Faith Must Prevail.

 Cultivating Faith.

Choosing to believe the Word of God when we have no understanding of our own. We love to lean to our own understanding as if we can understand the ways of God. As long as we understand something we seem to accept our understanding for what it is. Time and again we've had something we've understood turn out to be something completely different- revealing our understanding was flawed for one reason or another. I can tell you I understand, and after a bit of thought find myself not truly understanding. I thought I understood, but my understanding wasn't complete. We are told to …

Pro 3:5  Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. 

Pro 3:6  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. 

LEAN NOT to our OWN UNDERSTANDING. We think we have some kind of right to understand simply because we exist. We hold ourselves to be so important, all important just because we live. We pride ourselves on our lives, living to our own understanding, but our understanding is extremely flawed and terribly imperfect. We know this to be true- every time we are proven wrong about something, or are forced to recognize we are wrong in some way we have to KNOW that we are flawed creatures! As flawed creatures we cannot trust our own understanding it would be futile to do so. If we were never wrong about anything at all, then maybe just maybe we'd think differently but we are not only wrong occasionally, but often. Why do we insist upon understanding so much that is beyond our ability to do so? We toss and turn and keep ourselves in a state of anxiousness as we struggle to understand the whys and wherefores of our lives. We are told by our Creator, NOT to lean to our own understanding. We are to trust the LORD with all that we are, He alone has the perfect understanding. 

I can recall there being moments in my life during various crisis when I just say over and over, I don't understand, I just don't understand… I can't understand. And I do that, I announce my inability to understand as if I should be able to understand. I want to understand, I seek understanding, but that is when FAITH has to step in and I have to TRUST that the LORD has everything in HIS control. I may not understand the horrors or why they are allowed to such innocents, but I have been given the knowledge through CHRIST JESUS that I can understand that ALL the horrors are temporary. This knowledge alone allows hope for the end of ALL horrors for all one day, and a lifetime of endlessness without any suffering. I must believe this! If I try to lean to my own understanding, I'm lost entirely. Faith must step in, faith must prevail. All by the grace and mercy, the love of our SAVIOR, JESUS CHRIST, now and forever!

Amen!

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January 24, 1899  AT Jones Excerpt-

"The knowledge of what the Scripture means when urging upon us the necessity of cultivating faith is more important than any other knowledge that can be obtained."

Faith is the expecting the word of God to do the thing which that word speaks and the depending upon the word only to accomplish the thing which that word speaks.

Abraham is the father of all them which be of faith. The record of Abraham, then, gives instruction in faith--what it is and what it does for him who has it.

What shall we say, then, that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the faith, has found? What saith the Scripture?

When Abram was more than eighty years old and Sarai his wife was old and he had no child, God "brought him forth abroad and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be."

And Abram "believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness." Gen. 15:5,6. 

Abram accepted the word of God and expected by the word what the word said. And in that he was right.

Sarai, however, did not put her expectation upon the word of God only. She resorted to a device of her own to bring forth seed. She said to him, "The Lord hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her." Gen. 16:2.

Abram, for the moment, swerved from the perfect integrity of faith. Instead of holding fast his expectation and dependence upon the word of God only, he "harkened to the voice of Sarai."

Accordingly, a child was born, but the whole matter proved to be so unsatisfactory to Sarai that she repudiated her own arrangement. And God showed His repudiation of it by totally ignoring the fact that any child had been born. He changed Abram's name to Abraham and continued to talk about making him the father of nations through the seed promised and of making his covenant with Abraham and the seed that was promised. He also changed Sarai's name to Sarah, because she should "be a mother of nations" through the promised seed.

Abraham noticed this total ignoring of the child that had been born and called the Lord's attention to it, saying,  "O, that Ishmael might live before thee!"

But "God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed, and thou shalt call his name Isaac, and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant and with his seed after him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year." Gen. 17:15-21.

By all this both Abram and Sarai were taught that, in carrying out the promise, the fulfilling of the word of God,  nothing would answer but dependence upon that word only. Sarai learned that her device brought only trouble and perplexity and delayed the fulfillment of the promise. Abram learned that in harkening to the voice of Sarai,  he had missed the word of God, and that now he must abandon that whole scheme and turn again to the word of God only.

But now Abraham was ninety-nine years old and Sarah was eighty- nine. And, if anything, this seemed to put farther off than ever the fulfillment of the word and called for a deeper dependence upon the word of God--a greater faith than before.

It was perfectly plain that now there was no possibility of dependence upon anything whatever, but the naked word only; they were shut up absolutely to this for the accomplishment of what the word said. All works,  devices, plans, and efforts of their own were excluded, and they were shut up to faith alone--shut up to the word alone and to absolute dependence upon that word only for the accomplishment of what that word said.

And now that the way was clear for "the word only" to work, that word did work, effectually, and the promised "seed" was born. And so "through faith," through helpless, total dependence upon the word only--"Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised."

And "therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude,  and as the sand which is by the seashore innumerable." Heb. 11:12.

And thus was fulfilled the word spoken to Abram, when God "brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them. . . . So shall thy seed be."

This is a divine lesson in faith. And this is what the Scripture means when urging upon us the necessity of cultivating faith. For this was imputed to Abraham for righteousness, even the righteousness of God, which is by faith.

Yet "it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him, but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed,  if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered for our offenses and was raised again for our justification." Rom. 4:23-25.

And all "they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham." All they who, excluding--yea, repudiating--all works, plans, devices, and efforts, of their own, depend in utter helplessness upon the word of God only to accomplish what that word says--these are they which be of faith and are blessed with faithful Abraham with the righteousness of God.

O, "understanding how to exercise faith: this is the science of the gospel"! And the science of the gospel is the science of sciences. Who would not strain every nerve to understand it?