I was looking through a devotion i wrote a couple years ago and found something that i still believed in, yet i felt it needed more clarity because it sounded as if faith was dependent on works (because it is not). Your faith produces and affects what you do, instead of being the effect of works. Yet faith is not merely some fleeting fancy that persuades you at one moment in your life, and just leaves you with a golden key that you can pick up and put down. Faith can be as strong as bricks, and faith can be weak as hay. But although faith is not directed by your works, it is worked upon. There is still a kinetic element in one’s faith that is tested by everything else in life that surrounds it, and it’s our faith that either stands or fails, that is weakened or strengthened. But it is a decision we must consciously make each time our faith is questioned, to either work on it or let it be battered.

Our faith in God is constantly at work whether we know it or not. We can live life thinking that our faith is just a sentence claiming we believe in God, without letting it be active in our lives, working in our behaviors and testimony. Or we can live life through faith by living out our belief in God. It’s not just a play and rearranging of words, but grasp the meaning.

We make conscious decisions about our faith; it is not something we are born with or a mere title that categorizes us within Christianity. For example, a woman can be a mother by title because she has gone through labor and produced an offspring, but the role that she bravely steps up to involve and sacrifice herself for the loving and nurturing of her baby is the deeper definition of motherhood. A woman grows into her role, and with each day, becoming better, more mature and wiser in her understanding of her child and herself. Faith also must go beyond titles and statements; faith must grow and mature.

Our faith matures several ways, sometimes through pain and trials, and sometimes by our own spiritual exercise. We can build our faith by immersing in scripture, so we know what we believe, and why- and who, and when. In 1 Pet.2:2, it says, “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.” In the beginning of our faith, we learn little by little, mainly the basics of what we believe, and it’s by those things we’ve learned that help us to change and live for God. But as our lives continue, so does the fight to live for God, because Satan tries even harder to snatch us away from fully living for Christ. But by building our faith, we become more mature in our role, and therefore giving us more defense to run from sin. “Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil” (heb.5:13-14). The second part of the verse says “by constant use have trained themselves,” suggesting that there is a prolonged sense of time involved, as well as work. Our faith in its infancy produces only what it knows in its infancy, but when we continue to work on our faith by knowing more and more of who God is and what He’s done, and His plan for us, our faith in its maturity produces what it knows in its maturity. Righteousness becomes a conscious joy. Holiness is pushed up to the top 10 on our list. Our faith produces good works.

That’s why faith is never easy- even to the most “Christ-like” person, or the people in leadership positions in church, or the people who are termed “good” and “holy.” It just seems like their second nature to live for Christ is easy, but we most likely fail to see the pain they went through that tested and strengthened their faith. We don’t see the years they’ve toiled and struggled with their faith, like we do. But they’ve had to make similar choices. Their current exterior is the product of “constant” interior “training.”

Living in faith is not effortless. Sometimes we’re brought to our knees. Sometimes we so desperately want to run back and away from the cross. And sometimes we want to hide because of guilt or pride. But whatever the circumstance, we still need to make choices. When those choices come, we must have Christ in our focus, and no matter how hard it is to trust in Him, to come to Him, and to submit to Him, we can have the assurance that God’s grace and power will cover us. “Nothing will be impossible for you” (Matt.7:20). So let us continue to strengthen our faith, not let it stagnate or treat it like a key that we can pick up and put down. Let it stir in us every day. Let it jump and dance in our hearts that gives us joy. And lastly, let your faith move.

How about in the prayer life of our “fathers”?

When the Constitutional Convention was hopelessly deadlocked in 1787, Benjamin Franklin, considered to be the least religious among the delegates then , turned the situation around by saying this reminder, “In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger,we had DAILY prayers in this room for DIVINE protection. Our prayers, Sir, were HEARD, and they were graciously ANSWERED (emphases mine). All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending Providence in our favor. And have we now forgotten this powerful Friend ? Or , do we imagine we no longer need His assistance?”

Franklin continued, “I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: ‘that God GOVERNS (emphasis mine)in the affairs of man.’ And if a sparrow canot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? I therefore beg leave to move that, henceforth, prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven and its blessing on our deliberation be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business.”

