Stand Firm

Isaiah 7:9

“If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all.”

Experience is invaluable. Experience is something we seem to collect over time. All of the poor choices, the risky assumptions, the calculated moves all add up over time to a wonderful treasure chest of “experience”. Malcom Gladwell, a famous author, defines it as the 10,000 hour rule. It takes over 10,000 hours of work on that something to become an expert. All that time and investment channeled and directed to becoming an expert is daunting. If you take 4.8 years of 40 hours per week with no breaks on this one thing you achieve your 10,000 hours. I think you are now getting the picture.

Likewise, faith is a muscle and it must be exercised. For example, I love cycling and do it a lot but I recently told my daughters that I would run a half marathon with them. My cycling endurance and muscles are good to go, but the bad thing is that my running muscles might as well be atrophied and weak. I know this because my knees and other places felt like I had been run over and all I did was go for a 3 mile slow run. The kind characterized by the term “old man shuffle”. Nevertheless, I found muscles that were not up to speed. Welcome to exercising those muscles in the months to come and all of discomfort it brings.

Using faith in the Lord is that same way. Our life experiences often give us a foundation of strengths. Those strengths are God given and will be used for His glory for sure, but just like me starting to jog again, the Lord wants to stretch you and deepen your faith. The apostles, knowing they needed faith, asked in Luke 17:5, “Increase our faith.” Jesus then answered and told them if you had faith the size of a mustard seed you could move mountains. So it seems like a small little bit of faith is super powerful. Just like having large muscles makes someone strong; one might think that large faith is what we want to grasp for. Well, I can tell you that having one group of muscles strong does not make me an expert athlete in all things. I have to have a well rounded exercise routine to make the whole body stronger, something I have not done in a while.

Faith is not a quantity thing is it a quality thing. Jesus told us that a small bit of faith can move mountains. It is that kind of faith that builds us into a warrior for Christ. Faith is the currency of heaven, without it you can do nothing. James 2:14 tells us that faith without works is dead. We need to work out our Spirit man and understand and know the promises that Word of God gives us and the authority we have as Christians so we can do the works of God that He has predestined us to do (Ephesians 2:10).

Experience is invaluable, meaning that it cannot be purchased with a price, it has much greater value than you think. Understanding and growing in your walk with Christ and getting to know Him is a walk that is invaluable. All the hard times you don’t understand, the valleys of death, the pruning, and the striving to understand are all fashioning you into a mighty testimony for His glory. Our verse today is a chilling reminder of what happens when we don’t stand firm on our faith in God and His Word, we will not stand. In other words, whatever we are going through will eventually have its way with our lives leaving us to see first hand what Jesus said about the devil in John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” I would much rather be a part of the second half of that verse.

Today, start on that 10,000 hours of getting to know Jesus. Begin to stand firm on your faith. You may not be on the mountain top listening to God. You might be in a place of uncertainty and confusion. Please know that the Bible promises in Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” First, love the Lord with all of your being. Give Him time every day, search the Word daily and let the Holy Spirit guide you into all truth. Next, stand on and proclaim with your mouth the promises of the Word of God.

Prayer: Father, help us to understand faith in you more. Stretch us and deepen our relationship with you so that when the storms of life hit us, we will stand firm on your Word. In Jesus name, amen.