Justification Of Faith (Part II)

By Odon Bulamba (31 January 2003)

Do not destroy your faith because when you die you die alone. We walk on this earth, jump on this earth and dance on this earth, yet the earth does not complain, but the day when the earth will walk on us everybody starts crying. At funerals you bury dead people and when this happens people start crying. Once the body is in the earth everybody sprinkles dust over the coffin, so why can’t this dead body dance anymore?

When we are alive we sometimes forget what comes next, so according to the definition of faith we must hope in what our eyes have not seen yet. Do you believe that one day you’ll be buried? Have you prepared your life for this? Can you cheat death? Never! Even medicine can’t stop death. One day I asked God if He could give me one thing so I could become famous, and it was to give life back to the dead. How many clients do you think I’ll have? How much money do you think I’ll make? All the rich people will be my friends, why? Many people are afraid of dying but as Christians who are justified by faith, we must prepare for what is coming.

James 1:6-7 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.

What is the consequence of doubting when you pray? You don’t get what you asked for. Many Christians don’t receive today because of doubt. “Lord I need $5000 by tomorrow”, but when he sees that it is 5 minutes until tomorrow he doubts and tells God, “I’ll give you 48 hours”. If you don’t believe in small things do you think you’ll believe in big things? If you don’t think something is possible in 1 second do you think it will be possible in 2 weeks?

Sometimes it is a shock for people to hear that the person they had just spent the last 2 hours with is now dead especially if they were healthy. Many people don’t believe it until they see the coffin and once they see the coffin doubt doesn’t exist. Doubt is the first enemy to fight with our faith, so if you want to fight, fight your doubt and you’ll see what God will do for you.

When I was young I raised a chick that I liked a lot. One day I and another boy had an argument over this chick so I beat him up. Parents came along to break us up but to prove a point to me, this boy took my chick. In front of me he plucked its feathers and this hurt my heart a lot because the bird was suffering, he had no mercy. Then he took a blade and started cutting the chicks joints little by little, and then to top it off he took the chick and smashed its head. Because I was so angry I gave him a serious beating.

It is the same thing with doubt. When we doubt it eats up our faith, it doesn’t eat it all straight away but it will pluck at your feathers and when this happens you’ll suffer later. Where are you going to find a solution for the problem you have if you don’t have faith? Will you go to Colleen? Or Peter? All they’ll say is that we will pray for you.

Doubt can destroy your faith. To keep a strong faith tell your doubt to stop and go back to where you came from, it’s that easy. Can you forget that God created everything? If you didn’t get what you wanted yesterday maybe you’ll get it today, or maybe you need to remember Habakkuk 2:4? If you are righteous you must live by faith. The Bible says that you cannot change anything in your life, even when people colour their hair they are just covering it.

Our faith must be a living faith, a faith that never panics nor looks around. Look to God and you’ll find the answer.

1 Corinthians 8:1 we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.

Because we received faith by hearing the Word of God our faith needs to grow, and the only thing that can make faith grow is love, without love you will never be edified.

There was a man who had a son that was epileptic, so he took him to Jesus’ disciples but they couldn’t heal him. Jesus said to His disciples, “You of little faith, why doesn’t your faith heal him?” How many years have you been a Christian? Why aren’t we performing miracles? Why aren’t we using our gifts? Our faith doesn’t grow because we don’t practice love; love today and you’ll see what will happen with your gifts.

How many words constitute love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8? In order to practice love we must first know how many elements there are. We read these verses all the time, but if you were to define each word I think you might have a problem. We must know these words not only in our heads but also in practice. Do you have these 17 words in you? If not why? What do you lack? Maybe this is why your faith is weak; maybe this is why your faith doesn’t grow.

Everybody knows that without love you cannot see God yet we still think that one day we will see Him, but how? We won’t go to heaven by plane or rocket. Jonah was a courageous man but one day he disappointed me. God told Jonah to preach to the people and eventually he did, but after preaching he told God to punish them for sinning against Him. Do you think Jonah had love? How many times do we pray for others? How many times do we preach to people yet kill them with our actions? How many times do we preach to others yet make them sick by our actions? How many times do we say that we are Christians yet our actions disappoint others?

We must be careful, the life we have on earth is short and if you are not justified by faith yet, it is now time to ask God for help because we need to grow. If our faith doesn’t grow the devil will punish us and we might end up losing the faith. Why don’t we grow? What stops you from growing? Do you think that you can stop your body from growing? Can you stop yourself from aging? No! Then let your faith grow as well. We must not stop our faith from growing and keep on saying that I am spiritually young. How much money did God’s servants pay Him to work miracles? Nothing; just obedience.

Pray that God will help you have a perfect faith and that He will help you to be spiritually strong so your faith can grow. Tell God you don’t want Jesus to say that you have a little faith like He said to His disciples because faith doesn’t cost you anything only your decision. If you have a big faith ask God to give you a bigger faith so you can be justified by faith because the just live by faith.