Oswald Chambers, in the devotional My Utmost for His Highest for October 30 said ,” God brings us into circumstances in order to educate our faith, because the nature of faith is to make its object real. Until we know Jesus, God is a mere abstraction, we can not have faith in Him; “
In other words, every circumstance we find ourselves in CAN teach us about our Father, if we have eyes to see and ears that hear. Jesus said this is eternal life that we would know him and the Father.
Faith is not a formula designed to acquire our latest whim, but rather a relationship that expresses our fellowship with our Father.( Heb. 11:6). He who comes to God must believe that he is. Faith is primarily the belief system that I hold in who God in, thus, Have faith IN God.
Faith is defined as belief or trust. The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines trust as an assured reliance on the character, ability, strength or truth of someone or something.
In every circumstance we can learn. The Holy Spirit is teaching, the word is revealing, the nature of God. He is trustworthy.
The first temptation we see in the book of Genesis was designed for man to doubt the very integrity of God. “Has God really said”....., “you won’t die”..... and today nothing has changed in that temptation. Satan works to blind us to the reality of Gods nature. In our circumstances the challenge is to remain firmly and vitally connected to Our Father. Assured, relying, trusting, we are to have faith in God.
Trust is the fruit of intimacy. The more time I spend getting to know someone the more I learn how and where I can have confidence in their character, strength, abilities, or truth. A fundamental truth regarding man is that we are all flawed, we fail somewhere in one of these above attributes all the time, BUT GOD IS NOT A MAN.
Have faith in God means my strongest hope, my strongest confidence can not be in man. It must be in God and every circumstance gives me opportunity to learn His character, His ability, His strength, His truth
To have faith in God means:
- I trust His character. God is love. His mercies never fail. He is good to all. His faithfulness does not fail.
- I trust His ability, He makes a way where there is no way. He goes before me and perfects things that concern me. He is at work in me both to do and to will of His good pleasure.
- I trust His strength for He is the strength of my life. He is My fortress, my strong tower. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
- I trust His truth. God is not a man that he should lie. His word is truth and it is impossible for God to lie.
We learn to trust God in and through our daily events. We trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not to our own understanding. In all our ways we learn to acknowledge him and he directs our paths.
We can either settle down and let God rule our lives or continually contend with him fighting to maintain the control. But when we put God in charge, we commit the event to him, we roll that care off of us, we trust in Him and He will act. We can either allow God to be the performer or he will allow us to maintain control because of our fear and unbelief.
Jesus said the work we are to do as His disciples is Believe. We trust His character,
His ability. We trust His strength and we trust His truth which means I have faith in God.