Crazy Christians

"Acknowledge the Lord in all your ways, and he will guide your path." Acknowledging his guidance is an act of confessing faith in his guidance. David said, "I believed; therefore, I said." Paul referred to that when he said, "We believe; therefore, we say." The book of Revelations says we defeat the devil by two things: first, the blood of the lamb; second, the word of our testimony.

The testimony which makes things happen is confession of what we believe exists before we can perceive it with physical senses. We make things happen by confessing what we perceive with eyes of faith. Hebrews says, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. According to Mark, Jesus said, "I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you received it, and it will be yours."

That believe is an imperative in Mark’s quotation. Jesus did not say, "If you believe…." He instructed us to believe. Since we have this in the form of a command, we should do what we can to sure up our belief. Confessing over and over continually that we already have what we are expecting to receive is one way of building our faith. Preparing a place for what we are expecting is another faith builder. If we are expecting the Lord to supply us with a car, for example, we will fix up the garage and get it all ready for the physical manifestation of the car.

Of course the world thinks we are out of our minds. When we are obviously sick, we keep thanking Jesus that he has healed us. If we are in financial need, we thank Jesus for bearing our poverty and for making us rich. Walking to work, we keep saying, "Thank you, Jesus, for giving us a new car." If we are single and alone, we are thanking God for the helpmate he has given us. Hungry, we thank God for our daily bread. Crazy Christians? God doesn’t think so. In fact, he says the righteous shall live by faith (that is by believing in the substance of things we cannot yet see). The Bible says without faith it is impossible to please God. Crazy Christians? Paul said, "If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God."

Many times Paul was accused of being out of his mind. Jesus himself was accused of being out of his mind. His mother and brothers came to get him from Levi’s house because they thought he had lost his mind. We can be sure Joseph’s brothers thought he was crazy. Certainly Abram’s acquaintances thought he lost it when he changed his name from Abram to Abraham, confessing himself to be the father of many nations before Sarah ever got pregnant. Poor Noah! The man spent 120 years building a big boat to escape a flood while the land never received one drop of rain. The neighbors were surely talking about Noah’s mentality. In Nazareth there must have been much gossip about that young girl named Mary who was pregnant but was claiming to still be a virgin. She even expected people to believe God made her pregnant.

"The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord." The Bible says it. We need to trust it. God is good all the time, and he loves his children.