{"id":10494,"date":"2013-10-30T23:35:51","date_gmt":"2013-10-31T03:35:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=10494"},"modified":"2013-10-30T23:59:41","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T03:59:41","slug":"the-trial-of-faith-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=10494","title":{"rendered":"The Trial of Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eNh3BJEc5oI\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>If you have faith as a mustard seed . . . nothing will be impossible for you \u2014Matthew 17:20<br \/>\n<\/em><\/strong><br \/>\nWe have the idea that God rewards us for our faith, and it may be so in the initial stages. But we do not earn anything through faith\u2014 faith brings us into the right relationship with God and gives Him His opportunity to work. Yet God frequently has to knock the bottom out of your experience as His saint to get you in direct contact with Himself. God wants you to understand that it is a life of faith, not a life of emotional enjoyment of His blessings. The beginning of your life of faith was very narrow and intense, centered around a small amount of experience that had as much emotion as faith in it, and it was full of light and sweetness. Then God withdrew His conscious blessings to teach you to \u201cwalk by faith\u201d (2 Corinthians 5:7). And you are worth much more to Him now than you were in your days of conscious delight with your thrilling testimony.<\/p>\n<p>Faith by its very nature must be tested and tried. And the real trial of faith is not that we find it difficult to trust God, but that God\u2019s character must be proven as trustworthy in our own minds. Faith being worked out into reality must experience times of unbroken isolation. Never confuse the trial of faith with the ordinary discipline of life, because a great deal of what we call the trial of faith is the inevitable result of being alive. Faith, as the Bible teaches it, is faith in God coming against everything that contradicts Him\u2014 a faith that says, \u201cI will remain true to God\u2019s character whatever He may do.\u201d The highest and the greatest expression of faith in the whole Bible is\u2014 \u201cThough He slay me, yet will I trust Him\u201d (Job 13:15).<\/p>\n<p>Journal DJR<br \/>\nGood Morning Lord,<br \/>\nIn the last two days two devastating facts have come across my consciousness.  The intense poverty in West Virginia coal towns, and the intense poverty in Haiti.  The stories that went with these two made me cry.   Earlier in my walk I may have thought, &#8220;how could a good God let that happen?&#8221;  Same for tsunamis, hurricanes, floods and mass murderers.    I dont think that anymore.   That question has been replaced by 2 curiosities: &#8230;. What are you doing?   and What shall I do about it?   Thanks for making us curious beings.   Curiosity has been a refuge for me to run into when things dont seem to make sense.    Choosing and cultivating curiosity about what you are doing and how I can be involved has been one of the best things to keep my faith growing.   Thank You<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you have faith as a mustard seed . . . nothing will be impossible for you \u2014Matthew 17:20 We have the idea that God rewards us for our faith, and it may be so in the initial stages. But we do not earn anything through faith\u2014 faith brings us into the right relationship with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10494"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10494"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10496,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10494\/revisions\/10496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}