Walk In Faith

People are taught in the world, especially today, that we are a society of immediate gratification, that you want it now and you want it fast. Walking in faith does not work that way. It is a continual process of stripping the world out of our lives, and replacing it with those things that are Eternal. God is an Eternal Being, and our Walk Of Faith is all about being as He is.

Far fetched and New Age thinking? Hardly. First do you believe in Christ and what He taught, or even what God the Father taught? Then we must consider that God called Jesus Christ to be the FIRST born of many brethren. Who are they? It is those who decide to follow Him, or as Romans 8:17 declares: 

“And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with him that we be also glorified together.”

Glorified together, joint-heirs? God said it, so we need to believe it.

The Walk Of Faith is all about a destination: adoption. Why do we call it adoption? Because in the beginning we are not in the fullness of our relationship with God. Infants can not make conscious decisions for life changes needed to ascend from the world of perdition, and to stand Holy and complete before the throne of God.

So when we seek to overcome the world, through discipleship in Christ, then we shed the mantle of perdition with all it's evils and perversions, and are adopted back to God. In order to do this we must complete our Walk Of Faith in Christ, and that truly means ALL that He did we are to do also.

We must understand what a disciple is first. A disciple is a person that chooses to discipline their life to become like a Master, to become a Master themselves. Again a hard thought? Reading above it is stated that we are glorified together with Christ. It does not say that glory is to be different than Christ's, if it were then why embrace a discipleship that is destined to fail? It is in a successful Walk Of Faith that we gain all that the Father awaits to bestow upon us.

Discipleship In Christ, and the glory that we receive through it, does not fail! Ever!

But that brings up a decision for discipleship, and yes it sounds like I'm repeating myself over and over again, but it is the foundation of our Walk Of Faith. So we must know and understand what we must do to achieve our goal of adoption to our Father God.

The first thing a person needs to know about anything, no matter what thing might be, is:

• Do you believe that it is true
• Do you want/desire to do it
• Are you willing to sacrifice for it
• Will you stay with it until it's completed

These are important things to consider when you realize that your Walk Of Faith is not only something you do, but that it is something you become as well. The doing is the processing of the becoming. It has many facets, but the first thing is that you must be disciplined enough to complete the journey.

That is the calling of a disciple, not matter what that discipline is.

We need to take apart the above questions that we must know the answers to, in order to be successful in our calling to discipleship. We then need to apply them in our lives, or our walk is in vain. God is faithful to sustain us, teach us, give us Grace when we fall, so that we may rise up and continue, and provides us a manual that, if followed, will give us the tools to finish our Walk Of Faith.

Do you believe that it is true?

Scripture is God-breathed and inerrant (without error). It's authenticity is proven by thousands of archeological finds that include verification of customs, places, names and events. Additionally, the Dead Sea scrolls discovered at Qumran in 1947 and more than 24,000 partial and complete manuscript copies of the New Testament, attest to an accurate transcription of the Bible's text. Finally, divine inspiration is revealed by recently discovered scientific principles that are riddled in the earliest Scripture, as well as, hundreds of Bible prophecies that have come true in exact detail.

So the Bible has been validated to be correct in translation. But the question is, do you believe what it contains, and what God is calling you to do? We will look at that further on, but essentially you won't do what you don't believe. Discipleship is about believing that in disciplining yourself to a Master, in this case Jesus Christ, you will attain adoption to God the Father. In other words, be like Christ.

Do you want to do it?

This is a personal question, only you can decide your destiny. You have to decide whether it is worth the effort, and that the goal attained is something you want. Before you tell me “that's the reason I'm a Christian”, let's be honest that there are many who claim Christianity, who not Christians. Or to put it in perspective, they are not disciples of Christ.

These can be of the self proclaimed messengers of God, that riddle the Christian air-waves with their equivalent of the modern late-night snake oil salesman, and their questionable antics! Used to invoke authority, and authenticity, to the unassuming masses to get them to part with their hard-earned cash!. This describes the “form of godliness, but denying the power thereof” spoken of in the Bible in all it's worldliness, and mockery, of the One True God. Those are not the bearers of true Christianity.

But again you must decide you truly want to do it, because it is a path of toil. In other words you MUST work at it, just as Christ labored in the fields of God, to bless and heal a world fallen into the abyss of destruction, that is perdition.

Are you willing to sacrifice for it?

Any person that wishes to become proficient at something must sacrifice for it. Michael Jordan had to spend many hours developing his skills, and he became arguably the greatest basketball player ever. That is the dedication, and focus, one needs to walk in faith. We must deny ourselves first, and then take up our crosses and follow Christ, as we are told in Luke 9:23.

Therein lies the sacrifice, that we sacrifice what we want, and pursue what God wants. Then we labor to accomplish what has been set before us. In that, we can then follow Christ, because we have accomplished all the prerequisites needed to take our Walk Of Faith.

Will you stay until it's completed?

This may not seem too important, but it is the bane of many who fail and never gain the victory. In the above process to walk the Walk of faith, we find it is not a “one-time” effort. It becomes our lives. We must learn to endure, sacrifice and pick up our crosses everyday, every moment of our lives.

That is the very reason that our walk of faith is not only what we do, but who, and whose, we are. It is an identity we become. We become like our Master, then are glorified with him, in which we are sealed into adoption with God. We become one of the “many brethren” of which Christ is the first. We must learn to endure, and not fall short, because in that we miss the mark, and find ourselves with the “glass beads” and have nothing of value.

To reach the goal, we simply must endure to the end.

Be blessed, be loved and be and peace. May the light of God's glory and presence fire the brilliance of your souls. You are greatly loved.