We all find ourselves in this predicament occasionally – but why? Why have we misplaced or lost our shield, knowing that it quenches ALL the fires darts (Ephesians 6:16). What causes our faith to falter? These questions only scratch the surface of what and why our faith seems to dwindle at times. An equally important question is – how do we move on? How do we bolster our faith?
I’m not going into a discussion of what faith is, how we attain it, how we use it, etc. I’d like to focus on how we resolve the times of weakening faith. I realize that an argument can be made on the depth of our faith but again, the issue is why do we get into those times of faltering and how do we resolve them. We are all susceptible to having our faith questioned and attacked – it goes with the territory, but how strong is our faith?
Lessening, absolutely but is faltering a total loss? Not. At least not in my world of definitions. When I experience this I try and go back, in my mind, to a time when my faith was strong and slowly move forward to attempt to discover what happened and why. Many times it seems to be an issue of emotions – feelings. For me, this means that my faith wasn’t really being tested by the Lord but I fell prey to the devil’s enticements. Stupid, I know. Now to discover where my weakness lay and why I accepted the negative.
To do nothing I believe is a sin, because we all, always, have One who sticks closer than a brother and who will help us out of our predicament. We can regain what we’ve mislaid and then strengthen our faith to withstand the next blow… because the devil will try again. He hates it when we make Jesus our Lord but he pulls out all the stops to make our witness nonexistent. That really is the goal – to stop us from being effective. Even with ‘quivering lips’ we can share the Lord with those around us who need to find hope in this life. We have the answer and when we listen to the Word we share, we do find strength and that our faith is increased.
