I recently mentioned in Words for the Day that I look forward to passing through this life and into the next and going to heaven. I love my family, friends, and work, but I want to see Jesus and I want to enjoy heaven. One of the crazies that writes me virtually every day with gushers of raving, near unintelligible, often quarreling gibberish mocked this as being just so much bravado and informed me that no normal person looks forward to their own death.
Hmmm… This stark raving Looney Tunes fruitcake is calling me abnormal? I don’t really mind being called abnormal because it’s true. I look at this as a badge of honor because I think normal is…well boring. But this is a case of the proverbial pot calling the kettle black because he isn’t normal either. Now that I think of it, he isn’t boring either and in fact I find him to be rather amusing most days when I skim over his latest schizoid-rant.
That is a subject for another day though; today’s subject is about faith. I am telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth when I say that I do look forward to leaving this old world because I anticipate the next with much joy, excitement, and anticipation. I have complete faith that “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord”.
Oooooh… I really like the sound of that, don’t you?
I’m often deluged with e-mails from those who want to have faith like mine. 2 Corinthians gives us a clue as to why so many have problems. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” The key word here is unseen or invisible. There doesn’t seem to be a problem believing in invisible cell phone or television signals, but God who is defined as being spirit, now that’s a different story.
One may argue that they can hear someone talking over the cell phone as evidence of those signals. I counter by asking did you ever hear a whippoorwill singing away at night. They say I can see a television screen come to life. I counter again by asking if they ever saw a newborn baby laughing and smiling and waving its tiny fingers at you, or the sun rising over the ocean, or a whitetail deer peacefully grazing in an alfalfa patch at Honey Lake, or a zillion stars twinkling in the inky sky, or the countless other proofs of God’s existence.
Some want to explain everything with science. Hmmm… Who wrote those books? Are these the same folks that said the world was flat? The Bible said the world was round many centuries before Galileo claimed that the earth was round (1564-1642). Isaiah 40:22 It is God who sits above the circle of the earth. The people below must seem like grasshoppers to Him.”
Well what about today’s scientists? Oh, you must mean those guys who said everything started out from nothing that somehow exploded from its nothingness and formed a big slime ball that swam, crawled and then walked into Hollywood and Washington D.C.?
Give me a break…
Just in the past few weeks I’ve had a covey of people ask me to pray for them to receive more faith whereby they too can have peace about their eternal destiny.
Huh?
According to the Bible faith is obtained through hearing the word of God and not through someone else praying for them. Rom 10:17 “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God”.
I realize prayer for others is a good thing, but if we want to bolster our faith it begins with us hearing the word of God. I cannot impart my faith to anyone. If I drink a bottle of water will it quench your thirst?
No you have to obtain faith all by yourself through reading and studying the Bible, attending a Bible preaching church where you hear the word of God being preached from the pulpit and Sunday school class, read daily messages like your favorite and mine, Words for the Day, and have fellowship with Bible believing friends where the word of God is discussed and you can hear it.
The more you hear God’s word the more your faith will be enhanced; it’s as simple as that.
Unfortunately reading the Bible is anathema to most folks in this country. (For those of you who have complained about my vocabulary that means it is an abomination to them, or they intensely dislike it). It’s a paradox, (an absurd ironic contradiction), that the Bible is ignored by so many. To be honest it is too illogical for me to comprehend and I really don’t get it.
There is only way of which I am aware that we may know the mind of God and that is through reading His Holy Bible.
Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to learn about the mind of their Lord and creator almighty God? In so doing we begin to understand more about Him including: His love for us, His promises during hard times, His promises for daily living, His characteristics and ours, His desires for us, and how we can obtain everlasting peace and joy and even enjoy a small prelude of it throughout whatever remains of our life in this fallen world through His Son Jesus Christ.
The Bible is amazing. It is the best-selling book of all time and in fact no other book even comes close to the number of books printed, distributed, reprinted, and passed down from generation to generation. It has been translated into 1400 different languages and dialects of which we are aware and more books have been written about the Bible than any other work since the beginning of time. It is the cornerstone of civilization.
I came to Jesus through reading the Bible in an effort to disprove it. I couldn’t do it. The Bible says of itself that it is living and I can tell you I see evidence of this almost every single day of my life. If you are not reading the Bible daily, you are truly missing out on one of the most rewarding aspects of life.
My suggestions are not to force it. Take your time and analyze what you’ve read. Ask yourself, What is God telling me with this passage? It will come to you, perhaps slowly at first, but when you see it with your own eyes I will guarantee that the hair will stand up on your neck. The more you hear the word of God the stronger your faith will become.
We cannot approach having the intellect of our Lord and Savior, but we can see His mind through His holy word. That my friends is more important than watching American Idol, the Super bowl, winning that next business deal, excelling in that soccer game, or sitting on the couch watching the news with your mouth hanging open and watching one of those lying congressmen, senators, or our illustrious president telling you whatever he thinks will get him re-elected.
John 20:29
Jesus said unto him, Thomas, because you have seen me, you have believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.