The Backbone of Faith

 Does your faith have backbone? Do you really trust God when the chips are down? When all hell is raging around you with demons screaming in your ears to doubt and give up on God, do you still believe anyway? When the odds are stacked against you, when the improbabilities and impossibilities cast menacing shadows, do you still pray for God to move your mountain?

I have discovered in my own life the ebb and flow of faith. Some days faith is strong and I believe God to do anything. On other days, my faith is weak and I can barely muster any prayer much less mountain moving prayer. Faith is not stagnant. It is growing or it atrophying. 

Faith grows when it is exercised, stretched, and forced into action. Faith atrophies when it is kept in our heads but not engaged in reality. I think many people have an intellectual faith but not an experiential faith. If you want faith with backbone, then you will have to believe God in some trying circumstances. Faith is forged in the fires of trials. 

If you read Hebrews 11, you will identify the trials behind those listed in that chapter. They did get put in that famous chapter because they coasted down easy street. They were put there to inspire us to have backbone faith in our circumstances. Each faced trials. Each stood up courageously and believed God for impossible things. 

We may read the Bible. Do we believe it? Do we live it? Do we pray it?

Take Mark 11:22-24. We love that passage about mountain moving prayer. We are exhorted in that verse to do several things. These are action steps we have to take on our part before God does His part. 

1. Have faith in God. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen according to Hebrews 11:1. It means you become convinced that God will come through. You believe. You trust. If we do not have faith we are not praying. We are wishing. Having faith fuels praying effectively. 
2. Speak to your mountain. Twice in this passage we are exhorted to say to our mountain. I am not sure many of us speak to our mountain. Especially speaking publicly about the things we are trusting God to do. A few months ago I walked outside our facilities to do a prayer walk. There were multiple things I prayed about. I actually spoke out loud to several of my mountains. I know that sounds strange. It is right in the text. Speaking out loud is part of believing. 
3. Does not doubt. You could substitute the words unbelief and faithless here as well. Just this morning I was convicted about going through the motions of prayer, but letting doubts filter into most of them. At the moment we entertain doubt it is sin. It is the sin of unbelief. It is our lack of faith and fear triumphing over what we believe about God's faithfulness. In essence, we communicate with our doubts that God is not worthy of our trust. 
4. Believes. Believe and faith are the same things. We all know that we have offered prayers we really did not believe that God was going to answer. Prayers for healing. Prayers for provision. Prayers for multiple things. What is the point of praying if we do not believe that God can. Wait a moment. Believing is more than believing that God can. True belief is believing that God will. It may not happen in our timing, but if we believe God is able and desires to answer our prayers, we are assured the answer will come in God's time. Now, if we are believing for things that God does not will for us, He is not obligated to answer. If we believe I Jn 5:14-15, we can pray with real confidence, true belief that God will answer. 

When we take these action steps, God is faithful to do His part. He will grant what we ask, if it is in accordance with His will. God will answer and we will receive. God will do His part. He is not unfaithful. His very nature is faithful. So if we are not receiving answers to many or most of our prayers, we cannot blame God. He is no less powerful than He has ever been. He not less willing to come to our aid. We must ask ourselves if we truly have faith and belief, do we speak to our mountains, and do we doubt? I am confident if we do our part, God will ALWAYS do His part.