Great and Mighty Works

Good Friday morning! We may get snow, but that is up to God. "In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one." (Eph 6:16). He said to them, "Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you." (Matt 17:20) Now, take your grain of mustard seed and try to spread it out over a shield, not possible right? Okay, maybe place that mustard seed in the center of the shield. What good will that do? When we read the simile that Jesus used, we translate it to Paul's command to take up the whole armor of God, and that is just the way our shield of faith seems to work. The flaming darts of the evil one seem to shoot right through or past our guard. Our faith couldn't move a small anthill, much less a mountain. A crisis comes in life and our faith cannot be found. That little mustard seed has fallen off the shield and rolled under the bed, which seems like a good place to hide our heads in light of the current circumstance. Fear washes over us in waves, and the temperature of those waves freezes us to the very bone. How can we act in faith when the fear has frozen the very life right out of us?

How do we go from fear to faith? Does perfect faith cast out fear? At first, you might think that sounds familiar. You might even grab a Bible to look that up. But that isn't quite right, is it. In 1 John 4:18 we read, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." Oh great, perfect love, another standard you and I cannot meet. Yes, we are not yet perfected in much of anything yet, but let us remember who is perfect in love. Jesus has been raised from the dead after giving His life for our sin. Along with everything else, Jesus is perfect in love. Therefore, as children of God and brothers to Christ, let our Lord Jesus cast out your fear. Perhaps that was the name of the demon in Matthew 17 that the disciples could not remove. The symptom the boy's father saw was epilepsy, but Jesus cast out a demon to heal the boy. The statement in our earlier verse, "Because of your little faith." refers to the disciples inability to heal the boy. We do live in fear because of our little faith. We must bring our fear to that man of perfect love.

That man of perfect love is now our Savior and Lord. A little faith is a powerful thing, but so often I seem to have none of it at all. Fear like a black Godzilla smashes me flat, armor and all. This always occurs when I stare hard at the circumstance and spare no attention from the problem for my Savior and Lord. The perfect faith I need in every circumstance comes from casting my life on the mercy of our perfect Lord. I am going to make mistakes in this life, and I am going to walk into traps of our enemy that I cannot escape. God allows this to teach me that my strength, my knowledge, my anything else is not sufficient to save me. Today, I turn from the circumstance and make a declaration: Today is the day of great and mighty works of the Lord Jesus! If miracles seem absent from our nation because of our unbelief, then I volunteer to be one who believes in God and in His miracle-working power. If the unbelief of the majority could stop God's miracles, then Elijah would have made an utter fool of himself on Mount Carmel.

Elijah didn't have a band of believers praying for him, but he stood with God. We do have brothers and sisters in Christ praying for you and for me. Pray for each other today; pray for me, and I will pray for you. Today, this day, great and mighty works of the Lord are on the way. Some will say that they believe and they have never seen a miracle. Praise God! You are blessed because you have not seen and still believe. We do not need a miracle to believe, we believe and expect the Lord to do great and mighty things that only He can do; that's what we call a miracle.

Bucky