Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. Oswald Chambers said that faith is the deliberate confidence in the character of God, whose ways you may not understand at the time. There are times when God's apparent inaction to our circumstances may seem inconsistent with what we know of His character.
This is the wrestling of the prophet in Habakkuk 1. And in Habakkuk 1, God voices a response, leaving for us a helpful view into his heart. Let's listen in to this message titled, Why is faith sometimes hard? So the scriptures say the just shall live by faith, and that is the topic of this sermon series, living by faith. And what we need to do is understand what faith is.
We tackled that a little bit last time. Another question today, our focus today is why is faith sometimes hard? Now I'm going to invite you to open up your copy of the scriptures. First of all, to begin in Hebrews chapter 11 today.
Hebrews chapter 11. There are certain reasons why sometimes exercising faith is difficult. It is part of the human experience, but we need to exercise faith. So one of the reasons why it is sometimes hard is because we need to understand that not only is there destiny for us, but there is also the journey, right? We love to think about the destiny that God has for us. We're not so sure we like the journey getting there. There's a difference between the big picture that God has for us and living under the sun. We have a promised future, but we live under the sun in the time-space continuum, and that is what I experience now. And sometimes that seems kind of static, like I'm really not going anywhere.
Where is any of this going? And we have that question that arises in our minds, and we have that question that arises in our minds. That can make faith difficult.
It all depends on where our focus is, what the object of our trust is. Here's a statement that I want you to remember from today's teaching. We lose sight of the future by obsessing with the immediate. We lose sight of the destination by obsession with the immediate. We live in the here and now, and we can become so preoccupied with what's going on right now, right around me, that I forget where I'm going.
It's true about human beings. It's been studied over and over and over again that if we are going to be walking, we need a fixed reference point to keep us walking in a straight line, because it's been studied numerous times. Whether you're walking, swimming, driving a car, if you are in a fog or in a forest and you don't have a fixed reference point, you might think you're going straight, but you're actually going to be going in circles. Now this is true, literally, but it's also true metaphorically, with regard to life, if we don't have that fixed reference point.
And that can make things frustrating, can it? When we think we know, we're pretty certain we're going in a straight line, and we're not. It's because we don't have the right object of faith. Now this statement here, we lose sight of the destination by obsession with the immediate. Understand something, there is an adversary that is the adversary of our souls. This is one of his chief ploys, to fog out the destination so that you become obsessed with your immediate context.
That's what he loves to do. I mean, it started all the way back in the Garden of Eden, right? Look at this one thing that you can't have. You want it, you know you do.
You need it. That's one of his chief ploys, to make us myopic with immediate passions and circumstances. Why is this so important? Because he knows that what you believe about your future controls how you experience the present.
What you believe about your future controls how you experience the present. It is a truth. I've used this example before, but I want to use it again.
This is from Tim Keller in his book, Making Sense of God. Imagine you hire two women and say to each, you're an employer, and you hire two women, and you say to each, you are part of an assembly line, and I want you to put part A into slot B, and then hand it, hand what you've assembled to someone else. I want you to do it over and over for eight hours a day. And I want you to do it over and over for eight hours a day.
It is very boring work. Their conditions are the same in every way, except for one difference. You tell the first woman that at the end of the year you will pay her $30,000. And you tell the second woman that at the end of the year you will pay $30,000,000. After a couple of weeks, the first woman will be saying, what? Isn't this tedious? Isn't it driving you mad? Aren't you thinking about quitting? And the second woman will say, what? No, this is perfectly acceptable.
In fact, I whistle while I work. What's going on? You have two human beings who are experiencing identical circumstances in radically different ways.
Why? What makes the difference? It is their expectation of the future. I have a question for you. Has God revealed to us information about our future?
How's that working for you? What you believe about the future controls how you experience the present. It is the truth. Now, it's understanding that we are on a journey. And this is what the writer of Hebrews made very clear. These people that are mentioned in Hebrews chapter 11, it's called Heaven's Hall of Faith. They were on a journey.
That's exactly what he says about them. They left their homeland seeking out a better homeland. And it was a journey.
It was an experience. And they had to trust God in order to do it. And so we read about people and he includes some detail in some of these and then he gets, for example, to verse 32 and he says, there's so many people that I can talk about. I don't have the time to mention all of them. He says that in verse 32, for example, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David and Samuel and the prophets.
And listen to this. Here is their journey of faith. This is how they experienced it. Who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions. It's pretty good, isn't it?
Quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection. Isn't that awesome? That's what faith can do. And that's what we like to think about it, isn't it? Look at all the victory that comes through faith. Isn't it awesome? Keep reading.
This is going to make you uncomfortable because without any transition at all. Right there in verse 35, women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured.
Screech. Wait a minute. Let's not go there. Let's just stop where we were. Let's talk about what faith can do and all the victories it can bring. The whole point here is that life is a journey. We are headed to a destination that God has for us.
And yes, in this journey under the sun, there will be victories, but it is also difficult. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned. They were sawn in two.
It doesn't get any worse than that. They were killed with a sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated of whom this world is not worthy. That's the journey of faith. Oh, yay.
Let's get on this bandwagon. So what is faith? You see, we like to look at the victory and all the things that faith can do for us, but that's a wrong way.
That's a misnomer. That's a wrong way of looking at it because there is victory and also there is adversity because we live under the sun in a cursed world, a cursed creation. And if our view of faith is only that God would give us these great victories, then what we're doing is we are trusting our reason and using God. That's not faith. Not faith at all. Let me tell you a truth because faith, trust are synonymous terms. To have faith in something, it's a definition we used last week, faith is complete confidence in something or someone. Faith and trust are the same word. Faith is trust. Trust is a meaningless concept without challenge, right? Trust is a meaningless concept without challenge. In other words, if you have to exercise trust, it means there is something that you cannot know.
There's something that you do not or cannot know or that there are circumstances that are utterly beyond your control and the outcomes of them are completely beyond your control. So one writer said, if our love for God is dependent on being on the winning side at all times, we are destined to be disappointed. Hebrews 11 makes that clear, doesn't it? On the winning side, yes, we are on the winning side, but before we reach the destiny, there is a journey to complete. And if you're on that journey and you are trusting God, you are going to get to that destination. So let me quote Oswald Chambers here.
This is good. Faith is the deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time. At the time. The deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time. Isaiah 55 makes it very clear what God says to us. My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts.
They are way above. They are higher than your ways and your thoughts. We cannot attain to them except what God reveals to us. What is this telling us in Isaiah 55? That God has a perspective and He has the ability and He has the freedom, none of which we have. Thanks for joining us here at Delight in Grace. You've been listening to Rich Powell, the lead pastor at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. The Delight in Grace mission is to help you know that God designed you to realize your highest good and your deepest satisfaction in Him, the one who is infinitely good. We hope you'll join us again on weekdays at 10 a.m.
