What does the topic mean, would be your first thought. Allow me to elaborate. I say faith is relatively equivalent to the task at hand, keeping these factors in mind – importance, urgency, skills availability, knowledge, expertise, experience, control. In other words, we start looking for the ‘faith quotient’ only when we have to depend outside of our controllable areas. Now the Bible simply explains faith as ‘substance of things not seen, hope of things to come.’ Faith calls for a dependence on our talents, others and on God in varying orders. For this article, I take faith in God.
Oh! Yes, faith is a character of our walk in Christ and almost all of us could probably tap our backs and say we were faithful at one time or another. Now we know that Abraham was distinguished as the father of faith. He trusted God so much and believed in His promises to the word. He left known territories, networks, comfort-zones to obey the word of God who was probably calling him for the first time. Now that requires more than a ‘mustard-size’ faith one would say. But as we walk with Abraham, rather Abram we suddenly see him in a pretty ordinary way. The man of faith as he enters the Egyptian strongholds, works out a plan with ‘man’s wisdom’ and introduces his lovely Sarai as his sister and the Bible says, he found favor with the Egyptians because of Sarai. Where was Abram’s faith in God’s possibilities? What was he doing? You may probably find some great theologically ‘correct’ answers to this setting, but the one question I want to raise is ‘where was Abram’s faith in God?’ Oh, yes God did intervene and change the circumstance, but that was because God is faithful and full of love. So why would Abram not depend on God? (We also know he did a repetition of this later on!)
I personally feel Abraham felt it simply too much to trouble God when he himself could control the situation. He depended on himself, his wife, and his people and chalked out a plan leaving God out. It is the same with all of us. We cry out to God, we beg him, we seek him, and we strive to draw near to him, when we have situations too big to handle right at our doorsteps, but forget God in the normal ‘possible’ situations of our life.
This is not a story with Abraham alone, but with many of the great figures of the Bible. Moses began the great task of being a judge for all the people alone. He depended on himself and God had to use Jethro to drive some sense into Moses. David was God’s child, but when it came to Tamar and Amnon, he just depended on himself, letting lose so much blood and pain. Drawing nearer in years, we see our Peter and company in more than one situation depending on themselves instead of God.
Driving straight to my present day, I must confess that I am following the same order and in discussion with a few others, I see the same pattern. We all depend on God and have a lot of faith in God when faced with the impossible. In the case of possible, we are the masters and God is nowhere in the picture, except for a courtesy inclusion (sometimes) when we tell him to take care of it (though not allowing him to)
In my family, I don’t have a lot of faith on my 4yr old because he does not have enough knowledge or experience, but in contrast I have a lot of faith on my wife who has gained a lot of things, but only in areas in which she has shown excellence. Similarly in my case, I have faith in myself when doing ‘tested’ tasks, in the case of ‘not-tested’ I kind of depend on others and things which will support me. But here we have God who knows everything and who can do all righteous things and yet I don’t call on Him.
A few friends of mine were riding their bikes when it started to pour heavily and soon they found themselves sailing along in a flood. Being brought up in Bangalore where flooding of roads was quite common, they knew they could make it. As they made their way, one of them silently started praying to God and suddenly he got back two words, ‘stop here.’ Now there was no shelter, and so they continued when he distinctly heard the words again. This time, he called his friends and told them. Well you know what happened – they laughed at him but this guy, stopped his bike and got down and went to the side. The others just continued and suddenly less than 20 ft away their bikes struck against some stones and they fell. Two of them got hit badly on the big stones which some ‘wise’ people have deposited on the main road to enable easy crossing for pedestrians. (but were now covered by water!)
Friends, God is calling us to a life of faithfulness not just in big things, but in small things too. Question is ‘Are we ready to call on God in faith, in all the tasks we perform daily?’ It is not troubling God, but it is building our relationship with God.
Trying to walk in Faith daily
Ashley Chris
