Translation from Spanish
In my walk as I follow Jesus, I’ve gone through many tests of faith. Some have been lighter; others have been truly intense, the kind where you have to move forward almost blindly, step by step, without knowing what’s ahead.
It’s as if the Lord is leading and guiding you along a path where you don’t know where you’re headed.
This is normal and necessary, and it’s usually a good sign, because the Lord will test our faith.
It’s very easy to show God that we trust Him when everything is going well, but He will bring us to a point where He will test our faith by putting us in situations where things won’t seem right to us.
[1 Peter 1:7] That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.
As we move along that path where God asks us to walk blindly, without fully understanding the process of faith, He teaches us what faith really means and what it means to walk by faith.
Faith is knowing that something exists or will manifest, even though we don’t see it yet.
Walking by faith is walking in the spirit, not in the physical realm. It’s not about seeing what’s on our path, but trusting in what God promises us in the spirit, which is invisible. That’s faith.
There will be moments, and in fact I’m experiencing this in my own life, when God will ask you to take a very big step, and He won’t give you many details.
He may tell you, “You have to do this task,” or “You have to go to a certain place,” and you’ll be left thinking, “But how, Lord? Where to? When? What will happen afterward? How will I get by? What will we do? How will all this unfold? What’s the purpose?” And God’s answer will be, “Simply trust Me and obey Me.”
These great tests of faith are common and necessary, and they will come several times throughout a Christian’s life, at different levels.
God will test us in many ways to see if we truly trust Him. He will test us to see if we really listen to Him and obey, even when we can’t see beyond the first step He asks of us, because when He entrusts us with a great task, He guides us progressively, step by step.
He may tell you, “You have to go to a certain place,” and you will ask yourself, “How will I work? What will I do? Where will I get the resources? What for? What is my calling in that place?” And He will answer, “The first step is to go there. I want to see if you first respond to the call I am giving you, and then I will tell you where the path goes from there. But you have to take hold of My hand with blind faith, trusting that I will guide you.”
God doesn’t hand you the whole instruction manual all at once, but shows it to you page by page. First you have to read the first page and do what it says before you can move on to the next. God will give you the instructions for the second step only after you’ve trusted Him and taken the first.
For many Christians, the longer they’ve been following Jesus, the harder it becomes for them to walk by faith. I see that many born-again Christians reach a point in their lives where they become stuck.
God calls them to do something important that they don’t feel sure about, or to do something out of the ordinary that takes them out of their comfort zone, or to give something up, and that’s where it becomes very hard for them to take that step of faith.
So inwardly they say, “I’m already saved, I pray every day, I read the Bible, I’m active with God, and that’s all.”
But Jesus says in the Bible, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” God is very dynamic and diverse. He likes variety and change, and He is working all the time.
When someone stays in one place, doing the same thing for a long time, a moment will come when God will pull that person out of that comfort zone, because there’s no other way to learn. I see that many find it hard to take that leap of faith, especially when they’ve been following Jesus for many years.
When they see someone take that leap of faith, someone who responds to God without having anything certain, they usually say, “You should look for something more secure. Maybe what you heard didn’t come from God. Why don’t you find something in the meantime? Why don’t you make a transition while God confirms whether what you heard really was from Him?”
And that person replies, “I clearly heard God ask me to do this. I’ve already asked God, I’ve already sought confirmation, I’ve prayed, I’ve fasted, and I keep receiving the same answer. In my heart and mind, I know this is what He’s asking me to do, even if it seems like the craziest thing in the world.”
Some believers have a hard time hearing this, because it’s as if something that had been stuck inside them starts to move. A person with great faith has a tremendous influence on someone who had been standing still and whose faith had stayed at a certain level.
The Bible tells us that there are different measures of faith, and it also teaches us that we should ask for more faith. If we’re supposed to ask for more faith, that means faith can vary from one person to another.
Lately I’ve been living through this situation, and I’ve had to say, “I’m doing this because I know God is asking me to do it. I’m sure, and I will wait patiently until God fulfills His promise. I will pray, I will fast, and I won’t take another path, because He’s telling me to go to the right, not to the left.”
Fear plays a very powerful role in these situations and tries to tear down faith, both mine and other people’s.
Some believers feel deeply unsettled by this kind of great faith that says, “I don’t care what happens. I will do what He tells me, even if I have no certainty, even if I don’t have the full manual, and even if I don’t have the slightest idea what I’m doing. If He asks me to do something, I will do it, because I have faith and I trust Him.”
There are believers who insist, “But maybe you should do the other thing. And why don’t you take the path to the left until He fulfills what He promised on the right?” And I feel that some of them don’t do it intentionally.
