My faith must be practical. In fact, my faith is not faith unless it is practical, for “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26).
Jeremiah shows me what practical faith is. Although the Babylonian army was at the gates of Jerusalem, laying siege to it, God told Jeremiah that the day would come when He would restore the captivity of His people and return the land to them. As proof of that restoration, God told Jeremiah to buy a field from his uncle and lay away the deed in a safe place, to be used when the Jews were once again back in their own land (Jeremiah 32:6–15). Jeremiah did so, thus showing how totally he trusted the word of God.
Biblical faith is looked upon as a spring of action, a spiritual activator, a lifted latch that allows God’s blessings to come pouring down. I must not merely sing about faith, or glory in it, but I must do what my faith requires. The heroes of the Bible did not believe in belief; they accepted the consequences of commitment, and their faith was justified in the results of that commitment. I am impressed with the number of verbs contained in Hebrews 11, the faith chapter: Abel offered; Enoch walked; Noah prepared; Abraham went out; Sarah conceived; Isaac blessed; Jacob worshiped; Joseph commanded; Moses’ parents hid him; Moses refused, chose, esteemed, forsook, kept, and passed over; and Rahab received. What an avalanche of doings!
I cannot avoid being judged by works! The judgment of God will not be on how much faith I had within, but on how much was strong enough to get out. What gets out will be to God’s glory and my praise. Then, like Enoch, I will have this testimony: “that [I] pleased God” (Hebrews 11:5, KJV).
“And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, ‘And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,’ and he was called the friend of God. You see that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone” (James 2:23–24).
Daily with the King 