God is in control. All things work together for good. God sees and rewards faith and obedience and will one day confront unbelief and disobedience.
Most Christians would embrace these faith statements. But they’re not real until they’re tested by a misalignment between what we see and what we believe. It doesn’t always look or feel like God is in control. I don’t always see good coming from things. And it often seems today, as it did often with the Psalmist, that the righteous struggle along while evildoers seem to have an easier go of it.
The goal of faith is not only to change how we think and believe, but ultimately how we behave. In other words, our faith must become a life-transforming force if it is genuine faith. If it doesn’t transform my life, it isn’t really faith. It may be opinion, hunch, or something else. But genuine faith that flows from the Holy Spirit’s ministry in our lives takes Christianity out of the worship center on Sunday morning and starts to walk down the street, into the workplace, and right into our homes and hearts on Monday.
I’ve been forced time and time again in the last year to eighteen months to revisit these statements and ask myself if I really believe them. And I do, even when what my eyes are telling me doesn’t match up.
What I’m reading: The Rainmaker, by John Grisham. Interesting narrative and Grisham’s normally keen consistent characterizations make this work of fiction a favorite of some.
