“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” –
Hebrews 11:1
Introduction
Every Christian is called to a walk of faith as it is written ‘The just shall live by faith’ (Habakuk 2:4). This walk begins when we commit our lives to Jesus Christ, believing that He died for our sins, and that our sufficiency and victory comes only from Him. This confession of faith is the beginning of God’s revelation of Himself and His ways to us in our individual lives.
Abraham was the first person recorded to have been called to the faith walk. And if we, having been reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ, are called the children of Abraham (Romans 4:16), it implies that we are equally expected to walk in the same manner. And we will, whether we want to or not because that is what walking in Christ is all about! Make no mistake – God will teach you how to do it because He knows best how to get you to that point where you recognize and appreciate that it takes more than what you see to make you what He wants you to be.
Will you dare to believe? Then nothing shall be impossible for you. (John 11:40, Mark 9:23) Will you continue to believe even when the vision has tarried and everything around you and within you suggests that it shall never come to pass? That is the greatest challenge of all: to believe that God is still able and faithful to deliver on His word when you have tired of hoping beyond hope and yet the rope of your faith is still being stretched in spite of how frayed it looks.
We believe and therefore we speak- that is the paradox of the believer. It does not mean our vision never gets clouded from time to time with discouragement, disillusion, or the feeling of hopelessness that results from seeing in the natural what appears to be totally contradictory to everything God has promised to us in His rhema word, His logos word, and in prophecy.
We get tired and many times we consider halting where we are, never to move on again. However, there is something deep within that keeps us going: the unshakeable conviction that expresses itself in these words: ‘Lord to whom shall we go? You alone have the words of life’ (Jn 6:68). And there is the lure of this truth also, that ‘Though the vision tarries, in the end it shall speak….’ (Hab. 2:3).
However, to get to the point where this truth lures us and this conviction grips us more tangibly than life itself, God steps in, teaching us first to crawl, then to take our first baby steps, until we finally know how to walk. Hallelujah! It doesn’t happen in a day, but praise God for His infinite patience with us – how He helps us up when we fall repeatedly, and how, when we stubbornly refuse to take another step, He takes our feet gently and pushes them step by step one ahead of the other.
FOUR PHASES OF THE FAITH WALK
He will take each one of us through the four phases of the faith walk: 1) the isolation phase 2) the un-supported phase 3) the surrender phase and 4) the mountain-top phase.
- The isolation phasebegins with God’s instruction: “Get out…. from your father’s house….” (Genesis 12:1). We are hereby instructed to leave behind the things that are so familiar to us and to venture out to that which is completely unfamiliar. We walk away from the friends we’ve been hanging out with; from the family we’ve known and feel so comfortable with. We walk away from the activities that have become so much a part of our lives. We walk away from all these things to go to a particular location that God is calling us to, in order to deal with particular issues that need to be resolved in our lives. Here, we are left with no option other than to allow Him to prune away the flaws that distort our personality and our perception of Him. The familiar things that have unwittingly become distractions are gradually taken out of the way and we are left with only one choice: to seek God first for answers and then eventually, for companionship. In this sweet but rare environment of solitude, He finally has our full attention. And so He begins to speak – words of reassurance to quieten our fears first of all, and then His mind and will concerning our past, our present and our future (Genesis 15:1).
- The un-supported phaseis akin to Abraham’s experience of separation from Lot. This is where God slowly but surely removes the artificial props in our lives, and begins to construct a new foundation for us – one built by Himself and sustained by His faithfulness. He confronts us with the very things we unwittingly rely on but do not admit to until crises emerge in our lives. He allows us to be pushed up against the wall and once there He comes in to expose the things in our hearts that we were secretly, and even unknowingly, hoping to rely on when hard-pressed. He exposes the shallowness and the fragility of even the most treasured relationships we have, by keeping these out of reach when our deepest instinct is to reach out for them at the time we need a listening ear or a shoulder to lean on. He permits the social contacts to fail, allows friends to disappoint us, and loved ones to be moved out of our daily sphere. We are then compelled to face the truth that He alone is able to make meaning of our lives because He alone truly knows and understands us intimately (Psalm 139:1-4).
- The surrender phaseis the most difficult of all, requiring us to give up our all. Here God asks us to give Him our dreams, our hopes, our aspirations and every ambition we’ve ever had. He wants nothing than our best, nothing less than our all, and He will continue to ask of us everything until we have nothing left but the very thing we don’t want to give up – our Isaac. He will remind us of how much we love our Isaac, but in the same breath He’ll ask us to give him up anyway! (Genesis 22:2) And this is where our faith is tested and tried in the furnace of personal will versus the will of God. Which one will prevail? Do we love God as we have claimed and professed several times everywhere? Will we trust Him enough to believe that He still wants the best for us even though He’s asking for the best we have? Will we still believe that He is able to restore, to resurrect, to provide, and to work everything out for our good in spite of what circumstances suggest? Those are the issues at stake when God asks for our Isaac, the one on whom all our hopes and the fulfillment thereof are centered (Hebrews 11:17-18). But once we take the decision to surrender Isaac, the Lord immediately takes over, planting in our hearts the conviction that ‘The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof’ (Psalm 24:1). We are thereby strengthened within to climb up Mount Moriah. And as you tie up your precious Isaac on the altar of sacrifice, your heart is filled with hot burning tears which you are trying unsuccessfully to choke down because you know that your love and fear of God must come first anyway. This is the place where God defines to us His place in our hearts and in our lives. And for the first time we learn the import of loving the Lord with all that we have and all that we are, no matter what it costs us (Deuteronomy 6:5).
- The mountain-top phaseis our final step in the faith walk. We have taken the decision to honor God even if we get hurt in the process. And so as we lift up the knife to slay beloved Isaac, we do so in pain, pain so real and so piercing, and yet somehow subdued by our fear of God above all else. We have become as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego – trusting God to come through for us at the last minute, and yet determined that even if He doesn’t, our allegiance would still be to Him alone (Daniel 3:16-18). Our faithful God, seeing us demonstrate such devoted trust in Him, is swift to respond in His timely fashion (Genesis 22:11-12). He intervenes before the knife touches our Isaac, and He immediately translates lack into abundance (Genesis 22:13-14). He endorses us into the faith hall of fame and a covenant of blessings for the present generation and generations to come.
- He establishes a covenant with us, making us a source of blessing to many because we chose to bless Him with our best (Genesis 22:16-18). On Mount Moriah, we encounter Jehovah Jireh, the faithful Deliverer, the covenant-keeping God, the One in whom is vested the fulfillment of all we have ever hoped for, not for ourselves only, but for others yet to come.
Conclusion
This is true victory in the faith walk – having gone through all these phases, tried and tested as it were by fire, and having emerged from the furnace loving and trusting God more than ever before.
And why not? The isolation phase, the un-supported phase, the surrender phase, and the mountain-top phase all bring us to one destination: the unwavering conviction that God alone is God and worthy of our all. Every seasoned Christian will pass through all these phases. And having arrived at the summit of the faith walk, the response will remain the same for all time to come: ‘Even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God’ (Psalm 90:2b).
- Authored by: Hannah Arabella
Stay blessed!
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