| | From The New Life, Words of God for Young Disciples
Chapter V: Faith (Pointers at end of chapter)
By Andrew Murray
"1. The Christian must read and search the Scriptures to increase his knowledge. For this purpose he daily reads one or more principal portions. But he reads the Scriptures also to strengthen his faith. And to this end he must take one or two verses to make them the subject of special reflection, and to appropriate them trustfully for himself.
2. Pray, do not suffer yourselves to be led astray by those who speak as if faith were something great and unintelligible. Faith is nothing other than the certitude that God speaks truth. Take some promises of God and say to Him: I know for certain that this promise is truth, and that Thou wilt fulfill it. He will do it.
3. Never mourn over unbelief as if it were only a weakness which you cannot help. As God’s child, however weak you may be, you have the power to believe, for the spirit of God is in you. You have only to keep in mind this: no one apprehends anything before that he has the power to believe; he must simply begin and continue with saying to the Lord that he is sure that His word is truth. He must hold fast the promise and rely upon God for the fulfillment."
Murray defines faith as simply believing that what God says is true. It makes sense then, that when we find it hard to believe something that God has said, we are believing something else is truer or better, in other words, a lie. I’ve been slowly uncovering lots of lies lately, mainly through a re-reading of Wild at Heart. Most of them deal with my past, especially my dad.
One of the big ones was that other guys are just a bunch of jerks deep down, that they are “just as bad as me,” and that all they would do was tell me I was a loser right when I needed them. That probably came from my dad never telling me I was any good, and quite often telling me the opposite. This one belief has kept me from really being able to follow or lead other guys, because I just didn’t trust them or myself. Along with that, it has given me a really rebellious attitude; made me think that the only way I was going to get anywhere was to do it on my own, but not being quite sure if I was up to it. Dealing with it has made me a little more vulnerable than I like. Honestly, the first step in all of it was just recognizing that I wasn’t ok in the first place. The next step was really accepting God’s new life in me. I have been transformed, I am not the man I was. That is a comforting thought.
Murray tied a lot of this together for me in a few ways. He simplifies all the discouragment that can come with discovering big things in my life that I want to change. He says that simple trust is all this required. What God says is true, and God says that my heart is good. I can trust God that He has indeed changed me. Instead of being discouraged by my habits, I can look deeper into where they come from, and root out the lie that is causing my spiritual self to throw in the towel. It is not ME that is doing it, but sin living in me, sin that has slipped past the defenses. When I find it hard to believe something, but also know that God is true, I can pray through my unbelief and discover what lie is confusing me and causing me to sin.
With God’s grace I’ll be learning these lessons in a deeper way through this next school year.
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| | Posted 8/9/2006 10:02 PM - 23 Views - 2 eProps - 2 comments
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