AMAZING GRACE

If you read my blog, “Unmasked”, then you know that in that blog I was lamenting about a prayer I was praying to the Lord Jesus for someone I love.  The cause of my lamentation was that I had prayed the SAME prayers for someone else I loved for years without seeing much real life change and I was afraid I would wait years again this time around.   

What happened to FAITH?

The Bible, in Hebrews 11:1 defines faith in this way:

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

I don’t know about you, but what I really want in those circumstances that never seem to get any better, is SIGHT.  I want to SEE glimmers of God’s work.  I want to see changes in the life of the one I love.  But that is not faith.  

Faith is the “evidence” of things I cannot yet see.  Faith believes that God IS at work, that He HAS things in hand, even when it is currently veiled from our eyes.  It’s the “substance of things hoped for”.  But the "hope" isn't a cross your fingers hope, it's a CERTAIN hope!  That's faith.

I don't know about you, but sometimes I find it easier to exercise faith when I’m waiting for something to happen in my own life, and much harder to exercise it when I’m waiting for God to do something in someone else’s life.  Why?  

I know those other people.  I know they aren’t necessarily looking to the Lord for help, or answers, or direction. Because of that, I think they’re going to be really hard to reach and even harder to change.  Oh, how I underestimate the Lord!  All the time!

Mind you, it was only back in the middle of April that I watched the Lord perform a true miracle in the life of my brother, completely healing him of adenoblastoma, on the very day he was to have life altering surgery to remove it.  I was alive with praise that day because I SAW the outcome with my own eyes.  There’s that SIGHT again!  

So how is it that once again, when I’m looking to the Lord to do a great work in my loved one, and He does, I still find myself taken aback.  In just two months, the life of the one I love has completely turned around.  

Why is the Lord so continually patient with, and good to me, when I am so lacking in the most elemental faith?  

The only explanation is grace.  And God's grace really IS amazing!