Steps of Faith

For those who have met God, the life of faith begins with laying one’s greed and lust at the foot of the cross, yet understanding God’s will and setting down one’s burden takes time. As we love him, lean on him, and serve him, our faith grows, and that growth is a process everyone must go through. Giving ourselves up to take hold of faith demands a decision, because after going through the world as we pleased and as we saw fit, we must now live by God’s will. And the conflict along the way is, I would say, considerable. For only when we feel the pain of being cut away as we read the Bible, and can hear something crumbling inside us as we listen to the word, do we finally come to know God’s will.

God and human nature have stood on opposite sides from the beginning. The road from forsaking our human nature to standing before God is certainly rough and painful, yet it is a road we must travel.

Where along that road is your faith right now? As you climb, leaning on Christ, who is our ladder, are you helping your brothers and sisters whose faith is weak, pulling them up and taking them to your heart?

Even if day after day you gaze at the power and glamour of the world and trip over stumbling blocks, you stand among God’s people because God is there, always holding on to you. So you must take his love as your pattern and care for those who are weak in faith.

If our faith can grow at all, it is only because God has given us grace and love. So we must not boast as though we had achieved it by our own effort, and we must not sit in judgment on the faith of others.

I give glory to God, who held me fast as I wrote the sermons of Steps of Faith, and I am deeply grateful to the members of our church who worked so hard on this book.