“Blessings in Faith”
The power of God’s Word opens our hearts to put our faith in Him. As we do so, He sanctifies us and makes us worthy to be His children. As His children, He gives us spiritual gifts and divine wisdom.
Faith gives us access to God.
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me (John 14:6).
Once we’ve learned how to see Jesus for who He is, we will also be able to see God in the fullness of all the good things that spring up from Him. It’s like, through having faith in Jesus, the doors to the throne room of God the Father have been pushed aside to the very edges and we can run to His arms and embrace Him. God who before to us was an Omnipotent Unknown becomes our adoptive Father.
It is through Jesus that we can have a relationship with God the Father because Jesus is also human like us but also God as God the Father is. After making the necessary sacrifice for our sins just as the Levitical priesthood foreshadowed, God the Father now exalted Him as the King of kings and the Lord of lords. So it is in Jesus now that we should put our faith, and we can also have a personal relationship with Him.
As Jesus is the Way, He is also the truth. It means that true knowledge of God can be obtained by putting our faith in Jesus. We will be in the know of the mysteries of God that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has conceived.
Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom, we also have our access by faith into this grace, in which, we stand. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God (Romans 5:1–2).
Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
After being made right with God because of our faith, we no longer have to worry about the destiny of our souls. We can rest assured they will go home with God when our lives here on earth are through. We already have peace, as in peace of mind. Also, we will feel a sense of safety and security under the shadow God’s protective wings. We will be able to withstand the fiercest storm that may come upon us
…our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom, we also have our access by faith
When we put our faith in Jesus, God has adopted us into His family and we have become His children, specifically, sons. The epistles of Paul and of others are teeming with mentions of believers being specifically called “sons of God”. Because as far as I can understand it, in ancient times, maybe up to the 1st century, sons have more privileges (and responsibilities, of course) than daughters. It means that the privileges of being sons of God have been given to male and female believers alike.
As sons of God, we can go to our Father’s throne room anytime. We can talk to Him freely about everything that’s concerning us. We call that prayer.
As sons of God, here now comes our opportunity to impress God with our good works, unlike before when our good works meant nothing to God because we didn’t have yet faith in Him. Thus, when we obey God’s commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight, we no longer do it in the hopes that God would somehow take notice of how good we are. We no longer have to be that shy because we’re already part of His family.
As believers, as now sons of God, we directly present our good works to Him as an offering. If our motives are right and first and foremost to glorify Him, our offering will rise up to Him as a sweet scent; and He will accept it and be pleased with it. We can be sure that with God, no single subtlest good deed will remain unnoticed.
…into this grace in which we stand
God has been gracious ever since. When we put our faith in Jesus, we fortuitously tapped into this vast source of God’s overflowing grace. It is this grace that fills us with grace because otherwise, we are bland and self-centered.
It is this grace that empowers us to do good works and be the best person that we can be. It is this grace that enables us to give of ourselves unconditionally. It is this grace that endows us with strength and beauty, first, of our inner qualities and then sometimes of outward manifestations. It is this grace that carries us through hardships and brightens our dreary existence.
Therefore, this grace is something we won’t want to abuse and take for granted because we realize that everything good that is in our lives now that we can somehow be proud of is only by God’s grace. We’re able to carry on, function, and even flourish because of God’s grace. Without it, we won’t be able to stand. We will fall. We will be reduced into what we originally were: nothing.
For you didn’t receive the spirit of bondage again to fear; but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom, we cry, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15)
We can now confidently call ourselves sons of God and call God the Father our Father. As His children, we continue to fear and revere God; but He is no longer to us that scary Omnipotent Unknown that we used to regard Him as. We will just feel that in ourselves. It will just flow naturally.
…in whom, we have boldness and access in confidence through our faith in Him (Ephesians 3:12)
We can come boldly before God and tell Him everything that is in our hearts: our joy, our pain, our sorrow, our hopes. We can cry before Him, sing to Him, or just be silent in His presence. We can imitate the psalmists’ way of talking to God. We can just be as we are. I hope we’re already very clear on this point.
Let’s draw near with a true heart in fullness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and having our body washed with pure water (Hebrews 10:22).
We are encouraged to draw near to God and spend considerable time with Him because He is now our Father. We are no longer strangers to Him. He has sanctified us when we put our faith in His Son, Jesus. However, we may have had a few shortcomings lately. So we ask for His forgiveness first; and after that, we can go freely into His presence.
Faith’s source is the word of God.
So how does faith begin? Does faith just come to us by magic? Or maybe it had a source or origin. Maybe this source was the one that caused faith to exist in our minds. And maybe, unbeknownst to us, we underwent a process, by which, this source gave birth to a genuine faith.
So faith comes by hearing; and hearing, by the word of God (Romans 10:17).
The word of God is like a seed of a plant. The progress of the word of God planted in our hearts depends upon what kind of soil we are. It may grow or die away depending on our response. What will our response be to the word of God we found ourselves reading or listening to? Will we allow God to break open the seed from its casing, bringing forth tiny leaves and stems? Or will we allow the adversary to stomp on it, crush it, and suppress it from its inception? If we choose the former, there’s no stopping God in making the seedling grow into a tree that will eventually produce shiny, palatable, and useful fruits.