During the Revolutionary War American soldiers endured hunger and a critical shortage of clothes and blankets during the bitter winter at Volley Forge. Yet the men were patient and uncomplaining. How was such loyalty and hope kept alive? The answer was uncovered by those who discovered George Washington on his knees in the woods, his cheeks wet with tears as he prayed.

In 1863, during the Civil war, the Senate asked President Lincoln to designate a national day of fasting,humiliation and prayer. Lincoln’s proclamation haunts us today, “We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven, but we have forgotten God, intoxicated with unbroken success,we became self-sufficient, too proud to pray to the God that made us!” Alas! How easily we have forgotten!

Just few of the many examples we can get from our “fathers” recorded deeds. Just too profound to ignore. The depth of trust and confidence in God is rock solid. No iota of doubt nor wavering. Their anchor of faith holds on to the ROCK…which is GOD ALMIGHTY.

And so we ask, why all the fuzz with the phrase “under God” in our current Pledge ? Again, let me retreat to the early accounts written about the prime shapers and movers of this nation

On July 2, 1776 as the Continental Congress was meeting in Philadelphia to declare independence, George Washington was gathering his troops on Long Island to meet the British in battle. Washington wrote in the general order to his men that day:

“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or  slaves. The fate of unborn millions will now depend,UNDER GOD,on the courage and conduct of this army.”

Lincoln likewise echoed the same belief:

“It is for us the living,rather,to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they have gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, UNDER GOD, shall have a new birth of freedom.”

In prayers and major declared thoughts,God has been the inspiration of these leaders. Gingrich said that like Washington before him, Lincoln understood that America’s new birth of freedom would require that the nation seek the source of its liberties in the same place it had prior to the Civil War, UNDER GOD.

Where is God in America? In the hearts and minds and prayers and works of our “fathers”.

People are used to thinking about prayer as a means to get their personal needs met. However, we should understand prayer as a means to praise and adore God, to know him to come into his presence and be changed by him. We need to better learn how to pray, repent and petition God as a people.Biblically and historically, the one non-negotiable, universal ingredient in times of spiritual renewal is corporate, prevailing, intensive and kingdom-centered prayer. What is that?

1. It is focused on God’s presence and his kingdom.

Jack Miller talks about the difference between “maintenance prayer” and “frontline” prayer meetings. Maintenance prayer meetings are short, mechanical, and totally focused on physical needs inside the church. But frontline prayer has three basic traits:

• A request for grace to confess sins and humble ourselves.
• A compassion and zeal for the flourishing of the church.
• A yearning to know God, to see his face, to see his glory.

It is interesting to study Biblical prayer that brings out revival, such as in Acts 4 or Exodus 33 or Nehemiah 1, where these three elements are easy to see. Notice in Acts 4, for example, that the disciples, whose lives have been threatened, did not ask for protection for themselves and their families, but only boldness to keep preaching.

2. It is bold and specific.

The characteristics of this kind of prayer include:

• Pacesetters in prayer spend time in self-examination. Without a strong understanding of grace, this can be morbid and depressing. But in the context of the gospel, it is purifying and strengthening. They “take off their ornaments” (Exodus 33:1-6). They examine themselves for idols and set them aside.
• They then begin to make the big request – a sight of the glory God. That include asking:
  1. For a personal experience of the glory/presence of God: “that I may know you” (Exodus 33:13);
  2. For the people’s experience of the glory of God (v15); and
  3. That the world might see the glory of God through his people (v16). Moses asked that God’s presence be obvious to all

“What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” This is the prayer that the world be awed and amazed by a show of God’s power and radiance in the church, that it would become truly the new humanity that is a sign of the future kingdom.

3. It is prevailing, corporate.

By this we mean simply that prayers should be constant, not sporadic and brief. Why? Are we to think that God wants to see us grovel? Why do we not simply put our request in and wait? But sporadic, short prayer shows a lack of dependence, a self-sufficiency, and thus we have not built an altar that God can honor with his fire. We must pray without ceasing, pray long, pray hard, and we will find that the very process is bringing about that which we are asking for – to have our hard hearts melted, to tear down barriers, to have the glory of God, break through.

