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&In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths&

"And That Not of Yourselves”

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"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:" Ephesians 2:8. The Lord so graciously began laying this little article upon my heart some time ago and I didn't even see it coming together, I mean really coming together until last night, when He so burdened me to write it. I have always felt inadequate to serve the Lord, but not until last night have I ever known how Moses must have felt when the Lord called upon him to lead the children of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt. At that time, Moses was placing his confidence or lack of it in his own ability rather than that of the One Who was calling him. As I read that again, I couldn't help but notice that God's anger was kindled against him. I am indeed so inadequate to serve the Lord in any way, but I do so want to serve Him and I definitely don't want His anger to be kindled against me. With that thought in mind as I attempt to write this little article, it is my prayer that He will help me write it and that He will use it for His glory and as a very real and lasting blessing to all those who will read it.

You will notice that I have entitled this little article, "And That Not Of Yourselves" and that I have used the verse of scripture with those words in it, found in Ephesians 2:8. How many times have you heard someone refer to someone else as a man or woman of faith or even said that about someone yourself? Well, many times when we see someone who really and truly walks by faith as we are all instructed to do, we see ourselves as truly inadequate. The Lord has allowed me to do a lot of witnessing since He saved me. And it is really amazing how many people I witness to get hung up on the thought that they have no faith and cannot be saved. I too used to have that hang-up about faith or the lack of it. But after the Lord saved me, He allowed me to see in His Word, in the very verse of scripture I used to begin this little article, that the very faith it took to save me was and is not of myself. It is a fact that myself and a whole room full of people combined, could not muster up enough faith on our own, to save even one of us. No, the "and that" spoken of in Ephesians 2:8 is the very faith whereby we are saved.

I thank God that His Word doesn't say that I have to come up with some faith before He will save me. God's Word says, "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." Romans 10:9. It does not say that if thou wilt confess with thy mouth and have faith in thine heart. It only says to believe. I know that there are those who would say that believing and faith are the same thing, but they are not. The Lord has allowed me to see the difference in a story I once heard.

In the story, there was a man who hung a tight wire across Niagara Falls and he began to turn flips and do all sorts of tricks on that tight wire. There was a crowd that had gathered to watch the man and they began to cheer him on. When the man saw the crowd that had gathered and how that they were cheering him on, he ran across the tight wire to where the crowd had gathered. When the man got to where the crowd was he asked, "Who believes I can carry a man over to the other side?". The crowd all yelled out, "Why, after what we have seen, we all believe." Then the man held out his hands and said, "Who'll be first?". There are a whole lot of people both in churches and out who are cheering Jesus on, but when He holds out those nail scarred hands and says, "Will you let me take you over to the other side?", they would rather not. For those dear people, all you have to do is to believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins and that God has raised Him from the dead and confess Him with your mouth. God will provide the faith.

But there are those who really and truly have trusted Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour and yet they don't see themselves as having faith and they sometimes find it hard to trust Him when times get tough. Well, the Lord knows how I hate plumbing, but He has used that very thing to allow me to see that everyone has faith. Even lost people have faith to different degrees in something. Now, I didn't say that I hate plumbers, only that I hate plumbing. And I really hate it when I have to do plumbing. When I first built this house we now live in, I had to do quite a bit of plumbing and have had to do some since. When I had completed all the plumbing and the water tap had been connected, I went to the sink to check it out. Now, the first time I turned that faucet to the on position, I had a certain amount of faith that water would come out of it. But deep down inside somewhere there was the possibilty that water might not come out. Water did come out and I sure was pleased as well as relieved. The next time I turned the faucet and water came out, I had even more confidence that water would be there every time I turned the faucet. And every time I have turned the faucet since that time and found water, my faith in that water being there has increased. So you see, everyone has a certain amount of faith in something and in varying degrees in many things.

I could have and did contemplate giving this little article the title, "Consider The Source", but I believe the Lord gave me the right title and the right scripture for it. But we should first consider the source of our faith and then consider the way it must grow. If our faith is in the shed blood of Jesus Christ as our personal Saviour and as the at-one-ment (atonement) four sins, then the source of that faith is God Himself. Before we came to trust Him as our Saviour, we could only know about Him and we could not actually know Him. When I first began the plumbing in this house, I knew very little about plumbing, but by the time I had finished it, I knew considerably more about it. I still don't know all there is to know about plumbing, but as plumbing goes, I know all I want to know. Up until the moment I came to trust Jesus Christ as my very own personal Saviour, I knew a good bit about Him, but I did not actually know Him.

But to actually know Him is to trust Him and just like the first time I turned the water on, I didn't actually trust it as much as I do today. And just like turning that water on regularly over the years has built my confidence in the water being there, so too, getting to know the Lord more and more over these few short years since He saved me has built my faith in Him. How then do we get to know Him better than when He first gave us the faith to save us? Glad you asked! By talking with Him and by studying His Word and by surrounding ourselves with others who know Him and by listening to the right kind of music and preaching and teaching and yes, by serving Him even when we know that we are inadequate.

The Worf of God calls it a walk and we are instructed to walk by faith and not by sight. The dictionary gives a definition of the word walk as, "To follow a course of action or way of life (~humbly in the sight of God). The verb to walk would indicate a moving from one point to another, such as from point "A" to point "B".

When we trust Jesus Christ as our personal Saviour, we are given the promise of spending eternity with Him in heaven, but we are not quite there yet. It is so true that there are those who have been saved for many years who have not come to trust Him any more than the day He saved them. The other night as I was about to watch a video of a basketball game where our oldest son had scored his first two points for the school he attends, I was watching as he rewound the tape. He had it playing while rewinding it and everyone was going backwards. I made the comment that it was really hard to walk backwards. At that time I was not thinking about this little article, but as the Lord was putting it all together for me, He brought that comment back to my mind.

It truly is harder to to walk backwards than it is to walk forward, but there are many very real Christians who find themselves walking backward in the journey the Lord has so graciously set before them. There is no in between or neutral for we are always either going forward or we are going backward. Just to not go forward is to go backward. And as I said before, the going is always a lot tougher when walking backward.

Just like God will not make a lost man get saved, He also will not make His children walk forward all the time. He so graciously allowed me to see a prime example of this in the story we have come to know as the story of the prodigal son. I have heard many sermons on this story and they were all to do with a lost person getting saved. Just recently the Lord allowed me to see this story in a different light. In the story you will notice that the father had two sons. Now these were sons and not strangers. You will also notice that in the story, the son who has been called the prodigal was in fellowship with his father, but he walked away. Now, the father did not walk away, the son did. The father was right there all the time. You will also notice that the father, though he loved his son dearly, allowed him to walk away. This son was walking backward and it wasn't very long before he found that walking backward wasn't nearly as appealing as it had once seemed. In fact, this son found himself to be truly miserable.

I'm so glad how that the story ends as you will also notice that the son found himself to be in such misery, the story tells us that, he came to himself". First he had to come to himself and realize that this was not the way a son should be living and just how miserable he was like that. Like the son in the story, I remember when I was growing up and I knew I had done something wrong. I always dreaded the whipping I was going to get when I got home.

But the son in the story, after coming to himself said, "I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee. And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants." He expected, and knew he deserved a whipping, but this Father is not like most fathers, for He did not whip the boy when he came home. This son received his whipping while he was in a far country and in a hog pen. When this son came back home he found a Father full of compassion, ready to receive him. In fact, He did so with open arms and love. What a Father! What a God! I know that we all are capable of walking backward from time to time, but it sure is a joy to know that if we will go back to the Father, we will find Him right there where we left Him with open arms, just waiting to receive us!