Facing Faith Part 3

A synopsis of Genesis 15:
Genesis 15 – In this chapter, the Lord makes an agreement with Abram. The Lord says to him, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward”. Abram is promised a child from the Lord, a true son of his own blood as his heir. The Lord also promises beyond the very thing Abram brings up and promises to give him “offspring” greater than the count of the stars.

The hardest part about faith is the “blind” part. You hear people say all the time, “faith is believing without seeing” or “faith is taking one step at a time”. In theory, it sounds great! In reality, it’s scary as crap. When you have a mortgage payment to pay, you have made a little money but not enough because you are working every hour you can and it’s still not enough, you have given God what is His and you think… “faith is believing without seeing – I will be able to make this payment”. It doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, lol. What about when we have our hearts set on something like Abram and Sarai did. They wanted a child. Their age, body and everything around them said no – but God was saying yes. To the woman reading this that thinks you can’t have a child with your husband because the doctor said it was not ‘medically possible’… With Jesus, you can. To the man reading this that wants to have a child with your wife but the doctor says you are infertile… With Jesus, you can be healed. With Jesus and in the name of Jesus – all things are possible (Luke 1:37). This is what Abram discovered. God made a promise to him – and He kept it. Not only did God make a promise to Abram, He made a covenant with Him that he would have many, many descendants. As many as the stars in the sky. (He even tells him to count them!) I would look at Jesus and think, “you have lost your mind!” 🙂

But Abram believed Him and scripture says, “and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith.”. Our faith helps us to be righteous.

Today I struggle with my own battle of faith – one the Holy Spirit so softly encouraged me to change my perspective on. For a year and half now, I have struggled with (what we think to be) digestive issues. It started off as a little constipation and we went through the use of Miralax, laxatives, magnesium, clean eating, etc over the course of the next year. I had a colonoscopy and upper endoscopy performed in October of 2013. Besides having a “floppy colon” everything was fine. In the last 3-4 months it has gotten so bad, I am having some tests ran and going to see a second GI specialist. I have gained 7 pounds for no reason (I workout 4-5 days a week and don’t eat bad) and my stomach is gradually distending more and more. My clothes are beginning to not fit – I even took a pregnancy test! (it’s negative). I do not exaggerate when I tell you I took a photo of myself the other day in a sun dress and compared it to pregnancy pictures. I looked identical in both stomach wise – and I was 5 months pregnant in one. It’s frustrating and hard and difficult to deal with. Today, on my way home, I called my mom and told her I had enough. I had seriously had enough.

I knew I wanted to have some prayer time – but I had it planned out that instead of complaining to anyone else, I was going to complain to Jesus. He and I could just have a mini session for me to let all of my complaints out of my system. So I go into my prayer room, close my eyes and prepare myself to start venting… and then the Holy Spirit spoke.

“You are going through this for a reason” There was a quick vision of a timeline showing the amount of time I had been dealing with this.

When the Lord goes out of His way to make sure I know I am going through this for a reason – it must be a really good reason. However, being honest, I am struggling to mirror Abram with believing for the Lord to count me as righteous because of my faith tonight. Because truthfully, it’s wavering. Of course my mind starts wondering at this point, well what is it for? An experience to share with someone else? Are they going to find something else through all of the testing I am going to go through? Etc. Etc.

Facing Faith Challenge: The next time you find yourself wavering in your faith – find a verse from the Bible – write it down and place it where you will constantly see it. Every time you have a moment of doubt, look at the verse and change your perspective.

You can have doubt or you can have faith, but there is not enough room for both.