DAY 724: THE CHALLENGE OF FAITH - Devotional

The Return ^ | April 26, 2024

[metmom]

When we read the beginning books of the Bible, we tend to forget something very important. God had promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob a homeland where he would provide for them. He didn’t keep his promise the way that anyone would’ve thought he would. We forget that because we know the end of the story. Who would have thought that 400 years of slavery in Egypt would be part of keeping that promise, though? We feel like it’s hard to trust God when he’s not keeping his promises the way we think he should or with the timing we would have.

Take the story of when the Israelites finally got to the Promised Land, for example. They received the law on Mount Sinai and orders for worship. They knew what God wanted from them.

They sent 12 spies into the land; you know the story. They came back and said, “The land is beautiful! It’s flowing with milk and honey.” That means it could handle cattle and had enough greenery and fruit-bearing trees that there was honey. Ten of the spies then said, “We can’t take it. We’re slaves. We don’t fight. Let’s go back to Egypt. We had garlic, leeks, onions; we were safe there.”

This is the challenge of faith.

Now you’d figure that if God sent down 10 plagues and parted a sea in front of us that we’d trust him. No, no, that’s how we operate. No matter what God has done for us, unbelief clings to us like soot. Some people let God save them out of the world, but they never walk in faith and enter into all of his blessings.

How about you? What is God asking you to trust him with today? Think about what he’s already done for you. Think about what it says that he’s done for his people in the Bible. God is always faithful to his people.

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’ The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord” (Lamentations 3:22-26, ESV).

[metmom]

The Return ping

[Bob434]

The reason we don’t walk in faith is because we haven’t yet yielded- we haven’t learned the secret of the Christian life and overcoming (not that we Wil. Be perfect, but we WILL be conscious of our sin and christ much deeper)

The secret?

. ‘The love of Christ constraineth.’

As is a man’s love, so is his life. The mightiest devolution is to excite a new love, by which old loves and tastes are expelled. ‘A new affection’ has ‘expulsive power,’ as the new sap rising in the springtime pushes off the lingering withered leaves. So union with Him meets the difficulty arising from inclination still hankering after evil. It lifts life into a higher level where the noxious creatures that were proper to the swamps cannot live. The new love gives a new and mighty motive for obedience.

https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/mac/revelation-21.html

The love of Christ constraineth - our determined love for him keeps us from falling vict8m t9 our desires/lusts/temptations etc. It takes determination to stop and say “nope, im not going to indulge my sin nature in this issue because I love Christ and want to obey him more an i want to dive into sin “. It takes a tremendous amount of work and effort, as past bad habits are deeply I grained and will likely never cease calling our names. We reap what we sowed, and our past will be a continual thorn in our sides.