23 Nov 2023
Keeping faith and not drifting
Keeping faith has to do with holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods. Moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I find this ‘truth’ so very important to bear in mind, particularly in these last days when circumstances, people (including believers), world’s situations, ridiculous worldviews, and bad behaviour can truly dampen your moods and affect your emotions and spirits adversely.
If you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers and religious readings and meditations of the Word and churchgoing are necessary parts of the Christian life. Factor in spiritual warfare and the wiles and attacks of the enemy, then all these become even more essential, for the devil is expert in manipulating the mind, the emotion, and people to ‘neutralise’ your faith. Isolate yourself as an individual Christian, and you become easy ‘prey’ for the enemy.
We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither that belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind – it must be fed. We can now understand why Apostle Peter exhorted us to long for the milk of the Word and the author of Hebrews encouraged believers to ‘graduate’ to ‘meat’ and not remain as ‘babes’ in Christ. Do not most believers simply drift away when they gradually ignore these exhortations?
Keeping faith in the midst of Temptation
The first step towards humility is to realise that one is proud. The next step is to make some serious attempts to practise the Christian virtues. No one knows how bad he is until he has tried very hard to be good. Only those who try to resist temptations know how strong it is. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation. is also the only who knows to the full what temptations means. Those listening to the gospel and insisting that they are ‘good people’ and not that ‘bad’ and therefore do not need forgiveness from God are surely deceived.
Remember that when Jesus was tempted by the devil, his accurate knowledge and application of the Word of God countered the temptations; and when he faced the greatest temptation in the garden of Gethsemane, his prayer and obedience to the Father sustained him, and he chose to do the will of the Father, instead of his own. Jesus also spent much time alone in prayer, before choosing the twelve, and after a long day of ministry.
Spending time daily with the Author and Interpreter of the Word of God (the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father and the Son) in reading and meditating the Word, and in communicating with the Father in prayer (in Jesus’ name) are an expression of our dependence on theTriune God to keep and preserve us in the Faith.
A serious moral effort is the only thing that will bring you to the point where you throw in the towel; faith in Christ is the only thing to save you from despair at that point: and out of that Faith in Him good actions must inevitably come. Acknowledging our dependence on Christ and handing everything over to Him does not mean that you stop trying. To trust Him means to do all that He says; there would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him; but it is trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you and a new ‘seed’ and a new nature has been ‘implanted’ in you.
If what you call your ‘faith’ in Christ does not involve taking the slightest notice of what He says, then it is not Faith at all – not faith or trust in Him, but only intellectual acceptance of some theory about Him.