An Exercise of Faith

 

We are living in a time wherein more and more Christians believe that we are fast approaching the Last Days, or the Great Tribulation. I would agree with them. We are told by Jesus in Matthew 24, using a fig tree as an example, that we can tell by observing the signs of  things around us when that day is approaching. In verses 32-33 Jesus tells us "Now learn this lesson from the fig tree; As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door.", referring to the last days and the signs that Jesus had just previously laid out for the disciples, and for us.

I am not going to go into great detail about what those signs are in our modern day; that is not the purpose of this entry. What I want to discuss is the strength of our faith, especially as we are in difficult times already, and harder times are on the way.

Anyone who ardently works out to increase their strength and endurance knows that in order to build muscle, you need to actually strain your muscles beyond what they are currently capable of doing in order to mildly damage and injure them. Then, as the muscles recover and heal, they will grow in size and strength. There is a right way to do this and many wrong ways as well. If the muscle is too badly strained or injured, it is a detriment to the growth of the muscle and permanent damage can result. If the muscle is not strained enough there is no growth, and if the muscle is not used at all there is atrophy, or deterioration.

The same holds true of our faith walk. In order for our faith in God to grow, it must be strained; it must be tested. My experience with God has been that He has not tested my faith nor the faith of my immediate family, without permission from us. That will not always be the case, and that is not to say that we have not had difficulties that seemed to come out of the blue and really shook us. That should also not be taken as a blanket statement to say that God will never test someone's faith without their permission. I believe to state that would be a theological fallacy as I am sure that God has tested many people, without their permission, in order to draw them to Him. But I do think that if someone is truly seeking to know Him better and actively growing in their faith, they will get to the point of submitting to that testing of their own free will. I also think that if a person refuses to acknowledge God in their lives to the degree that is necessary for them to achieve what God's Will is for their life, then God will begin to act outside of their given permissions in order to stretch that person in preparation for what may lay ahead for them.

 It seems as though I will be giving at least a brief testimony of my own faith walk with God in this entry - that was not my plan, but that appears to be the way that this entry is going.

I have been a Christian for as long as I can remember. I grew up on a farm in a Christian home, praying before meals and bedtimes, attending church and youth programs regularly, and celebrating the typical Christian holidays. I even have a card dated in 1982 that states that I made a decision to accept Jesus as my Saviour on that date. I don't remember that event; I was quite young. I also don't really think that that particular date is necessarily a day that a decision was made, but I must have said something in a place where they were prepared to record it, and so it came to be.

I lived my life as a boy and a young man with nothing particularly surprising happening to me, in my own opinion at least. I had some minor health issues, one of which was actually potentially nearly deadly, but I was very young and unconscious for much of it, so while I have a memory of it, I don't recall my fear in that memory. I lost some extended family members to disease as well as most of my grandparents by the time of my early adulthood, none of this seeming particularly distressing to me in the grand scheme of things, it was just life. On the farm, we experienced a number of structure fires over the years, three to be specific. The first two were shocking, though not particularly life changing - the third one changed a lot. That one took my parents' barn and all of their livestock - nothing was saved. But again, as a teenager at the time, while my family situation changed and my Dad ended up getting a couple of jobs for number of years before returning full-time to farming, my own life was not much affected. I would dare say that my Dad's faith was greatly tested at that time though. I do not know if he had granted permission to God to test him, and it is more than ten years too late to ask him now, but I do know that around six months prior to the last fire, my Dad had decided to stop smoking after over 20 years, and he did not return to the cigarettes after the fire. That was an answer to over a decade of prayers from myself, and likely the prayers of many others as well. I have wondered if the fire was at least partly a test of his resolve to remain nicotine free.

As time passed and I entered early adulthood, I watched as some of my friends wandered away from God; some of them came back while others did not. In hind sight, many may not have been that close to Him to begin with, so it was likely not much of a journey to leave. I dated and married and started a family, all while working steadily, earning a living and building a life.

I eventually ended up in a job that was excessively stressful, at least for the first six to eight months. I took a position in the company that I was working for which had been held by someone else for about three months prior to me. It had been a new position when that person started it, and they had bungled it badly, so by the time I took it over I had three months worth of angry customers to deal with, a lack of a structure or system to work with and trades with their own ideas of how to do things. It took me those many months to catch up on long delayed obligations while trying to limit the delay of new obligations, show the long term customers that I was competent and I would meet their needs and to build a system wherein I had the control that I required to do the job properly. 

