It can be hard to have faith in God's word for our physical lives, yet it seems so much easier to have faith in His word for our spiritual lives.
We might find it easy to have the faith that we have been saved by His grace and redeemed from sin, and yet struggle to have faith that God will also follow through with His promises for our life on earth.
Two faiths?
Tough circumstances can weaken our faith in God's word for our physical lives. We are continually challenged in our day-to-day life; we can get caught up on what seems like unanswered prayers, sickness, or a lack of peace. We can get the feeling we are just going to struggle through this physical life, and paradise will be where we get to enjoy the full outworking of Calvary.
In contrast we don't expect to see the full outworking of our faith in terms of our spiritual transformation on this side of eternity—it is not always being challenged in our day-to-day life. We often find it easier to rest in the faith for our spiritual lives than for our physical lives. This is because there is absolutely nothing we can do physically that will earn our salvation. We just have to believe God has taken care of it. There is nothing we can do but rest in it.
We are constantly trying to split faith into two—one for the physical and one for spiritual. We fail to grasp that the Lord wants us to rest in our faith that he has spiritually transformed us, and in exactly the same way rest in the faith that he will take care of our physical lives.
Resting in faith is the key
We can be kept up all night worrying about a situation we think we must sort out, or we might be frightened by what we hear on the news, or be thinking we must strive to achieve things on our own. This is not what the Lord wants for His children.
The Bible says we are in Jesus who sits at the right hand of the Father. God is expecting us to sit in Jesus, with Him. That is meant to be our state of being—sitting. When we sit with Him, we are at rest. We are at rest in the faith He has it is all under control. We are His children and like a father, He is responsible for us. He wants us to rest in our faith in Him. If we are not resting in our faith, we are being frantic—leading ourselves astray and operating out of unbelief.
We need to apply to our physical lives the same resting faith we have in God's promise of spiritual redemption. There is not one faith for being redeemed, and another faith for the physical life.
We can have complete faith in God to supply all our needs—physical and spiritual, because Jesus paid for both on the cross. If we can rest in the faith that we are redeemed, then we can also rest in the faith that He will come through with his promises for our physical lives.
If you have the faith you have been saved by grace and are redeemed, then because of that faith you can also be sure that He will supply all your needs physically, protect you, heal you, deliver you from the enemy, and pass onto you every good thing He has promised in His Word.
Give thanks
Do not be surprised when the things you have asked for in faith are manifested in your life. If we are surprised it is like we did not believe Him in the first place. It would be a contradiction to be at rest in faith and be unbelieving at the same time. Give thanks and glory to God! It should seem normal, like how a child expects a parent to tend to its needs.
So I encourage you, when you are losing faith in God for your physical needs, draw on your faith in His spiritual redemption. They are not separate—they are the same faith.
Samuel James is a Media Communication graduate based in Wollongong.
Samuel James' previous articles may be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/samuel-james.html
