Where Will Your Faith Take You

Last summer my youngest son decided to take the biggest step of his 18-year-old life. He decided to go to Africa with the church’s mission team. Unsure where the money was coming from. When it came time for the deposit it was there. He raised the rest of the money and by his faith that God will provide he is leaving for Africa in February fully funded. What a testimony he has been to friends and family.

Likewise with all those who are listed in the Hall of Faith, Hebrews 11. I want to look at the last part of the chapter, starting with Moses. After having a talk with God at a bush that was burning but not being burnt up, having his rod turned into a snake and back into a rod when he picked it up by the tail, one could say his faith was built up. He had to have a lot of faith in what God had called him to do. He was a wanted man in Egypt and it wasn’t dead or alive, it was dead. He had to have faith that God would do something that would cause Pharoah to let the Hebrews go.

Then came time for the Hebrews faith to grow, as if the 10 plagues they just witness was not enough. They were not up against a rock and a hard place, they were against the Red Sea and possible death. Moses asked them to have faith and the Red Sea parted enabling them to walk on dry land to the other side. Imagine what would happen to your faith as you pass between two giant walls of water and the ground that was just covered by that water is dry.

You would think that the Hebrews would remember all that God had done for them and what walking through the Red Sea on dry land was like. You would think that their faith was so big they would no nothing is impossible with God. NOPE! Just as they approached the Promise Land they received a report 10 out of 12 spies trusted what they could do, only Joshua and Caleb had faith in what God could do. Because the Hebrews listened to the other 10 spies, who were not walking by faith but by sight, the Hebrews had to wonder in the wilderness for forty years.

Forty years later they are back with Joshua as the leader ready to go into the Promise Land, only the Jordan River is a flood stage. Yet when the priests’ feet touched the water it stopped flowing and they walked across on dry land again. What a reminder to their faith! What God saw did for the generation before He did for them. They really needed to know that God is still with them and had not changed. Their next step of faith will be hard. One doesn’t just march around a city 6 days and on the 7th marching 7 times around the city and then stopping and blowing horns. How foolish they must have looked to the people of Jericho, who had heard the stories of how they defeated everyone that they had gone up with and yet as they hid behind their locked gated walls nothing happened for 6 days,  since when did shouting become a form of battle?

There was one citizen who having heard all that God had done for the Hebrews found her placing her faith in Him. She believed before the spies even came that the God of the Hebrews was the one true God. Her faith caused her to go against the king of Jericho by hiding the spies and sending the men of Jericho in the opposite direction she sent the Hebrews spies. She had so much faith that when the Hebrews started marching around the city she gathered her family in her house that they may be saved to. Her faith led her and her family to a new life with new people.

Where is your faith taking you? Is it somewhere that you are not welcomed, to be a leader when you feel like that isn’t you, to trust Him to make His way known to you, to do something that looks totally foolish in doing so, trust Him with your life and the lives of your family, or to go on a mission trip?