Michael,
Thank you for simply being ‘real’ and transparent. That’s the reason I enjoy reading your blogs–because you ARE so very real, transparent and honest. What a breath of fresh air. Sincerely, Steve

If we look at what God has promised we can see that death is not God failing us. Even if we die we will still be resurrected and will glorify Him in His Kingdom if we have faith and trust in the promises he HAS made.

I Samuel 30:24 – The tired soldiers who stay watching the stuff will share in the spoils with those who go down to do battle.

We are not competing Christians against Christians to see who has the most faith and who can fight the most battles. We are a diversely gifted Church who is fighting together – in many ways and on many different levels – against an enemy who seeks to steal, kill, and destroy.

We may lost many battles, but in the end the war will be won! God does not promise we will win every battle, but that doesn’t mean He doesn’t want us fighting the battles He puts us in. God does promise that we will win the war!

Revelation 5:8 and 8:3-5 seem to say that the prayers of the saints are stored up for a later fulfillment and completion, even if we don’t see that completion in the present age.

It’s much better to ask God to show us which battles He wants us to fight and which ones we will have the faith to win, and then fight those battles … than it is to find a battle that we want to fight and then either ask God to give us the faith to win it or presume that God prefers to lose that one.

We shouldn’t fight out of our league. There are footsoldiers and there are commandos.

Where there is sickness, we know that God wants healing. We don’t know if God will achieve healing or not, because God limits Himself to work with Satan as the god of this world, and to rely on a partnership with the saints, knowing that the saints lack the faith to achieve total victory with every human being (we won’t heal everybody) and with every illness.

Part of it also has to do with the faith of the ones who are ill. In one town it says that Jesus could work only work a few miracles due to the unbelief of the people there, while in other towns it says that he was able to heal all who were sick and oppressed.

Wherever there is illness, there is at least one obstacle to the healing. If we don’t know, our prayer could be for the obstacles to be removed, or for the obstacles to be revealed so that we can pray effectively for their removal. One of the obstacles could be our lack of faith, in which case we should be praying for our faith to be strengthened.

Just as we don’t punish our infants when they are unable to walk, God doesn’t despise us for our weak faith. His love for us when we are young and weak is no excuse for us to stop growing. When our brother is weak, we are not to judge or look down on our brother. It is our job to grow in faith in those areas where we can’t walk in faith, so that one day we may walk and eventually run if we have enough years on earth to get to that point. Keep growing! Keep fighting the good fight! Don’t grow weary in your prayers if you don’t see results on this earth; in due time you will reap a harvest. It’s not about the results we want, it’s about the results God wants – the fruit he wants to see His tree bear!

I just noticed that the Hebrew boys two “if” statements” follow the king’s two “if” statements in the Daniel passage. Could they have just been replying with a structure parallel to the king’s?

I think that much of the faith issue comes from a sense of shame and guilt when we think that we do not have faith or do not have enough faith. We don’t want to believe that we lack faith, because we don’t want to feel ashamed and guilty. So instead of admitting that we lack faith, we turn and say that this or that must be God’s will – we take the focus off ourselves and our responsibility to be Jesus in the world and lay the responsibility at God’s feet for either acting or not acting in accordance with our will. We should actually be taking the responsibility for acting or not acting in accordance with His will, for believing or not believing according to His will.

If a soldier is commanded to fight a battle and loses that battle, he doesn’t blame the commander for the loss, nor does he go away feeling ashamed and guilty if he has done his best.

Daniel chapter 10 gives us a picture of God’s will for the angel to come to Daniel, yet the angel having to fight and be detained for 21 days. We are to pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is done in heaven, presumably because otherwise God’s will on earth will not be done. God’s will is for blessing and salvation to come to the entire human race. We shouldn’t stop praying just because we know that many will perish. God is not willing that any should perish, but they will. It is still our job to pray God’s will.

Thanks, Michael. This passage in Daniel 3 has been an anchor to me, in that it illustrates their devotion to God above personal safety. What the three were saying, in effect, is that the king’s threats are useless to turn them away from the true God. Their confidence in God’s ability to save is not the same as their knowledge of whether it was His will to do so at that time. Let me say that again. They could not see into the future, knowing the outcome, but they expressed their faith in His ability as sovereign Lord to do so, and to deliver them out of the king’s influence.
This is to me more impressive than a blind faith in the outcome.
Also, some speculate that Goliath had brothers and that the extra stones David picked up were for them, if they were in the crowd.

The Word says we know in part. I do not think we can full decipher the ways of a God that is so awesome in wisdom. His ways are not our ways and neither are His thoughts our thoughts. Sometimes trying to understand His intentions and how He works is what gets us into trouble. We just trust in Him and lean not unto our own understanding, humble ourselves and allow Him to take charge.
Some people have been told that because they did not have enough faith that is why certain things that they were beleiving God for did not come to pass but they forget that God works everything according to the counsel of HIS WILL….not yours!

Mike,

Obviously faith is quite messy. I do think that there are times where the Lord will give the confidence that He will work a certain way. In my experience it goes beyond some emotion. In fact it is a clear awareness of what He is getting ready to do, or in many cases not do.
As a pastor I am often asked to pray for someone who is sick. I NEVER pray confidently for their healing unless I sense the Spirit leading me. I will simply ask for God to help them. However there have been times when I sensed after the prayer that the Lord is going to answer…He usually does. I have also had a time where I took a deacon with me to pray for someone who was on their deathbed. They wanted me to ask for her healing. At the time I really didn’t know what to ask. I just prayed that the Lord would “be with her” (I know that it is a cop-out prayer). My deacon told me later that he really had no peace at all towards praying for her healing.
I think that what you shared is important in the fact that it frees people to be honest about whether they sense the Lord’s leading in something or not. There is no promise in scripture that God will heal in a specific case, but the Spirit does lead in giving assurance when it is the Lord’s Will. Care needs to be taken in the times where He doesn’t give the certainty.
I think that we need to seek the Lord’s will more diligently in such cases.

Bro. Will

Thank you for your post. I needed to here those thoughts from someone with skin on. I to believe that sometimes I am just not in the loop. I am a soldier who follows Christ on a need to know basis.

My father committed suicide the day after I gave birth to twin girls. I had two babies in intensive care and was grieving my dad’s death.

My father raised my brother and I as atheists. I am a Christian now and my brother is still an atheist. After his death, my aunt sent my dad’s childhood possessions down to us and in them was a little Bible my dad owned when he was 7 years old. In his hand writing is a confirmation of belief in Jesus dated by my grandmother.

I wonder is my dad saved because he believed and accepted Christ as a child? Or did he just do that for his mom or because he felt obliged to do it? Did he really give his faith up? Can you give your faith up? Was he really saved? Is he in heaven or hell?

I often get angry at God because I can’t see Him or feel Him working in my life. Maybe I am not saved. I gave my life to Christ as a 13 year old, but it was not until I was 33 that I even attempted to live a Christian life. Can I lose my faith?

I tell myself, “who knows – only God”. I tell God this. “God, I am holding onto one thought, I am trusting in you to save me from myself.” My mind goes in circles on this because the Bible is not clear on if you can lose your salvation or not. I find conflicting scriptures. So instead of just not believing I usually end up with the “God, I am trusting in you to save me.” then I stop thinking about it and go on with my life until the next go around in my head.

Personally I think Satan has fun with my misery and likes to see me go in circles.