Afterthoughts

 Why faith? Why not knowledge, or wisdom, or understanding of the inner workings of the children of darkness and their nefarious plans? Why not prophecy, end times, or otherwise? Why not the Apocrypha or the writings of the Nicene and Anti-Nicene fathers? Of all the things I could hope for you this coming year, why faith? The short answer is that faith is the one thing that will carry you through the coming season. That’s not my opinion, assumption, or conclusion based on some personal bias. It’s scripture.

Habakkuk 2:2-4, “Then the Lord answered me and said: “Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; Because it will surely come, it will not tarry. Behold the proud, his soul is not upright in him; but the just shall live by faith.”

There is a season coming, and I believe it to be closer than some would dare to think, wherein these words that Habakkuk prophesied about a time far into the future will become a present reality for us.

I’m not here to squabble. It’s a bit early in the year to start intellectual jousts, but I would proffer a query: If those who are just in the sight of God will live by faith, does it not presuppose that those just in the sight of God will be among the living, walking the earth, making their way through a cataclysm so beyond the scope of human comprehension that the mere thought of it will make men’s hearts stop beating in their chests?

Again, I'm not here to argue; I'm just making a rational argument based on Biblical text. We must lend more credibility to the Bible than to some Irish lass who claimed to have a vision while picking corn in her garden a couple of hundred years ago. We might prefer to believe the Irish lass because of what her claims imply, but we do so at our peril.

If we are honest with the text, we realize that faith will be a prerequisite for survival. In order to live by faith, you must have faith, and in order to have faith, you must surrender to the call of Christ and submit yourself fully at the foot of the cross. If the former has not occurred, if you’ve not repented, humbled yourself, and made the conscious choice to daily pick up your cross and follow after Him, then what you have faith in isn’t the God of the Bible but some aberration you created in the dark recesses of your heart.

Whether or not you have true faith, the faith once delivered to the saints is something only you can answer, and doing so honestly may make the difference between life and death. I realize I’m sounding dramatic, but I promise you it’s not unwarranted.

Countless souls are roaming about who have placed their trust, hope, and faith in something other than Jesus and the God of the Bible. They’ve either placed their faith and hope in an event, in an auxiliary byproduct of having a relationship with God, in a sign, a prophecy, or something they heard secondhand from someone else just as desperate for answers as they were.

Everything else will fail sooner or later except for true and abiding faith in God. True faith isn’t looking for reasons or excuses not to obey; it’s not looking for excuses not to press in and seek deeper intimacy with God; it’s not waiting on the sidelines doing the least it believes it can get away with doing. It pursues God with abandon, it forfeits this life for the next, and it obeys fully and without delay any command God may give.

We can’t control much in this world. We can’t control who will go to war with whom, which currency will lose half its value overnight, or what continent the next devastating disaster will occur on, but we can control whether or not we obey God. We can control whether or not we carve out the necessary time to be in His presence, fellowship with Him, learn to hear His voice, and grow our faith in Him.

We try to tackle the big things because, deep down, we know it won’t make any difference. We can still tell ourselves that we tried, even though our failure was the likeliest outcome, and that way, we won’t have to focus on the things that require peeling back the layers of self that we like to wrap ourselves in so often.

If you’ve ever wondered how a handful of men without the aid of cell phones, the internet, intercontinental flights, automobiles, trains, or mission funds were able to turn the world upside down, it wasn’t because they were smarter or more capable than this present generation, it’s because they were more committed. The will of God came first. The work of God came first. They were soldiers engaged in warfare and did not entangle themselves with the affairs of this life.

They didn’t care about the legacy they left behind; they were unconcerned about the nest egg they would leave to their children, and they’d made their peace with the reality that they’d likely die violent deaths for the cause of Christ.

If the church today had the same level of commitment, we’d have the same results. That we are slowly bleeding members, can’t bring ourselves to tell anyone about Jesus, refuse to stand on the truth of His word, and the average age of churchgoers is nearing a century all speak volumes. Thankfully, salvation is not collective. Salvation is individual and intimate, and it is the soul that sins that will die and not anyone else. Likewise, the soul buried with Christ in God walks in the newness of life and will hear, well done. You are responsible for your choices. Whether you will have faith to live by when the time comes is up to you and you alone.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.