be reading this, and you certainly wouldn't be comprehending it.

But let me tell you something else. He did not will your holiness in such a way as to render your own will superfluous.

At this point, I need to issue a warning. People have, quite literally, gone straight to hell trying to figure out how God's will and their own will could exist in the same universe.

When they got to hell, they may have arrived at a conclusion. Who knows. But don't bother going there to find out. Just believe they both exist and go from there.

Which is not to say that a few statements can't be made about the situation.

We observe, first of all, that our will exists because God willed it to exist. And we observe, secondly, that God has willed for our will to operate on faith--a faith that he has created, birthed in us, and is now nurturing to fruition. And--we observe that we genuinely have to choose to accept that faith.

In fact, the cardinal truth of sanctification is that the just live by their faith. Habakkuk's statement gets plenty of press in the New Testament.

This is not a life experience for most of us. Most children of God live as if they get into the kingdom by faith and then paddle upstream from there. And we've all tried it. We all keep trying it, from time to time.

But the Bible says we live by faith; that is, our actions derive from the unassailable fact that the Father loves us and has clothed us in the righteousness of Christ.

Let me give you a scenario.

Your boat has hit some rough water. As a matter of fact, it is being tossed thirty and forty feet into the air by waves you had no idea lurked on the little lake of your life. You are in pain; some situation or relationship is lacerating you; a bloody, throbbing wound in your soul is begging for novocaine.

And then you see it--the way out--the anesthetic--the one you've used so many times before, your favorite; the one that works! And you can have it--no-one will know--it's yours for the taking. And the devil fool with the consequences.

(He will, by the way.)

Friends, this is when you need faith--that God loves you, that you are whole, that no Bondo is needed on the car body of your life.

But this is also exactly where faith is hardest to find. Because all this pain that's tearing out your intestines is about some perceived deficiency in your life or soul, and gospel faith, of course, tells you that your soul is as safe and healthy in the arms of Jesus as a nursing baby. But you can't see this. The two strands of your life, actual and experiential, have diverged, and you're like a kid on roller skates with one leg careening south and the other racing insanely north.

And you might lose this battle. Because faith is better applied steering you away from the city the bordello's in than dragging you out the front door of the durned thing.

If you do lose, make up your mind to go back to faith. Remember who died to forgive you. Practice James 5:16. Figure out who you can call to keep you in the right city, or to go through the wrong one with you if that's where the path really leads.

And then again, you might not lose. Because faith, like a muscle, gets stronger every time you exercise it. And if Satan does manage to get you into a bad place, the child of God who's been around the block a few times remembers how much that last soul hit cost him.

And he remembers something else.

Gospel faith means you don't need painkillers.