Faith

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You cannot please God without faith.

And real faith – the absolute confidence that God will do what He says – comes at a price; the greater the faith the heavier the price. But if where He leads there is no risk, then it’s always worth it.

Here’s another way to look at it…
The parachute doesn’t open until you jump. Pull the cord if you like or unpack it and fiddle with it, but it will not fully deploy until you’re outside the airplane, in the air. It requires the force generated by actually falling to push open the canopy. It takes a literal fall (the death plunge) to transform the chute into a life-saving plane of resistance.
Through faith that death plunge becomes a controlled fall, slow and easy, to be enjoyed (if you like that kind of thing). Bottom line, you have to believe before you jump, but you have to jump to get the result of what you believed.

Okay I get it, I have to jump first, but how do I get the BELIEF so that I CAN jump? Exactly! Trusting your life to a piece of nylon two thousand feet up requires some front end work. Gaining enough confidence that your chute will open and prevent you from dying begins with a commitment of your time. The time spent with an instructor learning the truth about what works, how it works, and for whom it works. Without experience you’d never go to the airport, hop a twin engine, throw on a random chute and just see what happens.

Likewise spiritual faith requires spending time with the instructor learning the truth about what works, how it works, and for whom it works. God is our instructor and His word is the testimony of truth. In order to believe it you must first hear it, choose to believe it, step an inch, hear it again, believe, then step a foot, and so on. The ability to Jump is just a matter of time. Believing builds on upon itself but it begins by hearing the truth. The front end work is your commitment to spending time hearing the truth.

This could be the part where you’re thinking “I already know this, it’s just too hard to understand” or “I know, but I just don’t have the time” or even this one “I know, but it’s just so boring”. If your faith is at this level then you are certainly not ready to jump, but you are ready to begin. I’m not going to try and convince you, if you are His you already know where the truth resides. If you are only capable of stepping an inch, then step that inch toward the place that will eventually teach you how to jump. Begin today by meditating on Matthew 6:33 for ten minutes. Be encouraged that God will finish what he started in you. Please alert me if I can be of some encouragement to you.