LUKE 22:32a – “But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.”
THEME OF THE DAY: REMEMBER WHO IS PRAYING. It was mid-afternoon, but the thick clouds betrayed the clock. Surely evening had arrived. It looked like rain. It smelled like rain. It felt like rain. I had no doubt the heavens were about to open. I didn’t need any meteorologists to confirm it. My feelings were dead on! I felt the inevitable. I went for my umbrella. However, just for the sake of confirming my infallibility, I decided to check out the local radar picture. Just a formality until I saw the image revealing no pockets of rain anywhere near. But I FELT rain, I SMELLED rain, I SAW the clouds. Something or someone was wrong, and it wasn’t the radar. The radar felt nothing but just gave out the truth. It was me. My feelings betrayed me into a flawed evaluation of circumstances. And it did not rain. Not a drop.
The Christian experience includes the battle between feelings and faith. To win consistently in this battle, we need to remember a few things. First, the direction and focus of feelings and faith. Failure to distinguish the two results in living like “amateur meteorologists” in the spiritual realm. The up and down experience between feelings interpreting life and faith interpreting life will be like a ride on a playground seesaw. Feelings direct us inwardly toward self and focus on comfort. Faith directs us upward toward Christ and focuses on conformity. Without a clear understanding and fight to keep these separate, we head to the playground and the seesaw.
A second way to deal with this battle is prayer. Please don’t assume I am unleashing an attempt to guilt us into more commitment to private prayer and prayer meetings. However, that wouldn’t be a bad exhortation to receive for all of us! Consider prayer from a different angle. Before we pray to help in the battle between feelings and faith, what if we took the time in the war to ponder the prayer life of the Lord Jesus for us? Just meditate on Him praying for us. And particularly, notice what the Lord prayed for in Peter’s life, “but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail” (Luke 22:32). The petition we know was answered because Peter did not fail. He had failures in the life of faith but did not fail in the life of faith. Failures mature us; to fail points to abandonment and surrender to the Lord. A great man of faith, George Muller once said, “God delights to increase the faith of his children. We ought, instead of wanting no trials before victory, no exercise for patience, to be willing to take them from God’s hand as a means. Trials, obstacles, difficulties, and sometimes defeats, are the very food of faith.”
In the raging battle between feeling and faith we are to develop the spiritual ability to control our feelings under the power of God-given faith instead of being controlled by our feeling voiding the power of God-given faith. A great place to begin this process toward spiritual ability is to remember Who is praying for us – praying as He did for Peter that “our faith may not fail”. When we begin to let faith interpret circumstances instead of feelings, we will no longer be victimized by a see-sawing life or wearing the title of “amateur meteorologist”.
Prayer: Father, we are a “feeling” people and we thank you for making us so. Just keep us from reliance upon them instead of faith in Your Word.”
Quote: W.H. Hewitson, “Faith is the soul’s outward, not inward, look. The object on which faith fixes its eye is, not the heart’s every-varying frames, but the never-varying Christ.”
Because of Him,
Pastor Jim