Faith Vs. Flesh

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Doing things in faith is very different than doing things to make myself feel like a faithful person.

Faith puts all the leadership on God.

Jumping off of cliffs because I feel like I haven't been "faithful" enough doesn't please God. Believing He rewards those who seek Him... Who let Him lead them... That's the faith of the Bible.

Self leadership in the name of God is still self leadership!

If the whole world were led by God, everything would be good. I can let Him start with me. 

No one else, and nothing else, needs to change for me to be faithful. Just me.  I need to change. Changing my circumstance isn't necessarily faithful, letting God change my heart is always faithful.

The hardest thing to do is wait on God in faith.  The second hardest thing to do is move in obedience when HE says move. Both of these are required for faith.

I know I am doing both when my character changes to be more like Yeshua. Jesus is patient, kind, hopeful, joyful, peaceful, self controlled... Real faith changes me to be more like God.  

A fear of missing the boat is very different than faithfully nailing one together with God.

I naturally follow the whims of my heart.  That comes easy to me.  As I mature, God requires I recognize when I paint what I want as faith.  The heart is slippery.  I have to get with God and find out if HE believes what I think I should do is faithful.  Faith reaches for what God believes about my motives.  Withiut intentionally believing my flesh is always warring against God's Spirit (Galatians 5), my flesh will attach God to my self-led motivations which are usually fear, impatience, anxiety, doubt...  

I usually want to change my circumstances before my heart changes.  God is always changing my heart. That's the business He is in.  All of this will go away. What will remain, if anything remains at all, is faith, hope and love.

Since God is the source of love, faith is the bridge to it.  Faith gives me access to grace (Romans 5:1).  Grace is the power to stay faithful in tribulation (Romans 5 as a whole).

Amazing and exciting experiences don't prove and refine faith.  Being faithful through the waiting, the fearful things, the mundane, and then moving into the discomfort in a way that changes my heart... That is the faith the Bible describes.

1 Corinthians 13:7-13 NLT — Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless. When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

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