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- Written by: Don Goulding
Such trials show the proven character of your faith, which is much more valuable than gold - gold that is tested by fire, even though it is passing away - and will bring praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. (1 Peter 1:7)
A hunched man sat outside his house, gazing into the stunted pines and granite crags of China’s Yellow Mountains.
“I was a porter for fifty years,” he explained through my interpreter. “Every day, I carried goods up sixty thousand steps to the top.”
The man before me was a knot of muscles developed from five decades of hauling loaded buckets, balanced from a pole across his shoulders. Most locals I met played mahjong tiles every day, but this gentle soul had done something extraordinary with his life. He’d carried bricks and parcels up more than one billion stairs.
Faith is a muscle that atrophies without exercise. When there’s no resistance from trials in life, my faith in God gets weak and flabby. Hardship makes me pray and trust God until my faith increases. Trials build up faith, and faith stores up glory.
Faith is my most valuable strength. I may be a deeply religious person, and have an impeccable service record, but those don’t move the heart of God like faith in his Son. My heavenly Father wants to see a well developed, highly sculpted faith in my life.
Back in the Yellow Mountains I gave my new friend the gospel message, which he eagerly received. But he gave me something in return. He demonstrated that living a significant life requires overcoming significant hardship. If he’d loitered among the mahjong players, instead of fighting the gravity of those stairs every day, we would never have been touched by his incredible story, or spurred on to glorious faith.
Prayer: Master Trainer, use trials to build up my most holy faith.
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- Written by: Don Goulding
Did you not dry up the sea,
the waters of the great deep?
Did you not make a path through the depths of the sea,
so those delivered from bondage could cross over? (Isaiah 51:10)
Dani and I lay in our backyard gazing into the stars, praying, and discussing her first ministry trip to Africa.
“Why are there so many stars? A red line is connecting them to make a knight on a stallion,” Dani said.
It was a vision from the Lord, sent as reassurance for her upcoming leap of faith. Jesus would be her protector knight. God spoke, and we were both jazzed for days.
Another time, I waited out a tropical downpour while worshiping inside a mosquito net in West Africa. The Holy Spirit came within the draped gauze and lifted my spirit into the air. I wore that joy like the glow on Moses’ face for weeks.
I also recall that we had some money to donate, and I contacted a radio ministry that broadcast the gospel into the Middle East. The amount needed was precisely what we had prepared to give. Confirmation that we were in God’s will washed over my heart, and kept me floating for a month.
Why do I try to live on the highs of God’s interventions when the biggest miracle of history surrounds me every day in the form of salvation? My adoption into heaven ought to be enough to make Monday through Sunday all days of wild jubilation.
Imagine the thrill the Israelites felt after they walked between walls of water in the Red Sea. God singled them out and, with an awesome phenomenon, he redeemed them from their enemies. Has he done any less for me?
A vast body of sin separated me from the promises of God on the opposite shore. Demonic enemies closed in, ready to drag me down to hell. Then God pulled off the big one. The waters of my own treachery parted. Eternal death foamed about me, but God’s mighty hand held it back. I walked on the dry road of forgiveness, and crossed over to reconciliation.
Every day that the waters of sin pile up and don’t sweep me away, is another day of God’s dazzling intervention.
Prayer: Mighty Savior, my heart is giddy because of your forgiveness.
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- Written by: Don Goulding
So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if you are a son, then you are also an heir through God. (Galatians 4:7)
As a young boy, I refused to clean up my mess, and was introduced to the business end of Dad’s belt. When I was a bit older, I spread the news that Dad and Big Sis were the culprits of a long secreted house toilet papering caper. There was plenty of strife in our home on that day. And as a rebellious teenager, I spent a night in jail. Dad was not happy.
Now my father is aging into a sweet, easy disposition. We made it through every threat to our relationship, and we’re still friends, because never once did either of us say we wanted out of the family union.
When I accepted the sacrifice of Jesus as my own, God adopted me as his son. We now have a family bond that compels us to stand by one another, no matter what happens.
One purpose of families is to provide a safe environment where we learn to work out our differences. A certain amount of tension means I’m part of a functioning family, and not orphaned. We offend each other, fight, then forgive. That’s what families do.
Angst comes between God and me when I sin. It’s a natural tension that arises when a sinner tries to share the temple of his body with a holy God. These tensions don’t make me lose my adoption into heaven. On the contrary, they mean I’m still part of God’s family, and not orphaned. I eventually repent, we move on, and hopefully I grow.
Silence is more worrisome than confrontation. The absence of correction from the Holy Spirit is the most perilous. If he no longer convicts my conscience, or spikes my joy, it might be because I’ve walked away. Abandonment of one’s place in God’s family is a crime of epic foolishness.
I’m often disloyal to God, but I’ve never been daft enough to say, nor will I ever say by word or lifestyle, “You’re no longer my Father.”
Likewise, as long as I cling to Jesus, God is happy to call me his son. Nothing in heaven, on earth, or in hell can reverse my adoption. I’m the only one with the authority to defect by an exercise of free will, and I have no intention of giving up my adopted birthright.
Prayer: Heavenly Parent, I repent of ever doubting my adoption.