When I said, "God, I want a faith like Abraham's; a faith that pleases you", did I really know what I was asking?
One cool evening, under the star-dusted ,velvety black Texas sky, the phrase "..The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" kept rolling around in my mind. What does that mean and why those guys? I had been reading about Abraham in my devotions and knew that He was noted for 'having a faith that pleased God'. My heart was so consumed with the desire to have the same kind of faith that I began praying, "God, I want a faith like Abraham's. I want a faith that pleases you". The desire was intense and stayed for well beyond that one cool evening in Texas. For months I prayed this.
About a year before I began praying for this, something that God had already been having me trust Him with, was right in front of me. I struggled for years to keep on trusting Him with what He spoke to me in 2004 and now it seemed as though it was actually going to happen. My heart was elated and my faith, hope, and trust in Him seemed to have deepened....
Within a month of me praying for "a faith like Abraham's", the very thing "He spoke" to me started to become impossible...almost overnight. Walls suddenly erected around it, barbed wire, spikes, and slime covered the wall, and a moat filled with the foulest of creatures surrounded it. Basically, there was no way "what He spoke" could happen. All the odds were against it and He still asked me to trust Him...
Friends, this is where the real test of faith comes in. Since this drastic change for the worse has happened, I have had my ups and downs in my faith with God. Everything from "But God, this is what you spoke", "I must have misheard", "Why would you do this" even to the extreme of "There's still hope", "What you say, You will do", "The Lord fulfills His promises". God, being so very patient with me, has taken me from what I thought was a deep faith to showing me where, or what, my faith was really resting in. I was was putting my hope and faith in something happening, instead of in the One who can do all things. He has been walking with me on this rocky, mountainous journey of faith until He has "completed the work He has begun in me".
I am by no means a super-christian or anywhere near having a faith that is noted for pleasing God (Abraham), but I have been blessed to have these rose-colored glasses of what I thought faith was, removed. It is not a bed of roses, easy and sweet...no, I have come to see that is it full of sweat and tears with a result that is a deeper realization of who Christ is and all He is able and willing to do. With a result of a faith chiseled and put through the fire....with a result that is 'pleasing to God'. With a result of deepened hope and trust....with a result of a faith in the One and not the thing.
Yes, faith's journey has had its ups and downs for me, but it is so worth it. He is so beautiful and I can honestly say now: The Lord gives and takes away, and in both He is still so good!