It was extremely stressful at times. There were days when I left my cell phone on my desk and left the building to go for a walk to calm down. The longer I was gone, the worse the stress had been. I don't know if my boss knew how bad it had been until I told him about it later on, once I had things under control. It was during my time starting off in that position that I learned to practice regular, daily personal devotions in the morning, before I headed off to work, in order to get myself into a good, centred place before dealing with the stresses. It was during one of these devotional times, about three years into the job, when I first heard the Lord speak to me, almost audibly. 

All I heard was "It's time."

I immediately knew what was meant by that simple statement, not only in my head, but in my heart. 

I had held an idea for a business for about four years by that point, but I had never acted on it. I knew that the time had come. As a result, I secretly got some training for my chosen business and set it up without anyone being aware besides my wife. About six months after hearing God, I quit my job and threw everything on the line for this new business.

It. Was. Tough!

It took almost three years before we were finally earning enough to stop digging a financial hole almost every month, And another couple of years to reach ground level in our finances. After six years of business, while dealing with health issues suspected of stemming from chemicals that I used in my business, I arranged for a new job and shut down my business; just like that. I was a little tired of the stress, I was looking forward to more regular hours of work and I had landed a salaried position that included a company truck. I thought I had made a good trade - but I missed self-employment. Maybe fifteen months later I quit and went self-employed again into a different line of work from my first business, kind of. I had been splitting my previous business time into this line of work and I just committed to it fully at that point.

Not even a year into the life of the new business my family entered what we would later, and even now still refer to as "our year and a half of Job". In that year and a half I would almost lose my wife to medical issues three times, I did lose my Dad, and I almost lost my youngest child to medical issues as well. There were some other issues that we dealt with as well, but those were the big three. My wife and I had some close Christian friends later ask us how we didn't turn our backs on God through all of that. Honestly, the thought had never crossed our minds. We were too busy leaning into God to get us through to consider that we could turn our backs on Him.

Fast forward a number of years. We have been dealing with long-term health issues in both my wife and my daughter after their health scares, business has been sufficient but not stellar and age and bodily abuse have begun to take their tolls on me. 

Things are routine. We had fairly recently learned that God speaks to His children if we just learn to be quiet and listen for His voice. This was a new concept to us. Neither my wife nor I had grown up in this belief, but it absolutely and fundamentally changed our faith. Of course, I had heard His voice years earlier, but I had chalked that up to God intervening to achieve His Will in the moment, not an invitation to enter into regular conversation with Him. As we practised this act of submission, I remember a conversation that I had with Him one morning. I remember it so clearly because it was a bit disconcerting. In that conversation I said to God, "I want to go deeper with You."; my exact words. His exact reply was "Are you sure?" That unnerved me, and I took a pause, I don't know how long, before I replied with "Yes." His response was just "Okay." It was not too long before He put my resolve to the test.

It took about six months for things to start to change, specifically in my business. I wasn't losing customers, but I was getting a little less work, month by month. I had been self-employed long enough to know that business sometimes went this way and I didn't panic; I always tried to be prepared for a slow down and this was not extreme, so I didn't really worry about it.

Then about six months later again, after continual reductions in work, God speaks new instructions to me. He tells me that I am to stop looking for work in my business. I am allowed to accept any work that comes to me, but I am not allowed to seek out new work or ply my contacts for work when things are slow, both of which are essential actions for business survival. I would like to say that I immediately agreed to follow His instructions. I would like to say that, but I can't. I did not disobey Him, but I did not immediately accede either. It took a little bit of time to wrap my head around what He was telling me to do. I was being instructed to place my entire business, my entire livelihood and my entire financial security (as feeble as it was) into His hands and to leave it there.

I don't know if I ever told Him that I would obey Him. It is possible that I just never chose to disobey Him. Work dropped off more and more over the next several months. About two years after I made my commitment to God I was working about two to three half days a week in the middle of the busy season. The business accounts were clear of debt, but they were eventually drained completely. The personal finances have taken a massive beating and became completely depleted as well.

The real kick came about a year and a half after I made my commitment to God and before our finances were completely depleted, when I found myself dealing with some pretty serious allegations against my wife, and later against me as well; allegations that came out of the blue and that felt like a bat to the gut. I had no idea what to do, so I went to the Lord in prayer. I threw myself at His feet and at His mercy. He instructed me on what to do, but the instructions were completely illogical. I argued with Him. I told Him that His instructions would only make things worse for us, but He did not waver. I was reminded of my words to Him; "I want to go deeper with You." Thanks! Thanks a lot!! I guess this is what it looks like? I can't say He didn't warn me.

