A Lion-Hearted Faith

Readers,

I am particularly excited and prayerful about this week’s blogs. There are moments in life, for the believer, where one clearly gets the sense that God is nudging one toward a particular theme, lesson, pursuit, or change. In God’s providence, it appears that He is calling me to focus on the a particular theme for the coming week. It is a theme which has, out of the blue, come up in my life in various settings, conversations, study, and prayer. The theme is that of A Lion-Hearted Faith.

Ask anyone who knows me, and aside from the tennis court or ball field, they will tell you, “He’s a lover not a fighter.” As a practical out-working of who God has called me to be and how He wired me up, I just tend to be the guy who tries to handle all situations with diplomacy. I want to see relationships thrive and truth prevail in all situations. I want to see people experience peace not turmoil. I don’t gravitate toward conflict.

This being true, I recognize there are moments when a guy must “man up”, put on the armor and walk onto the field of battle. Once I am in a fight, and there are some things we must fight for, “its on”…it just takes me a little bit longer than it should to recognize when and where a fight must take place. As I have learned over the years, and am still learning actually, there is a time, place, and purpose for certain battles. I am getting closer to that place where I can say, when its time, “bring it on.” After all, this is what David did, is it not, when He faced Goliath? It is what Benaiah did when he chased down a lion, hopped in a dark pit, and fought the beast on a snowy day. I want to be able to see those battles God is calling me to and run toward them with a lion chasers faith imparted by God.

Why is all of this important you might be asking? I think its important because most of us tend to fit into one of two camps which define how we approach not only life situations, but also our spiritual battles. We tend to either be conflict avoiders or conflict makers. For the person of faith, if we are to find the life God intends for us, we must become people who are attune to the Spirit of God and what He is calling us to or from. We cannot operate in that kind of faith, however, unless we understand something about God–He is the Lion-hearted One. We can attain victory only in His strength. We walk, no run, toward the battle armed in His power not our own.
The meek and mild Jesus in a manger we all love to celebrate at Christmas time, and the bunny rabbit Jesus we receive candy from each Easter does not quite offer us the full perspective of the God of scripture. He is a God of love, and grace, and provision, and His kindness is beyond compare. Yet, if we are to know all of Him, we must recognize that there is more to His character. Throughout scripture, from beginning to end, in addition to the God of loving-kindness, we find a God who does not shrink back from calling His people to great challenge. All of our heroes of faith become so as a result of their walking by faith through great danger.

For the remainder of the week we will look at what it means to know the Lion of Judah, and what it means for us to walk as humble, loving, kind, generous, patient, and yes, battle ready people of God. God is calling us to a faith which lays hold of the big hairy audacious goals God sets before us. He does not desire that we all look like neat, tidy, and passive robots who sing a few hymns on Sunday, go out for lunch, and then just hang on in the routine for another week. God desires for His people to fight for the life they were meant to live. Anything else, whatever one may call it, is less than living. The world does not need another mass production run of moral robots abiding to a lifeless list of rules. What we need are more men and women who are trying to passionately pursue creative and inspiring lives. Enough of the mentality that merely “abstains” from rules. The battle field of faith is so much bigger than that.  Let’s get after compelling dreams and battles worth fighting for.  Let’s lay siege to the life we were designed by God to live.

Pray with me, and put on your thinking cap in the days ahead, as we look at what it means to embrace a lion-hearted faith. I hope this will be fun, and meaningful.

Getting ready to roar,

Bruce Smith

optimuslife.org

This entry was posted on 19. May 2008 at 09:04 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.