Everyone who comes to Jesus comes by faith. Faith is the substance of things not seen. I believe God allows great faith experiences to new Christians to ground us in our new found faith. But the more we grow in our relationship to God, the more He requires us to exhibit our faith in greater ways. Maybe our prayers don't get answered as quickly as they used to. God just wants us to trust Him more and more. This doesn't get any easier as we grow older; well, not for all of us anyway. God continues to take us to new levels in our faith.
Recently God has brought me through a new test and I guess that wasn't good enough, because even before that one was over He brought another one on. I really was almost at the point of admitting that God perhaps DOES give us more than we can bear! But I have been with Him too long to really believe that!
Two months ago I lost my job. It was sudden and unexpected. I had not had to look for a job in the last 15 years of work experience. I had no idea where to start looking. I was in shock for at least two weeks or more - and thinking that there might have been a chance of getting my old job back. Finally, I realized that was not going to happen. Well, the first thing I knew I had to do was prepare my resume, which I did. Then someone told me I should put it online and recommended Monster.Com. Which I also did. I also sent it to some employment agencies. I started getting calls and interviews. I was so nervous with my first interview and I realized quickly a couple of things. I was not prepared for all of this! I went to the library and got some books on writing resumes and redid the whole thing. I read articles on how to do interviews and started implementing some techniques. With each interview my confidence grew. I started doing a couple of temp jobs and found that I liked it. The whole process was very humbling to start with, but I was praying ALOT and God was enabling me to take things one step at a time. I knew I had all the spirtual tools I needed, but I needed some practical skills, too. But time was pressing on and still no job offers. I knew God was stretching my faith because I was having to trust Him in areas that I wasn't used to. God gave me some great moral supporters through my husband and other family members and friends.
Just when it looked like something was going to work out with the job situation, God brought another trial into my life. It was like I had not learned anything about faith for the last two months, even though I thought I had! Several days passed and I was feeling a lot of stress and I finally realized that I hadn't been trusting God in this new trial at all. All of my actions and reactions were totally in the flesh! So now that I have admitted this, I have to put into practice what I know about God and leaving things in His hands and letting Him control my actions and reactions so that I can experience God's peace in the midst of the trial. This all came about tonight so I will let you know in a few days how this is going!
Remember that one of our weapons of warfare is the shield of faith. A shield protects us from the advances of the enemy - that enemy is self, in my case. The Bible tells us to die to self and death is painful, but just as physical death brings us into Christ's presence so also does spiritual death. As Christians, we are to live in the "Heavenly Realms." That's what the life of faith is all about!
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