Monday, September 3, 2012

Living by Faith

When I arrived home from my YWAM travels at the end of 2009, I was restless, but it was a good restless.  I was eager to use what I had learned and experienced to impact others back home.  I had no idea if I would find myself back in the classroom or not, but whatever and wherever I ended up, I knew that I was a different person than I was before I left.  And so I waited.  I waited for God to tell me where He wanted me and what He wanted me to do.  And don't get me wrong, waiting on God is a good thing - the problem came in that my beliefs didn't line up with action in my life - my heart was in the right spot but my butt was still in the chair.

I am learning more and more that as I go out and live life by doing things (not simply for the sake of doing them but doing them as an offering back to God as I am compelled by His love for me), God will let me know if it's not the right thing.  It's not about sitting on my hands, waiting for a divine revelation (though God can speak that way if He chooses to).  It's about very literally being the hands and feet of Christ.  So I pray for God's direction to guide me and then I get up and live the life that He's graciously given me to live, by faith.  I can't tell you why I was born in North America and why I've had the privilege of education and travel and so many other good things in my life, but I do know that there will come a day when I will have to give an account for my life - not simply for the prayers I have prayed (which are all good), but for my actions and my words, and whether Jesus was made real through my life, through my hands, through my feet and through my heart.  I believe that living by faith is not only taking the time to pray and read the Bible, but it's also a matter of where I find myself each day and the people I encounter along the way.  Oswald Chambers said it like this:  "We are in danger of forgetting that we cannot do what God does, and that God will not do what we can do."

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ESSE QUAM VIDERI - to be, rather than to appear
"Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God."
~Robert W. Pierce