A Call To The Remnant

Jesus Christ places the strongest emphasis on faith and especially on the faith that has been tried.To have faith tests people for all they are worth. They have to stand in the commonsense universe, in the midst of things that conflict with their faith, and place confidence in the God whose character is revealed in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ’s statements reveal that God is a being of love and justice and truth, the actual happenings of our immediate circumstances seem to prove He is not.

Are we going to remain true to the revelation that God is good? Are we going to be true to His honor, whatever may happen in our actual domain? If we are, we shall find that God in His providence makes the two universes-the universe of revelation and the universe of common sense-work together in perfect harmony. Most of us are irreligious in a crisis, we think and act like unbelievers. Only one out of a hundred is daring enough to bank their faith in the character of God(Oswald Chambers)

Can you you see what brother Chambers is driving at? There are two universes, two worlds. One that we physically stand in and the Kingdom of God that we walk in. When he says that most of us are irreligious in a crisis, he means that we act no differently than the world does when crisis hits us. Who will actually trust in God when the moment comes? The one who actually believes what Jesus taught us and the one who is obedient to that teaching. So if Chambers is right, only one of us in a hundred will trust God when everything seems to be falling apart.

So the collision comes when our immediate circumstances seem to stand against what we know in our hearts to be true. The doctor says you are going die. You come home and your house has burned to the ground. You lose a child. You lose a job. Immediate circumstances illicit immediate responses. The perfect response in all of our immediate circumstances is to stand back and lift our hands to the heavens and praise God for His goodness. To place our confidence in the character of God and His revelations through His Son and the Holy Spirit. For almost all of us this is a learning curve. Paul Himself “learned to be content,” in all of his immediate circumstances, it is a high water mark of faith and we should aim for it.

I do not underestimate the trauma of the two worlds colliding. This world and all of its circumstances, immediate or otherwise, has an enormous effect upon us because we are flesh and blood. Yet brothers and sisters, we are more than flesh and blood. We are children of the living God, born of the Spirit and born into a Kingdom. The Kingdom of God. While we are on this earth we are walking in two worlds and when they collide, our default position must become the reality of the Kingdom of God no matter how much it assaults our common sense. We respond in obedience and trust to the Word of God and to the still small voice that rests at the center of our being.

I have been saved over thirty years now but just after a year of being saved I had my first major collision. It just happened to be life or death. I was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, the results of a syndrome called Sarcoidosis. It was stage three of a stage four disease, stage four meaning lung transplant. Two thirds of each lung were covered by irreversible fibrosis. The only treatment was to take high doses of prednisone, 60-80 mg a day for the rest of my life. Common sense dictated that the pulmonary specialists treatment must be adhered to. God spoke to me shortly after. “Come away with me,” He said. “Trust me.” I was to stop taking the pills.

Boom. The collision was huge. The climax of the collision took place in the clinical office with a very angry Pulmonologist. The backdrop of that encounter was multiple encounters with extremely angry wife. Just six weeks previously our youngest son was born. He had Down Syndrome and on top of that a life threatening condition that required multiple major surgeries. Common sense, the wisdom of the world, was screaming like a category five hurricane. And here i was sitting in a cold clinical specialists office just about to tell him that “God,” had told me something different from what he was suggesting.

Now brothers and sisters, it is one thing to have the courage of your convictions when down upon your knees in your room with hands raised high to heaven and tears falling in the presence of God. It is quite another thing to simply walk out His directions in the “cold light of day.” That is the collision. That is the decision, that is where the rubber hits the road. This doctor would not be making things easy for me that day. There would be no “I respect your position.” He was very angry with me and held nothing back in his descriptions of how I was going to die and how it would be a horrific death. Now, I would be lying if I said that none of these things moved me, The truth is that they all moved me. It was a battle of enormous proportions. It undoubtedly shaped the rest of my life.

The long and the short of it was that God healed me about four months later in a spectacular fashion in a moment of time. No pills would get the glory, no doctor would get the glory, no procedure would get the glory, only God would get the glory. There is no doubt that if I had followed the doctors advice that I would now be dead or in a wheelchair. Commonsense collided with trusting God. A collision of two worlds. Now, what I have just described i not a formula to follow. The only thing that you must follow is the Word of God and the still small voice. It will often defy common sense and no one will understand you. Who would have understood Abraham as he took his son to kill him? Yet, God had spoken to him. And he obeyed. Obedience and trust and walking that out in the Kingdom of God in the midst of this world oftentimes in defiance of commonsense is the narrow path of faith. God bless you in your own journey saints.