I wonder how often something keeps us from God. How often
does something keep us from believing and trusting in him enough to really live
up to the definition of what faith is all about. I'm sure you remember the
scripture: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things
not seen." (KJV) or perhaps a more modern translation would
explain it better: "Faith is the confidence that what we hope
for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see."
(NLT) (Hebrews 11:1)
What keeps us from having that assurance about things we
cannot see? If faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually
happen, why do so many of us who claim to have faith worry so much about the
future?
Many times I think we are like the man in this little story:
It seems that a man descended into a deep well by sliding down a rope which was
supposed to reach the bottom, but when he came to the end of the rope, his feet
still could not touch the bottom. He held on, but because his strength was gone
and he could not climb back up. Finally he could hold on no longer and he let
go fearing the worst. He fell three inches to the bottom.
This is the same problem some of us have today. Some of us
are just 3 inches from trusting God, but we are using all of our strength to
hold on to our doubts and fears. We can't make ourselves trust God and refuse
to trust anyone but ourselves. One man said, "He who cannot let go, cannot
hang on," he's talking about holding to faith in God and really trusting
him. Before we can let God help heal our hurts and comfort us in our
difficulties we must have faith enough to let go. We must believe in God, his strength, his
power and his ability to help us.
Sadly far too often we to try and hold on to our sanity, to
try and reason everything out for ourselves, to "fix" things, make
them all better, to solve all of our own problems and then we are crushed when
we can't do it.
At some point in our Christian walk we are going to have to
follow the old adage, "Let go and let God." In other words, some time
we are going to have to let go of the rope, stop trying to fix the unfixable
and turn it over to God. I don't know about you, but I'm not so worried about
having a faith that can move mountains as I am having a faith that will help me
make it through tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. The writer of
Hebrews also tells us in Hebrews 13:5,
"…
For God has said, "I will never fail you. I will never abandon you."
That's the faith that I'm trying for, how about you? What is
it that is keeping you three inches from God? Maybe it's time to let go and let
him handle the problem and fix the unfixable!
Russ Lawson, Messages From The Heart
Messages from the Heart is sent several times each week written by Russ Lawson.
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