Basically, faith is the absolute trust in the Lord, even when you dont know the outcome, even when you cant see Him face to face (yet). My favorite example of faith in the Bible is Genesis 22, the chapter about where God basically told Abraham to take Isaac up to the top of a mountain and give up as a burnt offering to the Lord, he said he would provide an offering. Isaac was Abraham's son, who God had promised him many years ago. I don't know if you know the down and dirty of what exactly a burnt offering is. A burnt offering, essentially, is when you take some living being, cut its guts out, throw them over some wood, along with the empty body, and then catch it all on fire as an offering to God for the forgiveness of your sins. In these days, people took their BEST sheep or whatever animal, and thats what they used in the offering.
The story goes that after God told Abraham to do this, he did it, had Isaac carry up the wood and Abraham and Isaac walked to the top of the mountain and Abraham had the knife raised over his head, about to actually do this gruesome sacrifice, God sent an angel saying 2 Abraham to stop what he was doing and because of his faith in the Lord, God sent a ram to get caught in the bushes nearby.
I don't know about you, but I dont know if I could see myself even doing a burnt offering with an animal, much less MY OWN SON! This is such an awesome description of the kind of faith God wants us all to have in Him. The real question here is: Do you have that kind of faith in God? Could you do something totally radical for the Lord?
I doubt that God will give any of us a test this radical, but you never know! Also, I'm not saying that I could do it; I would love to think that I would, but honestly, I'm not 100% on that one. The truth is, we ALL have our faith tested all the time, and we often don't even notice it. Our responsibility as FAITHFUL Christians is to be able to do whatever God asks of us, by faith. We may not face a life-or-death situation, but if Abraham could pass such a major test, why couldn't we pass the minor tests?
Lucky for us, we dont have to face many of these huge tests that are this radical, because of the parallel offering that God sent for us. Instead of us having to send something up as an offering to God, he sent his own offering down to us in Jesus and his blood spilled on the ground takes the place of ours! What an amazing, awesome gift!
I challenge each and every one of you who read this to take a step back and ask yourself honestly this question: "Self, could I step out of my comfort zone and do something radical for the Lord?" If you answered yes, AWESOME! If you answered no, thats okay, try to find out whats holding you back from saying yes. Work towards being able to answer honestly out of your heart: YES! Try spending some time with God, not just saying a prayer at dinner, but some 1 on 1 with God, pray, read in the Bible, journal your feelings/thoughts, anything just do it! And that's for everyone, spending time with God is the only way to get closer to him!
I hope that someone will get something good out of this blog, and I plan on writing many more! I'm always up for talking or texting anyone about anything you need/want to talk about, so feel free to do so anytime if u want someone to talk to! Send me a message and we will get started/hook up! God bless!!
- Michael Slaughter
Psalm 46:1-3
