The Lord has really been working in my heart lately on what it means to stand firm in faith. It’s been a thread in a lot of seasons of my life but this time God has decided we needed to go deeper into what that means. And as hard as that has gotten over the last month, I’m so glad that He is teaching me this.
I just started reading through Isaiah as part of my time with the Lord and I don’t know if you have ever read through the beginning of that book, or really just a lot of the Old Testament, but sometimes you really have to ask the Lord to speak to you because there’s a lot of history and background going on so it’s easy to get lost.
So I was in chapter 7 reading about this king Ahaz that God had sent Isaiah to because he needed to get his life together (shocker) when I came across the end of verse 9, which says, “If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all.”
I was shook.
And I could just feel the Lord pressing into my heart saying, “Yeah this isn’t just a history lesson.”
Like it isn’t saying if you lay down in your defeat you’ll make it. Or if you’re sitting there just chilling you’ll be just fine. Or if you just stand and hope that your feet are probably planted you’ll survive. No. If YOU don’t stand FIRM in your faith, then you won’t stand AT ALL.
Because attacks are coming. The enemy is real. You have to be able to defend yourself in faith. Sometimes life looks the total opposite of what the goodness of God. And you can’t make it through if you are not standing firm in faith.
But the chapter gets better too. I love it.
Right after in verses 10 and 11 God speaks to Ahaz and says, “Ask the Lord your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or in the highest heights.”
Wouldn’t you love for God to look at you right now and LITERALLY TELL YOU to ASK FOR A SIGN in the DEEPEST OR HIGHEST PLACES. So like NO limits basically. Like God where are you with my sign like that?
And what baffles me is Ahaz refuses. He tells God that he won’t put the Lord to the test. Which you know, sounds great and all high and mighty and that kind of thing but in reality, he was just pushing God away. He didn’t want to know what God was going to say or do.
And how often do we do that? We don’t want to know what God has to say to us because of our fear, so when He invites us deeper we refuse with some great excuse that we can later blame on the Lord and ‘still look good’? Like we can actually fool God…lol okay.
God was extending out His hand in one of the most beautiful pictures of relationship. He was giving Ahaz the opportunity to draw close to Him. He was giving him the ability to ask for something to stand in faith on. And I love that. That shows exactly what kind Father He is to us. He is still invited us to ask for things to stand win faith on.
In Hebrews 11:1 we are told faith is the confidence in what we hope for and the assurance of what we cannot see. And sometimes that can be such a hard thing to hold onto and stand firm on. Because we can’t see it.
The reality is that sometimes we have asked God for a sign and He doesn’t seem to be listening. Maybe you’ve been in a season of waiting and God doesn’t seem to be any closer to hearing your prayers today than He did two months ago. Or maybe you’re trying to walk where you feel like He is leading but every time you think you get it right, He closes the door without showing you an open one. And those are really hard seasons. Because we begin to question how a God that tells someone to ask for a sign so big can ignore all of our desperate please for a sign just large enough for us to breathe again.
But God promised He is indeed the same God today as He was yesterday. He is still the same God that invited us into deeper relationship with Him, whether it be by telling us to ask Him for a sign or through some other means that speaks to our hearts. For He knows it is hard to stand firm in hope of things we cannot see at times, but God is faithful in all He has promised, even when we cannot see in our limited perspective.
Deep Diving 