FAITH OR REASON?

Proverbs 3:5 – Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.

When it comes to making decisions in life, there are usually two subtle temptations that confront us. One is to partially trust in God and the other is to give greater credibility to our own reasoning ability rather than to lean solely on the Lord’s wisdom. These two temptations have driven a lot of people to utter ruin in life. The lives of Samson, King Saul, Absalom, Elimelech and Esau stand out as they tried to run their lives according to their reasoning power and intelligent thinking. On the other hand, we also have the example of great men of God like Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, Paul and others who lived contrary to human wisdom and understanding. There were occasions in the lives of people like Abraham and David when they made a few decisions according to their bright mind, but experienced great heartache. They learnt their bitter lessons through misery and agony and had to get back to the pathway of God and trust God with all their heart. Solomon started well, but later allowed human wisdom and cravings devour his life and found his life slipping away from God. We see that any of God’s children trusting God in a haphazard way runs into ruin, misery and heartache. But by the time they learnt their lessons, great opportunities were lost and testimonies ruined. We must also realize that the enemy of our souls is out there to trap us in wrong decisions so as to ruin our lives and testimony. We will face temptations to go the way of reason and intelligence to finally end up in calamity, conflict and confusion. When temptation knocks at our minds to pull us to go on the way of reason and intelligence, we must reject such temptations and stand strong on the pathway of faith and trust Go to take us forward. We should be willing to pay any price to choose the way of the cross rather than the Broadways the world lures us to. We must stand strong against any compromise on the pathway that we tread like Nehemiah and refuse to succumb to pressures to take detour. We are called to tread on the way of the cross and leave the consequences to the Lord.

Dear reader, are you tempted to lean on to your own understanding to run your life? Are there enough reasons to go the way of the world rather than the path of faith? Are your friends and acquaintances advising you to be reasonable and make the most profitable decisions in life? Remember the many that have gone such ways and ended up in ruining their lives and testimony. The lives of Lot, Gehazi, Balaam, Miriam, Korah, Jonah, Ananias and Sapphira are big signboards to forewarn us not to go the way of the world. We must learn lessons from their lives and subtle temptations they fell into. Our Lord expects simple and childlike faith from us. His ways are often unreasonable and unintelligent to the human mind. He wants us to sometimes cross the sea or river not through the traditional methods of bridge or taking detour. He wants us to trust Him to make unusual ways for us to cross over. He makes wine out of ordinary water at the split second rather than go shopping. He heals at an instance. He gives gourmet meals through birds. He pours manna from heaven and multiplies meager bread and fish several fold. His prophet runs faster than the chariots and brings fire from heaven. But He wants us to put our absolute faith in Him in all circumstances because no circumstance is impossible for Him. The Lord is not pleased when we mix His ways with the world’s ways. He doesn’t want us to put our feet in two canoes at the same time and serve God and mammon simultaneously. Today He throws a great challenge at us to take a stand for Him, stay on the pathway of faith and leave the consequences to Him.

Isaiah 30:21 – Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”

Thought for Today