Ezekiel 4-6
How would you have liked to be Ezekiel? He did what the Lord said to do, and said what the Lord said to say, but he couldn’t have been popular to the masses. In fact, many may have thought of him as a weird man.
God was using every means possible to get His message to the people. These Jews were His people, and they had a mission to accomplish still. They were to bring into the earth the Messiah, Jesus, and they were to have the history which would show God’s hand upon a nation.
However, at the time, it might not have seemed like it. They were in captivity in Babylon, and they were assimilating this new culture into their own routines.
But there were a few. There were a few who had not forsaken their God, and others who had turned back to Him because of their captivity. Those were the ones who would listen.
First Ezekiel used tremendous drama to show the plight of these people. They had turned their backs on God, and He had turned His back on them. How the mighty had fallen.
Soon he is going to begin to bring forth glorious words of hope concerning Jerusalem. The ones who believe God will grab hold of these words and feed on them.
But first he has to reiterate why they are in their current position.
Better days are ahead. Better days are always ahead when we walk with God.
Hebrews 11
“Without faith, it is impossible to please God. for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder for those who diligently seek Him.” (V. 6)
That’s what He wants from us: our faith. He wants us to believe Him. That’s the foundation for everything in our Father’s kingdom.
So what is this thing called faith? It’s the “assurance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen.” (V.1)
All of us exercise faith every day, whether we know it or not. Every night when we go to sleep, we “know” that the sun will be up again in the morning. Right? Do you ever wonder or worry about that? I hope not!
Every time we sit down in a chair and trust our body weight to that structure, we have faith that the chair will hold us. Every time we turn on a light, we expect the light to come on. Every time we go to work, we expect our job to be there. (Under ordinary circumstances).
All of these are examples of faith. We aren’t seeing something at the moment, but we know what the outcome will be. It’s easy to have faith in things which we have experienced over and over.
In the same way, as we walk with God and believe Him for things, we will see results of our faith. Then the results we see will increase our ability to believe next time. Our faith will grow from the experience.
However, if we say we are Christians and never believe God’s Word, our faith won’t grow. In fact, perhaps our doubt and unbelief will grow, because we will not see Him work as much.
There’s a key here, and it’s in verse 3. “By faith, we understand that the worlds were prepared by the Word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.”
A mouthful, I know. What it is saying is that the way God created the world is the same way He creates things in our lives. He spoke the word in faith, and things appeared, which had not been seen before. They had been created out of the word of God and faith in that word – when it was spoken.
Are there some unseen things in your life? Things which you have seen in God’s promises, but you haven’t seen manifested in your life?
Find those promises and meditate on them. Roll them around in your mind and heart, and speak them out loud. As you do this, your faith will grow, and you will begin to see these promises manifest in the natural.
It won’t happen overnight. Yet if you continue in God’s Word, your faith and patience will bring you into a whole new territory. A new territory of believing and receiving.
As you continue to read about the “hall of faith” in Hebrews 11, your faith will rise also. You will see that faith was an essential element of all of the heroes in the Old Testament. (In fact, when Abraham believed God’s Word to Him, he had righteousness granted to him as a gift).
Our faith is essential to a successful walk with our God. We must believe Him. He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