Dr. Michael Newdow, who continues to fight in court to outlaw the phrase “under God”, told the New York Times that he intended to “ferret out all insidious uses of religion in daily life”. This by the way is no indle threat. He meant it. While his case brought up in the Supreme Court did not result in the kind if decisions he likes, he nontheless “won” a similar lawsuit at the federal district court level and is now on appeal to the Ninth Circuit.

A far cry from him, the Founding Fathers, from the very birth of the United States, publicly acknowledged and invoked the assistance of the Almighty God as pivotal ang central to America’s birth and liberty for the infant nation.

We can read that George Washington, at his first inauguration on April 30, 1789, “put his right hand on the Bible…after taking the oath) adding…’so help me God’. He then bent forward and kissed the Bible before him”. In his remarks he said:

“It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that ALMIGHTY BEING who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States, a government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instruments employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge… No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the INVISIBLE HAND which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States.”

You will join with me, I trust, in thinking that there are none under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free government can more auspiciously commence.

Seven months later on October 3, 1789, in his Thanksgiving Proclamation, he said, “It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.”

No ! No thanks to Dr. Newdow! Even if some people of this nation doesn’t want any trace of God’s existancein this nation,the feeling of strong conviction about God even then, has been very strong. Published in 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville states, “I do not know whether ALL americans have a sincere faith in their religion, for who can read the human heart ? but I am certain that they hold it to be indespensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society. ”

But, we may argue, America has changed significantly and is a very different nation today. Justice O’Connor reflected this thought in her earlier decision cited that the phrase “under God” was adopted in 1954 when “our national religious diversity was neither as robust nor as well recognized as it is now” Be as it may, the faith of this nation has been recorded from its infancy. Its not a waste of time to look back if merely for the sake of historical documentation. As trivial as it may sound, yet there is no argument that early on, our national leaders expressed their belief, trust, and confidence in one Almighty God, neatly embedded on their speeches.

Editors Note: Where is God in America? Part I can be found here.

On R.Zacharias’ 3 part sermon on the temptation of Christ, Ravi dissected the temptations of Christ and explained it in 3 different philosophies- 1. Humanism 2. Utilitarianism 3. Hedonism.  After listening to all of the sermons, if you could sum up everything, although that would lose all that good stuff and such a complexity of rich flavors, it would be this in my own processed translation: with all our intellect, with all our gifts, with all our finite qualities and limited capacities, we try to be over and above wisdom through the exclusivity of reason without faith; over and above power as a hero to influence and/or control the lives of others; and over and above eternity by denying God and our need for Jesus- the ONLY way, the ONLY reason. We think we can live the way we want in freedom from the shackles and constraints of God’s laws. But when we do so, it is freedom that we forfeit when we are slaves to sin.  Our flaw is that we don’t have eternity on our minds.  We really live in this world to live for ourselves, to do what we want, to indulge in its pleasures and indulge in it well, without regret or thought of consequence, to experience ALL there is to experience and taking in every opportunity to feel, hence therefore really living. That is the distraction that the spiritual principalities of Satan uses to deviate us from what is really true- which is to live for Christ.

Satan tempts us, saying, “why not?  Do it. Everything is yours and take what you want. Satisfy your curiosity and have no reservations. This world is meant for you and everything in life is there for you to taste. Take the fame, acquire more and more, experience love and lust everywhere, feed your pleasures, think that you are better than your friends, forget fellowship with those that challenge your character, believe in your validated reason and your intellectual superiority…etc.”

Man lives for man, and man only sees what man sees, and thinks he thinks like God.

Man self justifies his worth without God and refuses his basic inherent quality- which is ‘to need.’  Man thinks and forgets that he was born with the quality ‘to need.’  Man needs bread.  Man needs shelter.  Man needs love.  Ask Maslow; man has basic needs, a hierarchy of materialism, but needs nonetheless.  But God, who has fashioned the earth and holds the galaxy and all there is outside of our imaginative realm, does not need.  God does not need. 

