What's the current reality that you're in that is hindering your sight of faith? What's the current reality that is keeping you from a blessed season of faith in God? Identify it. Okay. Sweet. Now let God pick-pocket that.
For many of our own walks of faith, our current reality screams hopelessness, it screams anguish, disruption, scarcity, depression maybe, or perhaps joy, goodness, and peace. Current realities seem to be this breathing ground to sew faith in our lives but also this ground where we question and lower the level of faith in our lives, too. I walked through a current reality in that past endeavors to become CPA where I had to take 4 exams that required a significant amount of time studying and my practice exam scores were in the high 50s and low 60s when I needed a 75 to pass the second test when I would actually go on to take it. By all means, my current reality said I was gonna fail my test come actual exam day. I had already invested 150+ hours for this exam and lots of rough nights and mental gymnastics over the course of a month and a half for this exam come September 9th.
Yet, it's in the current realities where the Enemy attacks us... there's a place in Scripture in Matthew 4:1-11 where Jesus is fasting 40 days/nights in the wilderness and the Enemy comes to tempt Him to eat saying: "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."
The current reality of who Jesus is, AKA --> the Son of God, was used as a way to twist the current reality of a situation where Jesus was in. If He is the Son of God (His reality), He should be able to do XYZ... Isn't that what the Enemy does with us: If God is so good, and your faith is so strong shouldn't you be able to believe or do XYZ? Like if God really promised this to us, then XYZ should occur. The truth is, the Enemy comes in with deception and a LYING tongue to spin our current reality and ostracize us from the hands of the Father. If I'm honest, I doubted the reality that I would pass this exam, that I will conquer it given the past reality of low scores. The exam just HAS SO MUCH material that it can be significantly overwhelming.
Let's look at some of the passages in Genesis 17-20 where God promises Abraham and Sarah an abundance and a legacy of children, and they're 80+ years old and BY ALL CONVENTIONAL/scientific means say they should not have capacity for children, it's no surprise that reality has informed their belief here.
So, the Scriptures say BOTH Abraham and Sarah laughed at God after He delivered the promise to them. Quite a few times actually. Literally LOL'd at God because they saw their CURRENT realities and saw impossibility. Just picturing the event of this story in present day reality where God texts Abraham/Sarah the promise of what He is going to do in their lives and Sarah/Abraham both text back: "LOL. Okay!" because their current reality speaks to anything but the possibility of having children when Sarah and Abraham are both old and 'wrinkly' in their 80s.
So, they waited 10+ years throughout a reality that wasn't CONDUCIVE to bear children as they were in their late 80s-90s in age through a concept called faith: faith makes its NEST in the Father outside of what we can't see from our current realities.
The question it comes down to that I walk through and others should ask is: Am I (or you) gonna look at the current situation of my (our) reality as > than God or am (are) I (you) gonna look at God as > the situation of the current reality we're walking through?
I'm sitting here writing and wondering how many of us look at our realities and see impossibility and elements of scarcity. "Like God can't use me in my certain situation or use all my brokenness..." I'm wondering if we no longer even believe in certain things because of the broken state of our reality. Current realities will tell us we don't have the resumé or the leadership capacity for that job, that skillset for the position, the practice test scores to pass the real exam, etc. For example, not going to church because we were around a dysfunctional church community that wasn't anything like the community the church 'ought' to be. So, now we're sitting in a broken reality and picture of the church for what it should be but isn't. So, you don't go to church or take a part in anything related to it because your belief in the church is stained from the reality of what it was for you. So, the reality of what it was is now informing the belief in the church and impeding your relationship with God because of that.
Anyways, I'm wondering if we even believe in certain things based on the reality of our life. If reality informs and AFFECTS belief, then what? Well, if the level of difficulty or perceived impossibility of reality rises, we gotta believe God and raise our level of belief in God to spite our current reality. If the current reality is getting harder, let the prayer life get STRONGER!
I recently read a book called Good to Great by Jim Collins about top fortune 500 companies that pivoted their businesses to go literally from Good to Great in terms of ROI for stockholders and for its employees. The author did years and years of research and drew upon a conclusion that all the Good to Great companies had shared this same cornerstone belief in something called the Stockdale Paradox. The Stockdale Paradox, essentially, is the ability to confront your current reality (however brutal it may be) with a level of optimism to face the situation with resiliency that you'll prevail in the end. These companies, despite difficulty, believed they would always come out on top and lived that out. Is that level of optimism not faith? Essentially, these companies were rooted in faith in whatever they were walking through to surpass their current reality of whatever it was. Do we not do this in our walk with God?
Because it seems like God will give us a current reality to stretch our faith for a promise He was gonna deliver through in the first place. So, in the current reality, He can craft a certain situation that doesn't look like God will come through. Thus, we gotta be careful to not let the current REALITIES speak LOUDER than the Spirit of God who is trying to literally breath life and hope in a desolate situation. If God makes His pathways outside of conventional means (you see this trend Scripturally speaking of Him moving INCREDIBLY above the current realities of life to build something incredible in whatever situation it is) in a situation, it means our faith has to SURPASS the belief in the current reality of what it is we may be facing.
Take the belief that He who is the "Author and perfecter of our faith" per Hebrews 12:2 is using our CURRENT realities to develop a NEW FOUND level of faith in Him. That although the Enemy may bring the current realities of our lives to develop conflict with what God says, we can rest assured that the Author is still penning the story of our faith.
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