To understand this better, let’s reverse the wording in the verse from this:
So faith comes by hearing; and hearing, by the word of God (Romans 10:17).
…to something like this:
“Through the word of God comes hearing; and though hearing comes faith.”
It means that the word of God can activate hearing and this hearing can produce or give birth to faith.
The marked difference that the Bible has from other works of literature is its power to change a person’s soul. It is because although the Bible was written by humans, what its human authors wrote are not their own words but the very words of God. Even their historical narratives and outpouring of emotions are guided by the Holy Spirit. So since everything they wrote in the Bible are the very words of God, they have power. They don’t return to God void.
The word of God we accidentally read or heard may either fall on deaf ears or leave a mark. If the latter happens to us, then our mind may involuntarily incline us to stop, pay attention, and set ourselves to read or hear more. This is what we would categorize as “hearing”, meaning accepting, welcoming, and not rejecting God’s word. We gave it an ear when we could have ignored it. We picked up a Bible and read it when we could have done some other “cooler” stuff. From being cynical about the Bible, we started to appreciate it even to a very-small degree. We allowed it to take hold of our consciousness and started to see it in a good light.
This “hearing” may develop in us an affinity for the things concerning God. We may start asking questions and setting out to find answers. We may start reading the Bible closely and intently and undertaking some initial studies. We may find ourselves wanting to attend gatherings where the Bible is taught to learn more.
This turn of events may lead us to a decision to finally take a step of faith, something we discussed about in episode 1 of this series. According to it, faith in God is not blind and not something we’re indoctrinated about (in the negative sense of the word) or tricked into. Faith in God is a conscious move and an informed decision. We, out of our own volition, decided to trust God, dedicate our lives to God, and follow His ways based on our conviction that He is true and that His words are true.
Faith endows believers with divine wisdom.
…that your faith wouldn’t stand in the wisdom of men but in the power of God (I Corinthians 2:5).
Faith in Jesus is an altogether-different school of thought from what we used to know when we were still in the world. It’s because it doesn’t emanate from the world; it comes from heaven. It’s different from what we learned in school, from the advice of old people who are unbelievers, from wise sayings that are passed on from generations to generations, and from the lessons we learned from the hardships of life. It’s different from the philosophies of ancient and modern philosophers. It’s different from the ideas evoked by secular entertainment and art forms.
Some of the secular wisdom are good; some are of it are not that good. For instance, what worldly wisdom sometimes celebrates, divine wisdom frowns upon. Divine wisdom is perfect because it comes from God.
Whether we like or not or whether we intend it or not, we are, every day, exposed to worldly wisdom; and it has a lot of pull especially to the naïve and weak-minded. An understanding of how it operates may sometimes be helpful in order for us to understand life as a whole in many of its facets and complexities. But as believers, we are not to allow it to dominate our thinking. We are not to adopt worldly wisdom, especially in decision-making, if they go against the teachings of the Bible.
Of course, we value our unbelieving fellowmen. We respect them for who they are. We give them space to express themselves. We listen to their points of view. We try to understand what they think and feel as much as we can. We interact and get along with them. We appreciate the good things that they do. We appreciate their scientific and artistic genius. We appreciate the brilliant products of their minds like inventions, projects, music, and pictures. We realize that their accomplishments give positive contributions to the society.
However, they still have a different way of thinking than us, true believers. Unlike them, we have this thing called the “mind of Christ” which God has blessed us with when we put our faith in Jesus.
“For who has known the mind of the Lord that he should instruct Him?” But we have Christ’s mind (I Corinthians 2:16).
This is something that unbelievers certainly don’t have no matter how gargantuan of an intellectual giant they are. They wish they could grasp what we, simple persons who believe in Jesus, can; but they can’t, and we want them to be able to. It’s as if we’ve been given a new set of brains.
Through this, we now have a strategic grasp of spiritual matters. We see life now from a broader perspective and in the light of God’s word. We see the interplay of events in our surroundings and in the world as a whole as more spiritual than they are natural, that the invisible happenings in the spiritual realm actually manifest themselves in the visible physical realm. It empowers us to be the bigger person, the more patient, the more accommodating, the more thoughtful and considerate.
As followers of Jesus, we are expected to always keep the “mind of Christ” on and fully functioning. This is what we should let dominate our entire thought life. We must strive to lead quiet, decent, and godly lives. We can’t detach ourselves from the realities of our earthly existence, and we will have to get along with our unbelieving fellowmen. We desire that they, too, would able to know God the way that we do. We want to persuade them to be like us, and we gently refuse to let their worldly wisdom influence us. Because we know where our place should be, and we’re always reminding ourselves of it.
So those are just some of the amazing things that happen in our lives once we put our faith in Jesus. We discussed three points today. I encourage you to be serious Bible students from now on because here, we are all serious Bible students.
Study the Bible with me: Faith series, episode 4
by: Marven T. Baldo