So why does man think that his wisdom can be above God?  Why do our actions confront God with such audacity instead of fear? Why does man live as if he’s only living for his present lifetime and for himself?  Our worship which was intended for the creator has been displaced for that which was created.  But King David had it right, he said, “Who is man that you are mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:4).  David realized our insignificance objectively, but subjectively, to God, we are significant.  As Louie Giglio termed it- our “significant insignificance.” 

To illustrate, I’ll share a story: while driving home one night, I looked at my daughter Emma who was overly snuggly strapped into her car seat.  Neither hungry, wet, nor scared, she kept crying because she wanted to get out of her car seat and be held, or be patted, or have a little to drink.  Whatever her reason, she let us know that we had to give her attention.  To her, the world was Emma-centric and she wouldn’t cease until she was appeased temporarily, and then complain again for something else.  She didn’t know that outside of her tiny shell were her two parents in the car who are trying to follow Ravi’s elusive thoughts.  She didn’t know that outside their car were her grandparents waiting at home to smother her with hugs and kisses.  She didn’t know that outside her grandparents’ home were their neighbors, then developments, then cities- states- countries- planets- galaxies.  Her concerns are absent of national tragedies, world calamities.  To her, everything is nonexistent and insignificant compared to maybe a wet diaper.

My second example is my last: one day, after Emma’s routine of waking up and smiling to greet me a new morning, she started getting antsy because she was getting bored of being on her back.  Being 3.5 months, she thinks she’s a big girl.  She wants to do big girl things like join the big people table when we eat, or stand all the time like a big girl, and these days she refuses to lean back on my legs when I prop her to sitting position.  Nowadays, she persists to sit like a big girl and tries to support her immature body.  She even smiles proudly when you gawk at her in amazement and mention how she’s become such a big girl.  When I propped her to stand in front of the mirror that day, she smiled at herself, paying no attention to the 122lbs big girl in back supporting her.  Knowing exponentially more than she does, I ask her, “who is that baby?”  Through reflection, I’d like to think that she sees that she is not as big as she thinks she is, and is not to par physically as the giants that carry her.  And if she could just see the reflection of the mirror, and see the entire picture of me holding her, she’ll see how small she is compared to me, but ultimately and nonetheless precious and a beloved wonder to me.

That’s how we are.  Because we have one view, we are sometimes selective of what we see and what is out there.  We look out and we think our lives are the most important to us. But at those times of reflection, we give ourselves the allowance to see how big we made ourselves to be to the reality of our smallness in comparison to God.  And that is possible by reflecting on the whole image, the bigger picture, in seeing who is carrying us, through grace to live.

That’s how we are.  Our view, compared to God’s, is that of a baby’s perspective.  And it’s funny when I think of how Emma thinks, how limited her world is, and how big things really are.  But it’s not so funny when we look at ourselves, and our wet diapers in comparison to what God sees.

Live for Jesus. And you don’t have to commit your life to full time missions, or save a thousand souls, be a speaker on a soap box, take a profession in clergy, be on the praise and worship team, lead a small group, or even go to all the retreats and convention conferences and attend every hot upcoming Christian concert.  Living for Jesus sometimes means working on your integrity, leaving away messages on your online journals/IMs that don’t contradict your testimony, talking to that person who just doesn’t reach out to others, being an example to your children, down playing your ego, pride, and self-bloatedness, mastering an unspoken sin, or vice, or habit like cursing, indulging in slothfulness, jealousy, excessive competitiveness, sexual immorality, backbiting, drunkenness, perversion, adultery, materialism, popularity, etc…And sometimes living for Jesus means trusting he’s got your back when you’re kicked down, acknowledging he’s working in every aspect of your life [like your love life, your relationships, job, family, financial standing, school, friends, your future]. Living for Jesus could mean humbling your life to him by strengthening your QT with him, meditating on his word, being quiet to listen to him, and spending time to know him- know him- not just his name, or that he exists, or that he’s just there to answer prayers; find out about His love, seek His character, research of His goodness, and be sensitive in allowing him to reveal to you his nature of who he is.

Be relevant; daily; living for Christ is a lifestyle that sets its eyes on eternity.

-marchesa ababa