Faith

Faith do you have it? I know that it is not something that came over night for me. I thought it was hard when trials came before I started my walk with Christ. Man how I was wrong. I know for me, trying to stand for what I believe was not enough. Without faith you can only see what is in front of you or the near future. I have learned through several trials where my faith was. I didn't have any. I tried to fly by the seat of my pants (Oklahoma slang for I didn't have a clue).


For me it took some drastic measures to change my life. I thought God was letting me go on my own for a while, not leaving me out there too long. I can see now that he was always there for me I just couldn't see him through all the sin that I was living in.


He knew that if he let me see that I didn't have the faith it took to make it with out him that I would come to a place of total brokenness. When I was trying to live out what I wanted to I found myself with another woman, drinking, fighting, and just acting like a complete loser. This is what happens when you put faith in yourself, not in the one who is always faithful.


In the middle of all this sin I decided I was leaving home. I took a trip by myself where I told people I needed to take a sabbatical. WHAT??? I didn't even know what that was. I heard someone say they went on one and that sounded like another way I could get away and keep living the life I wanted to.


On this trip God tried to tell me several times - Rick this is enough, you need to have faith and come back to me and let me make everything new again. But I just turned up the radio and kept going. It took me hitting a deer and doing $6,000 damage to my truck, losing the keys to the cabin that I was going to be staying in, and not having anywhere else to turn before I turned to Him for help. It is amazing how when we are in trouble we ask God for help.


He did help and then told me to go home. But that was just the voice of God trying to get me to have faith in him. Over the next several months I would go from earning a great income, getting separated from the person that loved me the most, to losing our home and just feeling like checking out of this world early.


All of this because I let Satan in to run my life and didn't have faith and believe that God was going to help me.


After all this, I still do not have a job and not much money. In spite of this, I now know that the faith that I have and the little chills that he gives me lets me know he is here through this hard time. He has given me a peace that is worth all that stuff. I have my family back together and I am seeing him work in me and the ones around me. I had faith that he could restore it all and trusted in him to do it.


1 Corinthians 10:12 "So if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you do not fall! (13) No temptation has seized you except what is common to man, and God is faithful, he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bare, but when you are tempted he will also give you a way out so that you can stand up under him".