For By Grace Through Faith

One of the greatest discoveries for my life personally, is to have realized how subtle flesh really does like to “work” in regard to God and all the spiritual realities concerning Him. 

When I sort through all the things I’ve heard in my life and then put it alongside the fact I was not experiencing a true rest (as promised in Hebrews 4), it causes you to “look again,” and “look again!”

This sorting has to do with “listening again” to things I had heard and weighing them against the true Word of God.  For example, something so simple as “For by grace through faith you are saved, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.”  Ephesians 2:8,9.

God’s Spirit does compare “spiritual with spiritual,” as found in I Corinthians 2 – and teaches with wisdom certainly not of this world.  He pulls back the curtain further on the Stage of Truth, until we can see the full picture of what God truly has accomplished in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Without continual faith in His Son, “brought to us by grace alone,” we start to fall into methods, modes, and teachings that if not carefully discerned, get us into that cycle of fleshly striving.

When I examine my life, I can honestly say that whatever fruitfulness is there – and that I can “see” working out through me, I KNOW it has been the Lord’s work of His grace, His Spirit, and Word.  All our thinking, our thoughts, our strength, our peace, our understanding, our constant hope is coming from the Lord Who lives within us.

So to witness His working in us is only to wet our appetites for the full stature of Christ being formed within our hearts.  This is what God’s Word tell us:  “Conformed to the image of His Son.”

There are Scriptures that are written as imperatives that say, “Do…” But to me, it’s after we carefully seen that are “doing” is still rooted in faith in the Son of God day by day, then it takes on a whole different meaning for our lives.

The children of Israel “moved” towards the land God had promised.  But their “moving” (those who were of faith), did so because of the promise of God – not through their own ideas or because they decided to be a nation on their own.

The ones who didn’t “move,” were in unbelief.  Every day we can “move” in God, because of the Promise to express the life of His Son in us.  We pray because we want to “see” and “hear” God’s will in matters.  Then we believe that He shows us, then we “move!”

Praise the Lord, God is not lazy and He is very practical too.  I found myself yesterday not “feeling” much of anything.  But it was God’s Spirit who reminded me that I could “move” in faith about everything.  God says that we can even “love with faith.”  Sometimes we might need a little push from our brothers or sisters through prayer and exhortation of truth.  Part of God’s constant exhortation is to believe His Word.

Grace and faith go together always – from when we first believed until we see the face of Jesus. 

More and more the Lord wants to me of AND show me (and us) more deeply, the blood of Jesus Christ and our sins and how powerful His blood truly is to wash them away.  Years ago, I met a precious lady who had polio and lived 17 years in an iron lung before she went to be with the Lord.   I was only 9 years old when I met, her but she impacted me.  I used to visit her and was in awe that someone had wired her television backwards so that when she look in her mirror she saw it correctly.  Anyone else saw it backwards.  (She was a big baseball sports fan!)

Well that’s a picture to me what the Holy Spirit has to do with our minds when it comes to His Word.  All through life we may get some of His truths “wired backwards,” and it takes Him to unravel these things so we can “see” His Word correctly.

When He does, we jump for joy.  Why?  Because He says this:

"Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost."  Romans 15:13

This is awesome!

Until next time,

Sue Gaither