If Your Faith Is Being Assailed, Remember...

August 13

The ‘prince and power of the air,” Ephesians 2:2, the one who is “the god of this world,” II Corinthians 4:4, has come against you with a whirlwind of confusion and doubt that has as its intent the destruction of a strong Christian who is not only raising his children in “the nurture and wisdom and admonition of the Lord,” Ephesians 6:4, but is also a “living epistle, written on tables of the heart and read of all men,” II Corinthians 3:2.

If the wicked one succeeds in bringing the seeds of discontent that he has sown within you to fruition, he will not only have successfully destroyed the commitment you made before the Lord to love Christ with every fiber of your being, but you will also allow him to succeed in robbing those who are watching you live your Christianity of the witness you are to those who do not believe..

And if you think the young believers around you won’t be impacted by your abdication of your role as spiritual father to those you have nurtured in the faith,I beg you to consider the statistical evidence regarding natural fathers:

• 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes (Source: U.S. D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census
• 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes
• 85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes (Source: Center for Disease Control)
• 80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes (Source: Criminal Justice & Behavior, Vol 14, p. 403-26, 1978.)
• 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes (Source: National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools.)
• 75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes (Source: Rainbows for all Gods Children.)
• 70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes (Source: U.S. Dept. of Justice, Special Report, Sept 1988)
• 85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home (Source: Fulton Co. Georgia jail populations, Texas Dept. of Corrections 1992)

Whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not, a mature believer such as yourself is a role model to younger Christians. If you can chose to abrogate your commitment to the Lord because you aren’t content with the way His will is unfolding in your life, you are giving permission to countless young believers to do the same thing if glitches come along in their lives.

But the bottom line isn’t how your actions impact other people; the bottom line is what is motivating your actions. To say one is not happy is to state a truth that anyone who has progressed beyond the idyllic honeymoon stage of his faith can say. All manner of trials bring challenges to a walk of faith.

Financial problems bring challenges. Watching parents grow old and die brings challenges. Disappointments on the job bring challenges. And the list can go on ad nauseum—and the list impacts an individual’s ability to cope with the trials and to maintain a spirit of surrender to the Lord.

But the beauty of being a Christian is that God doesn’t expect us to be happy all the time! No, He doesn’t or Jesus wouldn’t have said, “If the world hated and persecuted Me, so will it hate and persecute you,” John 15:18. The Lord doesn’t expect His people to be happy because He knows happiness is based on circumstances that change.

One minute a man might be euphoric because all is well in his world and the next minute he may be devastated (like Job and his wife who in her misery said, “Why not curse God and die!” Job 2:9). What HE DOES EXPECT THE CHRISTIAN TO DO IS TO APPROPRIATE THE PROMISE OF NEHEMIAH 8:10, “THE JOY OF THE LORD IS YOUR STRENGTH!”

He knows the believer needs strength to overcome the challenges of life and the attacks of the enemy and He knows that kind of strength—to be committed to Him, to spouse, to family (even to a drudgerous job) requires something outside oneself! It requires being anchored to Jesus, it requires being fully committed to your ‘First Love.’

And the reality is that unless a man is holding fast to Jesus, he will not hold fast to any other commitment. If a man can seriously entertain the notion of abrogating his commitment to love his wife, or to help his aging parents or to maintain a drudgerous job, it is only because he has first abrogated his commitment to love Jesus and to put Him and His will first in his life.

If JESUS IS YOUR PRIORITY, YOU WILL ACCEPT THE ENTIRETY OF HIS STATED WILL AS YOUR OWN WILL. If Jesus has slipped from the throne of your heart, your heart will not be faithful to any of its commitments.

The solution to your ‘happiness’ which is fleeting is to root it in “the joy of the Lord.” The secret to loving your spouse is falling in love with Christ again, for the Word tells us that “GOD IS LOVE AND THEY WHO DWELL IN LOVE DWELL IN GOD,” I John 4:8. If a man loves Jesus with every fiber of his being as he should, he will love not only his wife but his family and be loyal to them and to his job. He will love himself because he knows he is bought with an incalculable price (see II Corinthians 9:15.) He will love with a love that is anchored to commitment to Jesus.

When we let Jesus be ‘the center of it all,’ it will all be as it should be. Apart from Him, we cannot succeed. With Him, we cannot fail.