Believing is not just a punctiliar, isolated, insulated act. It is an ongoing way of life. We daily look to Christ in faith for the power to obey and for the strength to endure. Even as we received Christ by faith, so walk we in Him. The believer looks ahead, and there is a life to be lived for Christ, in the power of Christ, through faith in Christ, striving to obey and waiting for God’s working.
In his letter to the church at Rome, the Apostle Paul shared about his efforts to travel to the city of Rome in order to visit the Christians there. From Paul’s travel plans and experiences, we can learn something about faith as a strategy for living. In Colossians 2:6, the Apostle Paul wrote, “As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him …” When we walk in Christ by faith, that doesn’t mean that we now have the power to quickly and easily overcome every obstacle. The life of faith often involves frustrations and delays and disappointments. We can see this from Paul’s own efforts to travel to Rome.
Because Jesus had called him to be the apostle to the Gentiles, Paul sensed that he had an obligation topreach the Gospel at Rome, the Gentile capital of the world. Paul was ready to do this: “So, as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also” (Romans 1:15).
Paul was not only ready, he had long desired to preach the Gospel at Rome: “For I long to see you …” (Romans 1:11); “… having a great desire these many years to come to you …” (Romans 15:23).
Paul had even made many plans to come to Rome, yet he had so far been hindered and thus prevented from preaching at Rome: “Now I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that I often planned to come to you (but was hindered until now)…” (Romans 1:13).
Now look at the humble, submissive attitude that Paul displays in Romans 1:9-10: “For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers, making request if, by some means, now at last I may find a way in the will of God to come to you.”
Paul wanted to go to Rome, desired to go to Rome, planned to go to Rome, tried to go to Rome, prayed to go to Rome, but he also patiently waited for God’s time and God’s way for him to go to Rome.
Here we see an example of faith as a strategy for living. Saving faith is not a detached decision that a person makes at some point in life and then goes on to other things. It is more than signing a card or voicing a prayer at a time of heightened emotion. It is not an isolated act but a continuing attitude. It is a way of life, an approach to life, a perspective on life.
Contrary to what some are teaching today, faith is also not some sure and easy way to get whatever we want whenever we want it. Some today teach that faith is a force that we can tap into, a force more basic even than God. If we can’t obtain whatever we want whenever we want it, some today teach, then that can only mean that our faith is defective and deficient. No, faith is not some impersonal force, not some form of magic, not some technique for getting our way in life. Faith is a personal trust in Jesus Christ, a trust that involves submitting to His directions and waiting on His timing. This proper understanding of faith is clear from the example that we have of faith in the life of the Apostle Paul.
When Paul returned to Jerusalem after his conversion on the road to Damascus, Jesus appeared to Paul in a vision when Paul was praying in the temple. In that vision, Jesus said to Paul, “Depart, for I will send you far from here to the Gentiles” (Acts 22:21). Paul sought to be obedient to that commission in whatever circumstances he found himself. And he reasoned that being Christ’s apostle to the Gentiles would involve preaching in Rome. Paul planned and prepared and prayed for this. Yet Paul also patiently waited, because he wanted to go to Rome only in God’s time and only in God’s way.
He was constantly trying to find a way to go to Rome, but he was also patiently waiting for the way to go to Rome which fit into God’s will for his life. In this context, God’s will refers to God’s sovereign plan decreed in eternity past, God’s providential plan which works everything for God’s glory and His people’s good. This is the life of faith: responsibly seeking to obey God’s revealed will while at the same time patiently waiting on the outworking of God’s secret will within history.
If we look ahead a few years, we see that God did answer Paul’s prayer and that God enabled Paul to go to Rome. After writing his letter to the Romans, Paul traveled to Jerusalem, where he was arrested. After a two-year imprisonment in Caesarea, Paul was brought to Rome for a trial before Caesar. The book of Acts ends with Paul imprisoned at Rome but also freely preaching the gospel at Rome. In all of Paul’s planning and praying, he probably never dreamed that this would be the way that he would end up going to Rome. And yet I am sure that once things worked out this way, Paul would not have had it any other way, because this was the way that God had sovereignly decreed, and God knows what He is doing.
It is so easy for us to imagine other ways that God could have answered our prayers, ways that may seem to us better and easier. Yet we must always remember that these are only our imaginings based on very limited knowledge and distorted by our sinful biases. God’s knowledge is comprehensive. He knows all the details of the past, all the circumstances of the present and all the implications for the future. And God applies to this knowledge His pure and infallible wisdom as He answers our prayers in the way that best works for His glory and our good.
Jesus speaks His revealed will to us today through the pages of Scripture. We should prayerfully seek to discern God’s revealed will through reading God’s Word, studying God’s Word and hearing God’s Word preached. We learn what God would have us to do and how God would have us to live.
Then we should desire to do this, we should plan to do this and we should pray to do this. Still that is not all. When we run into obstacles and hindrances and delays, when things do not work out as we had expected or hoped or planned, then we should trust in God as the Sovereign Lord. We should trust both God’s revealed will and God’s hidden working. We should trust both God’s open Book and God’s secret plan.
The life of faith involves both responsible acting and patient waiting. We focus our efforts on fulfilling our responsibilities spelled out for us in Scripture. We then leave the results to God, trusting Him to work all things for His glory and our good.
Believing is not just a punctiliar, isolated, insulated act. It is an ongoing way of life. We daily look to Christ in faith for the power to obey and for the strength to endure. Even as we received Christ by faith, so walk we in Him. The believer looks ahead, and there is a life to be lived for Christ, in the power of Christ, through faith in Christ, striving to obey and waiting for God’s working.
Dr. Grover Gunn is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is pastor of MacDonald PCA in Collins, MS.
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