more on Faith

If faith is simply our give-and-take relationship with God through the action of the Holy Spirit, then seeking faith simply means that we go to Jesus and say, "Lord, speak to me about this situation.  What do you want to tell me about this?  Pull aside the veil of flesh and give me a look into the world of spirit.  Let me see this situation through your eyes.  What is your viewpoint?  I wait for your insight on this."

At this point, according to Katherine Marshall's The Helper, we are not asking for a change in circumstances, just for inward revelation.  Then we wait and listen and watch.

When that insight is given---Jesus' very personal word to me----then faith automatically follows.  And in the wake of that quiet knowing, external events change.

I love, love, love this approach to prayer and faith.  So many of us "try to believe," try to hope, try to trust----but what we are trying to believe, hope, and trust in is our own understanding of the situation, our own pronouncement, or judgment, of the way things should work.  Once the Holy Spirit begins to quietly impress on our minds and hearts the understanding and the will of God, we no longer have to try to believe or trust----having God's judgment of the situation in our hearts brings a quiet peace and trust.

Proverbs 3: 5 says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
                                and lean not on your own understanding;
                                in all your ways, acknowledge Him,
                                and He will direct your paths.

Faith, then, means waiting, listening, trusting, until we receive the Word of the Lord for this situation.  It is based on our on-going conversation with the Most High; it means hearing His voice and trusting that He cannot lead us astray.  Abraham did not walk in his own understanding of where he should be going, but waited daily to hear the direction of God.  His own understanding often led him astray, but in each case, God gently brought him back, not leaving him to his own viewpoint.

It is hard to follow in Abraham's footsteps, as we are impatient to "do" something to remedy the situation---but our doing often makes things worse because we "do" in our own understanding.  Oswald Chambers (My Utmost for His Highest) says this:  Our degree of panic is the degree of our lack of personal spiritual experience.  Put another way, we might say that our degree of panic is the measure of our lack of faith, or listening, for God's understanding of our situation.