But that’s not faith. If I take the path to the left, thinking God will fulfill what He promised me on the path to the right, He won’t do it, because I’m investing my time and energy somewhere else, moving away from His will.
He will see that I truly don’t have the faith to wait for what He promised me or to do what He asked me to do, whether it’s something small or great.
In these situations, you feel as if those people are stealing your faith, even if that’s not their intention. They are like vampires trying to suck your blood.
When I myself went through that recently, I was thinking and meditating, and I said, “No, I’m not going to let them steal my faith, because faith is more precious than gold. Faith is the greatest thing a Christian can have.”
We have an obligation to work day by day to make our faith grow. If I let the fear and frustration of others affect my faith, I won’t do my Father’s will. So you have to make the decision and say:
“Thank you for your help. I really appreciate that you want to help me and that you’re concerned about me, but I have complete faith that God will fulfill what He’s telling me, because He is powerful, and everything He says comes to pass. And if I’m sure that what I heard came from Him, because I’ve been praying about it for a long time, I’ve even fasted, and the answer is the same and keeps growing stronger, then I will do that, and I won’t go somewhere else, as if just killing time while what God told me comes to pass.”
The Bible says that without faith it’s impossible to please God. In the life of someone who truly follows Jesus, every verse comes alive. But in the life of someone who reads the Bible and doesn’t apply it, nothing happens. It’s as if the Word is dead to him.
When you truly follow Jesus, He is your Shepherd, and He tells you, “I am calling you to go this way, My sheep. You belong to My flock, and I am your Shepherd. No one else is your shepherd.”
God will test your faith, because that’s the only way it grows.
If you ask the Lord for more faith, as I do every day, He will tell you, “I will give you more faith, but you have to show Me that you are worthy of receiving more faith from Me,” and He will most likely put you in difficult situations where you will have to show the measure of faith that can fit in your vessel.
You will go through many tests. God may say to you, “Carry out this task, please,” and He tests you to see whether you are capable of doing it. And those tests always go beyond what you think you can do.
God may say to you, “I will take you a little beyond the limits of your mind, beyond what you think you can reach.” Then you may say, “But I’ve never done that. I’ve never been there, and I don’t know how to do that, Lord,” and protest at first, “But how do You want me to do it? I don’t feel capable.”
Yet God doesn’t want you to do it on your own; He wants to do it through you, through your faith. But you have to be worthy.
God will put you in these kinds of situations, and you will begin to walk down a path full of obstacles and stones.
Sometimes those stones aren’t situations or things, but people around you, sometimes even believers. And it’s up to you what you do with those stones, what you do with those faith vampires who want to bring you down and steal the most precious thing you have.
As for me, I say to the Lord, “No, Lord, this is mine, and it’s the most precious thing I have. No one will touch it, and no one will steal it from me. No matter what happens, I will trust in You, I will wait on You, and I will not take any path other than the one You told me to take, because You are holy and mighty, because You are omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, Lord. Who else could know what’s best for me if not You?”
This was the message I wanted to leave you with today. You have to defend your faith. You have to be tenacious and absolutely convinced, because we have to wait for what we do not see.
God tells us, “I have this prepared for you,” and it still hasn’t materialized, but in the spirit the command has already been sent, and all that remains is for it to manifest in the material realm. But what makes it manifest in the material realm is your faith.
Lord, give all of us the strength to trust in You. Give us more faith. We need very strong faith, Lord. We want to please You with a good measure of faith, Lord.
If we are worthy, equip us with the shield of faith, because we know that through faith we can win battles, we can defend ourselves against every dart of the evil one, and we can survive any situation and any trial.
Faith is everything to us, Lord. Give us more. Give us that precious treasure, Lord. We long for it and we want it.
In the name of Jesus, Lord, I ask You to increase the faith of my fellow believers who are listening to this, and help us learn together to defend the most precious thing we have, which is more precious than gold.
Thank You, Lord, for everything. Thank You for these great trials. Thank You for these great commissions You give us, Lord, because when You give us something very great to do, that means You are working in us.
And when everything is stable and nothing moves for a long time, that’s when we have to begin asking ourselves, “What’s happening? Am I doing something wrong, Lord? Because nothing is moving. I feel stuck, sitting still, bored, like I already know everything.”
Lord, I thank You for leading us down unexpected paths, for broadening the boundaries of our minds and teaching us spiritual things, so we can be fully equipped. I know that we are Your children and that You won’t stop perfecting us until the end, Lord. The Bible says that we will be perfected until the end, and we want to be as much like Jesus as possible, Lord.
Thank You so much for teaching me in my own life and for allowing me to share all this with others for their edification. Thank You very much, Lord, in the name of Jesus.