Rodney Drury: Faith for the moment

Schutzengelchen, Angel, Figure, Cute, Ceramic, Art

Faith

When I find myself in a middle of a crisis, I try to have faith. I do the same when I pray for someone who is very sick, suffering or when I feel what they feel. Then I try to have more faith. Every now and then I try to have faith when I speak. I try to believe God to do something with and through my words. But the times I live most faithless is every day.

I hope you’re not like me, I really do. At least in this area. If deep in your heart you are aspiring to be a redneck mystic, I approve. But if you are like me in the area of daily faithlessness, stop it. I’m going to stop it.

I’m going to stop being faithless in the area of not believing God for total obedience in everything He desires. I’ve already started, seeking to live my life with a wholehearted trust that I can do anything God ask of me and I can follow every command that God gives me – completely.

I still want signs and wonders. I want to prophesy and interpret dreams. But right now, I want to live my life trusting Father that I can do everything He asks of me in the way He desires. I want my everyday life to transcend in faithfulness. I want to believe for an everyday life of faith that trusts, obeys, serves, sacrifices, gives, and forgives without a doubt.

Can I have an AMEN?

What triggered this?

I’m sorta sick of trying to use my faith to go somewhere. I’m tired of trying to be a significant person of God. I weary of seeking to arrive at healer, delivered, more important or more significant. Since I’m too tired to move on, I decided to live where I am, better. It’s like wanting to go to Daily Queen to get a blizzard but you're tired, so you eat the frozen yogurt in the frig. A part of me still desires to be the influential, powerful, anointed, touching the nations, Super Rod that I think people want me to be. But I’m tired of trying to get there. Since I’m here, let’s try to be the man of God I can be here, now.

Sausages In A Dressing Gown, Sausage, Mummies

Not peanut butter crackers but I liked the image

So I am seeking to retarget my faith. I am lowering my sights from tomorrow and setting them on the now. Right now. I want to live in faith with God as I mow the yard, pray for my family, listen to my neighbors and pay my bills. I want to trust in God to fill me as I am approached for change in the parking lot, tempted to comfort myself with Netflix or meet my emotional need with peanut butter crackers. (I don’t know if you know this, but some scholars think the manna in the wilderness was actually peanut butter crackers.)

But what I am after is not a better me. I’m after a life of faith, pleasing to the Lord. A life full, not of what I might do, but full of living daily with God. I want to know you can trust God in everything, every day. I want to do it and see if doing it, glorifies God.

Maybe you too are being oppressed by the spirit of “better someday?” Maybe you too are tired to living in moments of faith and want your heart to soar in confidence in God as you commune with Father, Son and Spirit moment by moment. Maybe you want to join the ranks of global redneck mystics and…. Well let’s just stay with the first two.

The Strategy

Contentment.

Read the following passage and insert spiritual riches and wealth alongside of the natural. If you want more insight into the seven deadly spiritual sins, check out John of the Cross. Join me in reading this passage with the intention of living life in faith daily. Seeking to see that giving, trusting in the moment and obeying are real and valid expression of life in God. Try for a period of time to set your hope, not on the good blessing that might come one day. But rather on the good in the moment you are in. If you are in a bad moment, make it better by giving, blessing, being generous and maybe sharing your faith (trusting God in the moment).

If you have a chance, let me know how it works out. You can share with me your perspective on being content with faith. Maybe share a passage that helped you.

But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life. O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge,” for by professing it some have swerved from the faith. Grace be with you.

(1Ti 6:6-21) ESV emphasis added