Is a Life of 'Living Faith' Important to You? (Amos 7 - Obadiah - Jonah 3)
How often do you ask someone what they’re up to and it doesn’t come back in a string of reasons for how busy they are? While not necessarily a bad thing, a busy life focused on the right things can be immensely powerful to grow our relationship with God and plant seeds.
Pause a moment in this busy world to reflect on this question: is a life of living faith important to you, why or why not?
It’s never too late to start!
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How often do you ask someone what they’re up to and it doesn’t come back in a string of reasons for how busy they are? While not necessarily a bad thing, a busy life focused on the right things can be immensely powerful to grow our relationship with God and plant seeds.
Pause a moment in this busy world to reflect on this question: is a life of living faith important to you, why or why not?
It’s never too late to start!
Download your first two weeks free by signing up below (or buy Book One of the Family Bible Plan)!
What is living faith?
There are two ends of every spectrum. In terms of faith, one side is passive and the other is active.
Nowhere in the Bible will you find a commendation of a life lived in passivity or complacency with regard to the Christian walk. In fact, you also won’t find any middle ground accolades either.
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’
A life of living faith is not defined by knowledge… rather, it grants one a Biblical wisdom the world won’t understand and a seeking out to know Him better.
The book of Jonah provides a great illustration of sitting on the sidelines when God has called him to a mission.
The surrounding nations...
The book of Amos takes us through God’s judgments on the neighboring nations (and Israel) while the book of Obadiah focuses on Edom.
Amos journeys us through God’s judgment on all nations… that we all fall under His sovereignty. Ultimately, we know that God chose the leaders and kings throughout history in all of the world so it should come to no surprise then, that every nation will also fall under His sovereign justice.
The Edomites...
In Obadiah, we see a shift of familial ties having an effect on judgment. The Edomites came from Esau. Think through the history between Jacob and Esau as brothers:
- Jacob deceives his father and steals the birthright from Esau (bad relationship),
- flees from his brother who wants to kill him (bad relationship),
- comes back (good terms initially), lies to him, and settles away from him (while assumptions aren’t good to make, this is the instance in between good and bad relations between the brothers and their descendants).
Then we find example after example of the Edomites either attacking/fighting the Israelites, refusing passage through their land, etc.
Obadiah condemns the Edomites for their gloating and arrogance over Israel’s destruction when they were once family.
Judgment...
Again we see God’s sovereign judgment is over all nations, even one that is related to His chosen nation.
We saw the judgment that occurred on God’s chosen nation as well. They did not escape the consequences due them.
They had a role in the agreement to be God’s chosen nation and they had failed. Now, while you may be thinking it’s a standard no one can attain to, you’re right. To a degree, though.
When complacency sets in...
The Israelites in the book of Amos were complacent and not living faith out for His glory. That lifestyle snowballed into idol worship and a complete lack of seeking the Lord.
The perfection standard we have set as a bar for us isn’t to hold us to an impossible standard, but a motivational factor of sorts to keep us striving for more.
It wasn’t the Israelites’ (or other nations’) failure to attain perfection that led to judgment. It was a sinful life (of the overall peoples within the nations) that grew from a life that didn’t seek the Lord.
It is in the seeking that our foundation is solidified, our faith grows, and our relationship deepens. We ought never to stop seeking for it is in this act that motivates a true living faith!
Jonah...
Then we get to the book of Jonah. Overall synopsis is:
- Jonah is told by God to do something,
- he runs away,
- God stops him by exacting a truly miraculous series of events,
- Jonah repents,
- God tells him again to do what he refused earlier,
- Jonah obeys,
- then gets angry, and
- God explains why He is compassionate.
Flipping it on and off...
If you live in the modern world today, we may be disillusioned to think that we can turn on and off our faith with the switch of a faucet. As quick as we can get running water, we can activate our faith.
Sundays, flip on for church. Then flip off. No running water, no need.
Except that isn’t what God requires and the Bible makes that 1,000% clear.
We may lean toward scoffing Jonah for his abject refusal to obey God, but oftentimes our complacency, busy lives, and desire for other things in our lives have us flipping that switch just as often.
Why run away...
With Jonah, he ran away because he had already given over the nation to their sin, realized God shows compassion to those He chooses, and was angry that he was called to bring about salvation to Israel’s enemy.
Except that God had directed him to do it and had a plan to bring about repentance to the city. He was going to show compassion on them and lead them to repent!
After the books of Amos and Obadiah repeatedly share the tragedies Israel faced as a result of the surrounding nations, here Jonah is called to witness to them.
Obedience...
A part of living a complacent life is not obeying God which often turns into a snowball effect where you listen less and less. Here, we cannot necessarily call Jonah complacent, but we can note the similarities he shows to one who is passively living their life.
We are foolish if we ever think we can ignore, brush aside, disobey, or hide from God. It was a common mistake made by those who did not follow Him, but an erroneous one at that!
We do not know the big picture and how all the puzzle pieces fit together. We may be left feeling puzzled, but we don’t need to feel that way. When we rest in God’s sovereignty, we know that His plan is better than ours and we trust that what He sends us to do fulfills His purpose. This is a living faith.
Runaway...
It can seem easier in the long run to run away. The task God sets in front of us seems monumental at times and far beyond our scope or talent.
But God will bring about His divine will whether we agree to it or not. With Jonah, God sought him out to teach him and lead him.
It was quite a miraculous trip! God showed His power that He is the God over all as He controlled the wind, sea, and lives of those on board… all while effecting a recognition of His power. To those who were scared out of their minds and realized the prayers they made to their gods had failed, He showed His strength by controlling the wind and the waves.
How often do we forget that even a windy day is under His control. Or the weather where it breaks record rainfall in a month. It is all under His sovereign control.
This should be of great comfort to us and lead us to a deeper trust. Recognizing this makes a living faith even more desirable as we deepen our knowledge of who it is that we serve!
Are you listening?
Is it important to you to live out a living faith? It is deeply engrained in the threads of the Bible from beginning to end that it is part of our Christian walks.
Without it, we are lukewarm or in sin.
It is hard to have people talk about you behind your back, treat you like you’re a leper, and act like they didn’t see you in the store because you have stood up for or lived out a life of faith holding firm to the standards set forth in the Bible.
Yet, do we stop to consider what a little thing that is in comparison to the glory of God?
Do we recognize the stances we make that are hard for us are only emboldening us to stand for Him and the truths of the Bible?
Do we forget that we ultimately live for Him and His glory? And if not, what else are we living for?
Because the truth of the matter is that the way is narrow and few will enter the gates of Heaven. It is scary but true. How you live on earth matters for eternity. Your heart and life will either be in a living faith seeking Him or not.
So I leave you again with this question to ponder…
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