I obeyed the illogical instructions. Things went public. Our reputations were destroyed and the business, or what was left of it, was gutted. We became pariahs in our own community. Still God's instructions remained the same and remained completely illogical. It was a conscious decision everyday to continue to follow the instructions that I had been given to deal with this situation. The public attacks eventually waned off, but there was still considerable external pressure on us.

Because I wasn't working our financial picture worsened. Utilities were threatened and/or lost.We had to rely on charity from our church (which turned out to be a vast disappointment), friends, neighbours and even secret gifts from unknown individuals (blessed souls sensitive to God's nudging?), just to keep fed. Through all of this I never felt compelled to rely on personal credit though, and we carry zero credit card debt, which in itself is a massive blessing. We were called to rely fully on God's provision, and he has seen us through.

There were legal proceedings against us. We faced a civil lawsuit, which God did not allow us to defend ourselves against, and my wife faced criminal charges, which thankfully God allowed us to get a Legal Aid lawyer for and which resulted not in an acquittal but a reasonable plea deal which allowed us to avoid the additional stresses of a trial. Believe it or not, a minor criminal record was better than the ramifications of a trial on top of everything else.

Due to our failure to defend ourselves in the civil case, the court found against us. As a result, our real assets were threatened by debtors and, trying to make a long story short, we eventually had our house taken from us by questionably legal means and my family lived in a camper for eight months, including about half of a Canadian prairie winter.

Keep in mind that through all of this I was not working. Thankfully God had prepared us for this ahead of time in some ways and protected us in others. We started this with a car loan that we were working down as well as an orthodontics bill for one of our kids that we had committed to prior to things turning sour, but both of those obligations got cleared before things got completely dire. We also had a good supply of meat in our freezers from animals that we had raised, so we weren't starving by any means, though I do recall a stretch of time when my weekly food budget for my family of five was $65. That was so immeasurably hard.

The loss of the house cleared up the legal pressures and also removed us from the community where we were no longer wanted, but I have to start building a life all over again. Our journey is not over yet, and we don't know what the destination is, but we have committed our way into His hands and we will see this through to the end.

That is a lot more than I intended to share. There are only a handful of people that have been informed of our situation to that extent, but I felt compelled to write all of that to make a point.

There will be people that will read that and say something like "Wow, you have an unbelievable faith to have obeyed God through all of that!" To this I would respond with "Please don't give me so much credit." This has been a journey. God has been gentle with us, slowly immersing us into our trials, letting us get acclimated to the stress and the strain before lowering us further. Had He dropped us in all at once, I have no doubt that I would have failed spectacularly. God strained our faith to the point of causing mild harm, then held us there to allow a healing of our faith, a strengthening. He then strained our faith again to encourage more growth.

I would also want to tell the above person that there are other people that have, are, and will suffer far more than we have. This has been a very specific type of trial to gain a very specific type of growth. It does not mean that we will be able to stand under all types of trials, however, we have been strengthened to stand under greater strain than we would have been able to before the trials. I am grateful for the lessons that we have learned so far and I hope to never forget them.

There is another type of reaction that I might expect. There will be those that will call me a fool for what I have done. Even some that believe on God will not believe my story, and there is plenty within this story that has not been shared. I cannot say to that person that I have believed, I have obeyed and God has carried me through, because I am not looking at it from the other side yet. We are still believing, obeying and God is still carrying us. We have travelled a significant distance through this trial, and I have faith that I will, someday, look at this from the other side of it, but that day has not yet arrived. There are many hurdles and struggles that we need to deal with before all is behind us, and I don't know what that will look like.

I guess the point of all of that is to say this: if your faith has not been tested, do you know that it will stand? What will happen if or when you come up against a mountain that you cannot see your way through, around or over? I don't wish these types of trials on anyone, but I do wish this type of growth on people. The problem is that you can't have one without the other.

My story is one of God testing and strengthening not only my faith but the faith of every member of my family. We were not dropped into deep waters where our faith would have floundered and drowned under the waves; we were slowly pushed out of the shallows so we could learn to "tread water" in our faith. It was this gradual strengthening and testing that has carried us through and I am glad that I can claim that none of us has lost our faith in God through all of this.

We will all need a strong faith as we enter into the Last Days. It is my belief that the church will be here for the trials of persecution and tribulation. If we do not exercise the muscle of faith through testing prior to entering into those trials, will our faith stand, or will be be found among those who fall away  (2 Thessalonians 2:3)? I hope and I pray that it is your strong desire to stand with God in the end and that if God chooses to test your faith prior to those days, that your faith will be strengthened through adversity.

Please let me know what you think in the comment section below. I know that people are looking at my writings, but I don't know who is actually reading them, if anybody. Your comments will help me to know who my audience is and if I am offering you something of value.