In this next section I would like to look at the necessity of faith for God says without faith it is impossible to please Him. If that is what God says then we need to understand exactly what faith is and how it applies to our relationship with Him. These next episodes will give you some practical ways to apply faith to all you have learned so far.

LESSON 13 ─ Applying faith and believing to why life is so difficult (part 2) Bible References:

• Matthew 4:1-11 (1)
• Colossians 1:13 (2)

Good morning and welcome to another Lesson From The Tent. This is the second part of applying faith and believing to the question; why is life so difficult?

I would like to continue to examine the domain of darkness freewill that causes all the problems of life. Just imagine for a moment you started a new job today in the emergency room of a hospital. Once there you find out your boss and the staff are all only five years old. Can you imagine the difficulties that would arise from the choices they make throughout the day? Their decisions were not made with evil intentions, but they would surely be made in blind ignorance.

The best way to describe the working conditions of your new job would be total chaos. Well, that is pretty much the way things are when all the people in the world make choices from their blindly ignorant freewill. The net result is a world of chaos that is out of harmony with God’s purpose and will.

I know this is a pretty absurd illustration, but it does depict the irrational way we fallen, blindly ignorant people choose to live when not concerned with the God’s intended purpose for their life. I’m sure at times we look as foolish to God as a group of five-year-olds running an emergency room does to us.

We do fairly well with the simple choices that face us most of the time, but life is filled with many difficult and challenging things that we need to make decisions about. For example, let’s talk about the biggest one. Since life comes from God then each of us has a responsibility to orchestrate their life according to His purposes.

This is why blind ignorance is so devastating. A tree has life, and it also has been created by God just as we have. But a tree does not have freewill to do something other than be a tree and therefore it will always fulfill the reason God created it. But not so with us humans and this is where faith and believing must be applied to life. We have the ability to choose a thousand different things we can do with our lives; therefore, it is imperative we apply faith and believing to God’s purpose for life.

But this can be extremely challenging for us. Do you think, in your blindly ignorant way of understanding the ways of God, that you know exactly where you fit into His plan for this world?

If you fully did understand the significance of this question, it should make you feel like a five-year-old trying to run an emergency room. If you ever expect to live your life purposely and consistently according to God’s plan, then you must apply faith and believing to the kingdom of God’s beloved Son because that is the world He transfers His favored ones into once He rescues them from the domain of darkness.

Let me illustrate how we do this with a true story where the importance of knowing and obeying God’s purpose greatly affected the choices Jesus made, which then greatly affected everyone on earth. Right after Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, He went into the wilderness to allow Himself to be tempted by Satan.(1) Three times Satan tried to influence Jesus to go against God’s established purpose for Him by trying to get Him to choose an easier path then the one He came to accomplish.

Each time Satan offered Jesus a choice, Jesus very confidently quotes from the Bible and refutes what Satan is trying to get Him to do. And every time Jesus does, Satan does nothing but move on to another temptation. After failing three times to influence Jesus even a little bit, Satan left, knowing he could not influence Jesus to go against the purpose God had for His life.

As the result of Jesus not falling for Satan’s alluring temptations, everyone living on this planet has the opportunity to be rescued from the evil domain of darkness and be transferred into the wonderful kingdom of God’s beloved Son.(2)

If Jesus would have succumbed to the temptations of Satan, His life would certainly have been a whole lot easier, but it would not have attained the purpose for why He was born. This illustration from the life of Jesus is exactly how we apply faith and actions of believing to life.

God has a purpose for everyone, and it is here where we make our biggest mistake. By faith our decisions must be made according to what is important to God and we do this by learning what the Bible says and then applying actions of obedience to it. Jesus quoted the Bible to Satan and then obeyed it. If He did this, then how much more should we blindly ignorant people do the same.

Unfortunately, we make choices about our lives based on cultural norms and personal aspirations that come from the domain of darkness influence such as, how much money you want to make, what kind of life you want to live, what you think is important, and the biggest one – what will make your life easier. Decisions like these are most often made without any concern for what God thinks is best.

Make sure you catch what I say next, by faith you must be convinced that Satan wants to influence your blindly ignorant freewill to live contrary to God’s purposes. It is from the truth taught in the Bible that we get the right perspective for the choices we need to make about life. If you are not fully assured and convinced of this, then you are doomed to being controlled by your blindly ignorant freewill. Is there any wonder then why life is so difficult?

Well, that’s it for today and once again there is just one thing – The greatest and most important decision you will ever make is the one requiring faith that God will rescue you from the domain of darkness and transfer you to the kingdom of His beloved Son.

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