How can you maintain your faith, even when things are falling apart all around you and even in the darkest of times?
A Tested Faith
How can you maintain your faith, even when things are falling apart all around you and even in the darkest of times? I love what one person said: “Faith is like film…its best developed in the dark.” That makes sense to me, because a faith not tested is a faith not trusted. The testing of our faith ends up in something more precious than gold. The Apostle Peter said that we must suffer “so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 1:7). If we suffer and then later reject Christ, our faith was not genuine in the first place, but if it remains, even if we’re “tested by fire,” we know we will be received by God to see His glory and His Kingdom.
Deut 31:5 “Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.”
A Suffering Faith
What do you do when you start to suffer…and what would you say to someone going through a trial due to their faith in Christ? Again, the Apostle Peter answers this in telling “those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good” (2 Pet 4:19). Even when we’re under fire for our faith, we should remain “firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world” (2 Pet 5:9). When you feel persecuted for your faith, read about someone who’s had it much worse than you or I do (Heb 11). These saints of old are “an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord” (James 5:10). In Jesus’ departing words before Calvary He said to His disciples (and by extension, to us His disciples today), “Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours” (John 15:20).
He is Faithful
God is faithful, even when we are not. He is faithful to His own Word and cannot go back or break what He has already said, so that’s a great blessing. He cannot deny Himself and His great and precious promises. The Apostle Paul writes that even “if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself”(2 Tim 2:13). Don’t ever glory in achieving your own salvation but rather give all glory “to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy” (Jude 1:24). It is not we who keep us unto the end, but by His mighty hand. Jesus said “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (Matt 10:28). To even further strengthen God’s hold on us, Jesus also says, “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (Matt 10:29). You are in His mighty grip. Rejoice in that eternal assurance…even in the darkest of times.
Heb 13:5 “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Faithful Promises
The Bible is full of tremendous promises, including your eternal, future home by Jesus’ shed blood (John 3:16). God has no aborted children. He always delivers on what He promises. He gave “to Abraham what he has promised him” (Gen 18:19), “and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised” (Gen 21:1), so why wouldn’t He keep His promise to you when He says that “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16b)? Consider all that God “has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire” (2 Pet 1:4). In every age of the church, it is “according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Pet 3:13). Of course, the most wonderful promise He has ever made “is the promise that he made to us—eternal life” (1 John 2:25). The Lord Jesus Christ was our one and only way to the Father, and into the coming Kingdom of Heaven (John 6:44; Acts 4:12).
Conclusion
Incidentally, If God has never brought you to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, then you currently have the wrath of God resting upon you (Rom 2). If you were to die in this state…dying in your sins, your future and eternal home will have been forever fixed. That is why I pray that you have already put your trust in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. If that has not happened yet, you are presently in real danger of hell fire. Like all unsaved people you’re one breath, one heartbeat…one accident away from eternity when it will be too late to repent and trust in Him. Today is the best day of all to believe (2 Cor 6:2) because tomorrow is not guaranteed to anyone. If Jesus Christ came today, this is your unchangeable fate (Matt 7:21-23). And this is all the more reason I desperately plead with you as you read this, repent today…right now. Put your faith in Jesus Christ. If not, you will face God’s judgment after death guaranteed (Heb 9:27), or at Jesus Christ’s appearance (Rev 20:12-15), either of which could happen at any moment.
