Faithful Living is Something Everyone Can Do
A few days ago we talked about Nik Wallenda and his amazing high wire walk between skyscrapers in Chicago. I not only wouldn’t contemplate trying to do that, I didn’t even want to watch it. Unfortunately many people have the mistaken idea that walking by faith is just as incredible. They think of faithful living as trusting God to use us to do extraordinary things like preaching to thousands of people as Billy Graham did!
It’s true that Billy Graham and others like him have done spectacular things by faith. When we hear about those thing we think “I could never do that!” And you’re right. But God doesn’t expect everyone to do those things. The majority of things that people do by faith are rather boring. Really! Let’s dig a little bit deeper in the Bible to see this.
Faithful Living is Doing Normal things by Faith
We are fortunate to have the Bible! It is full of everything we need to know to practice faithful living. We have teaching and examples about it. Hebrews 11 is correctly called the faith chapter in the Bible. In it we have a list of people who God thinks are worthy of mention because of their faith. What’s really interesting is that many of the things those people did were pretty simple. I don’t mean they were easy to do. Faith stretches us spiritually and emotionally. But the actual things people did, for which God commended them, were normal things. There were a few extraordinary things in the list, but I’m going to leave them out and give you the normal stuff done by people as part of faithful living.
10 Normal Things People Did By Faith
- offered a lamb as a sacrifice Hebrews 11:4, Genesis 4:1-7
- built a boat Hebrews 11:7, Genesis 6:9-22
- moved Hebrews 11:8-10, Genesis 12:1-6
- believed she could have a baby Hebrews 11:11-12, Genesis 18:9-15
- instructed his body to be buried in Israel Hebrews 11:22, Genesis 50:22-26
- hid their baby Hebrews 11:23, Exodus 1:15-2:3
- refused a privileged life Hebrews 11:24-26, Exodus 2:11-15
- walked on dry ground through what had been a body of water Hebrews 11:29, Exodus 14:21-31
- welcomed some people into her house Hebrews 11:31 Joshua 2:1-21
- walked around a city for seven days Hebrews 11:30, Joshua 1:1-21
When you look at that list what stands out is that these were normal activities. The circumstances of some were challenging but some, like moving or building a boat, were not. What was extraordinary is that each person trusted God when it was easier not to do so. They did what God wanted. That is the challenge of faith.
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Think about your life at home and work. Today, make the hard choice of doing what you know God wants you to do. It will please Him Hebrews 11:6. That’s faithful living.
What has God taught you about faithful living? Please share a comment or question below.
