Faith

He was a big Scottish Presbyterian evangelist who visited the pulpit of Miami’s Allapattah Methodist Church on a couple of occasions. Of all the things that he shared – the blank pages in the back of my red-letter King James version of the Bible are filled to over flowing with the memorable ideas and thoughts that peppered his sermons – the one thing that I remember most was the acrostic he shared to define faith.

F – forsaking
A – all
I – I
T – trust
H – Him

The issue is trust. Do I have enough faith in God to trust the Almighty with my life … or the life of my beloved? Wasn’t that the issue confronting Abraham when he was asked to take his beloved first born to holy mountain and sacrifice him to the Almighty? I’m thankful that I have never been confronted with such a challenge. I probably would have failed, but Abraham didn’t (for those who do not know this story God provided a ram, at the very last minute, for Abraham to sacrifice). We have tried to understand the full spectrum of this Old Testament story ever since.

Maybe if we have the faith of a child our view of trusting God with everything would be different.

Coming home from the last vacation we were to share with our son Tim we were stopped on US 441 in Georgia by a road working crew as they trucked away portions of the mountain. The delay was long, it was hot and we gradually grew impatient. Tim turned to me stating with great confidence and the deep faith of a child, “Daddy way don’t you help them out and tell that mountain to be moved!”

During devotions that week I had used the Gospel story which states: “… if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move …” (Matt. 17:20) Tim believed it, why didn’t I? A child, my child, led me … taught me a lesson about faith and trust! The issue with faith, a mountain moving faith, is trust. Therein lies the question doesn’t it. Do I trust God enough that I am willing to forsake all?

Quote for today: “An act of pure faith is the death of what we love most so it may be offered to the loved one because only love is stronger than death.” Carlo Carretto