Taste and See part 2
Faith is not hoping something will happen. Faith is knowing something happened. Two thousand years ago. On an old rugged cross. That's why the good fight of faith is laying hold of something you've already got, not trying to get something you haven't got. Seeking first the Kingdom and His righteousness is not about seeking in order to find something you don't have. Its about EXPLORING what you do have. Because you have His righteousness. You ARE His righteousness. The righteousness of God in Christ. That's you. Not who you need to be... not who you can be if you try hard enough... no, that's who you are. Right now. Who you've always been. The problem is that we allow the world to pile stuff up on us. Disappointments. Mistakes. Heartaches. And we let these things define us. Then we turn faith into hoping that somehow, someway, on some glad morning we'll finally turn into who we need to be. That's not faith. Because faith is believing in the Word (which is Jesus, which is love) of God. Believing that truth about yourself. Believing that God is love and He loves you. But God doesn't expect us to just blindly "take it on faith." God is ready, willing, and able to prove Himself. Our key verse for this Rant series is Psalm 34:8, "O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him." Faith. Trust. Having faith in God because God has proven Himself faithful. Tryusting Him because He has proven Himself trustworthy. And never forget that God is love. So having faith in God is having faith in love. Trusting love. Not expecting to get what we WANT all the time, but trusting that our heavenly Father will always provide all our NEED. And look at Hebrews 2:9, because this is powerful, "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man." Jesus tasted death for us. And all we have to do is see it. Because seeing is believing. Knowing that He died both for me and as me is what allows me to live in Him and as Him. Because we couldn't have a new birth without a second death. The first death was when Adam ate of the tree of death--the tree of knowledge of good and evil--and died. The second death was the death OF death when Jesus died and then rose again. He tasted death for us and as us. And when we see it, we don't have to suffer it. We can walk in newness of life. We can awake to righteousness, and because we're no longer sleepwalking (death walking) we will sin not. Because sin is unbelief. Believing anything other than God's Word. Faith comes from hearing and hearing from the Word of God. Listen to that still, small voice inside you that says, "I love you, I love you, I love you. I can't stop loving you" and you will be able to stop believing the lie that says, "Nobody love me, everybody hates me, guess I'll go eat some worms." You can stop trying to get something when you know what you've got--when you know that WHAT you've got is the only thing worth having. And then you can share what you've got. You can give it away to the people who need it. The people who need it, by the way, are everybody. Just so we're clear. When we taste and see that love--the kind of sacrificial love in which you give everything you are and everything you have, in which you lay your life down for your friends--we can't help but let what's inside come out. Naturally. Taste... and see... and share!