The more I go through life the more I am convinced that while we have been given a lot of spiritual tools in this life, the most important and influential one we have is our faith. With enough faith applied correctly we can accomplish anything. One evening as I was pondering about faith I suddenly had an awareness of the entire nursing unit I was on–a vague awareness for just a few moments. With that brief moment of awareness came a realization that all of it was within a domain that I could control–down to the very atoms themselves. If I wanted to I could literally reshape the fabric of the universe around me. I understood in that moment that I was only aware of what was possible, but that I lacked the ability at that moment to actually effect that kind of change on any kind of noticeable level because I lacked the faith necessary to accomplish it even though I have the right of access as a son of God.
Faith is the key that unlocks doors, and I believe that we as sons and daughters of God must learn to live in high levels of faith if we want to see even a fraction of the things God has promised us. The truth is that living in this level of faith is going to take sacrifice that I believe few have made to date, and it’s not because we are earning faith by our good works, but because faith is always in flux. Faith is like the ocean–constantly undulating up and down, occasionally hitting a high peak or a low trough, but usually staying in a relatively constant set of bounds. I think of those bounds as normal life.
In normal life we have a measure of things we are used to, and we get comfortable in that place. Sure, things in our house may break and we may have to get them fixed or replace them from time to time. An occasional trip to the doctor and a rare trip to the hospital is within reason–after all, we live in a fallen world. Sure, God blesses us in many ways, but the enemy also steals from time to time, and we live in a tension between blessing and attack. It happens. And unfortunately, that seems to be the normal life many of us get used to. I know I am guilty of it myself.
The problem with this is that we get so used to the level we are living at that we forget there are much higher levels that we COULD be living at. What if anytime something in our house broke we waved our hand at it and it was made whole? What if any sickness and disease was fixed in five minutes–or better yet, never graced the threshold of our doors? What if attacks from the enemy were highly uncommon because we were simply such a difficult target to attack? All of these things are possible and much more, but it starts with building faith. Faith-building starts with changing expectations. When we start to expect something different we make a requirement from our beliefs. Instead of just knowing God CAN do something, we start to expect it to happen, and then go from expectancy to outright commanding reality to change.
Changing our expectations has a lot to do with changing our external input–the things we allow into our minds. If we want to have crazy miracles happen, we need to turn off the news, sometimes even turn off social media, my iphone, and all of the other distractions, and we need to pray. We need to feed ourselves with miracle stories of God’s glory and goodness and meditate on God’s nature of love. We need to get healed of inner hurts that hold us back and take fierce captivity of our thoughts–our daydreams and ideas, that we only let those things that are fruitful take hold within our minds. None of these things are easy; all of them take time. They take a shift of focus that is not small. Movies may go out the window. Various other forms of entertainment may soon follow–not that entertainment is bad, but everything we look at, think upon, hear, see, all forms of contact play a part in our faith level. I am not saying we must shun the world, but on some level I am saying we must start to shun the systems of this world’s way of doing things. I have heard stories of such men of God as Smith Wigglesworth who wouldn’t even let a newspaper cross the threshold of their door, as they didn’t want to be tainted by the negativity and bad news contained therein.
We don’t need to put our heads in the sand and hide; rather we must put our heads in the clouds–in heavenly places where Christ is seated and where we can rule and reign with him to administrate justice and mercy into the earth. There is a reason that we are transformed and metamorphosed when we renew our minds–because only mind-renewal and a birthing of new faith will bring about the transformation we truly desire–the Kingdom of God manifesting on the earth. Let us set our sights on a higher way of life and in so doing transform our world.
