We continue our series today on the book, Can God be Trusted in our Trials? by Dr. Tony Evans. Today we’re talking about how our faith taps into God’s power. A trust in God when we can’t see where he’s taking us, or when it looks like we’re heading toward a cliff is an act of faith.
Faith is the subject of Hebrews 11 – that’s what we’re told in the very first verse: “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction or the evidence of things not seen.” Faith is simply belief in God; having an absolute assurance that he’s completely truthful in everything he says.
God calls us to have faith in an object that is big enough and worthy enough to merit our trust. That object is His own person and His promises.
The reason many of us have small faith, especially when we’re going through trials, is that we think we have a small God.
That’s why the most important doctrine for a Christian to understand is the doctrine of God; because your view of God will determine the size of your faith. Faith is being persuaded that God always tells the truth. So when he says, “I will never desert you or forsake you” in Hebrews 13:5, you can take that promise to the bank.
God never asks anyone to act on so-called blind faith…the message of Hebrews 11 is that many people took God and His word and triumphed even when things were at their toughest. The heroes of Hebrews 11, like Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab and Joshua can say to us, “we’ve been where you are going, we fought and we won the battle; and we can tell you that God is faithful.”
It’s always great to have someone tell us that we can make it, but don’t miss the bottom line of Hebrews 11 and 12. We are to fix our eyes on Jesus, not on the people who have gone before us. We can look at them, but we focus on Jesus.
The truth is that too many Christians are more than willing to put their faith in another human being. More so than in God. We trust doctors and pharmacists when they tell us that what they’re giving us is good for us. We’re making a faith decision to take a medicine that we really know nothing about. Let’s make the same faith decision about something we KNOW.
Dr. Evans also shares that we must work to become “FAITH WALKERS” not just “FAITH TALKERS.”
Hebrews 11:6 reminds us that without faith, it is impossible to please Him.
Tony Evans tells the story of the farming community that was in a terrible drought and the farmers were in danger of losing their crops. The situation was so bad that they called a special prayer meeting to pray for rain.
Everyone came to the meeting with their Bibles and prayed for 2 hours, but nothing happened, so everyone went home. Everyone except for a boy in the back. He walked outside, looked up and said. “Lord we need rain, we’re in a crisis and you promised to meet our needs, so we are expecting it to rain.”
Soon the clouds begin to form and before long, rain started falling. The boy’s face broke into a huge smile, he pulled out the umbrella had brought to the prayer meeting, opened it up and walked home. The others said they believed in God but this boy acted as if he believed in God.
If you feel like you’re in a drought with your trial, have you come to God with your umbrella and hand ready to hear from Heaven? If we’re living faithless lives, our lives are displeasing to God. He is not happy with us when we fail to trust him, because nothing can take the place of faith.
You can win whatever battle or crisis you are in right now because you can trust God in your trial. And you have a great cloud of witnesses from the past to remind you that you serve the same changeless, eternally faithful God.
Thanks for listening!
– Joe and Todd
Driving Notes 