When you run out of human love, what do you do? I suggest that you ask God for more faith. Our cry should be: “I believe, help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24, Hebrews 11.) Faith and love are necessarily connected. The Christian life is “faith working through love.” (Galatians 5:6.) You won’t be able to love without faith in a big God!
In A Loving Life, Paul E. Miller explains that “Faith is the power for love.” (p.43.) A lack of love for others can stem from unbelief in the faithfulness of God. When you are out of human love, ask God for more faith to believe his promises. If God has raised Jesus from the dead and we are united with Christ, we can hope in Him in the present and for the life to come. Christ in us is our hope of glory (Colossians 1:27).
Miller explains some of the implications of what faith in God’s resurrecting power looks like. He observes:
“1. We don’t know how or when resurrection will come. It is God’s work, not ours.
2. We don’t even know what a resurrection will look like. We can’t demand the shape or timing of a resurrection.
3. Like Jesus, we must embrace the death that the Father has put in front of us. The path to resurrection is through dying, not fighting.
4. If we endure, resurrection always comes. God is alive!”
– (A Loving Life, p.70.)
The resurrection of Jesus Christ gives us hope that God has a plan to conquer sin and death. God is in the business of redemption. And this means that there is every reason to hope. What men may have meant for evil, God uses to accomplishing his good (Genesis 50:20).
Abraham is a great role model of faith for us. God promised him many descendants but then commands Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, on an altar. Abraham trusted God and obeyed, not knowing how or when God would act. Scripture tells us that Abraham even believed that God could raise Isaac from the dead to fulfill his promises (Hebrews 11:17-19). Our calling, like Abraham’s, is to trust and obey God, and leave the results to him.
Like Abraham, we are not in charge of the resurrecting. Our assignment is to “die to ourselves.” We let our heavenly Father control the resurrecting and joyfully submit to the Father’s will (Luke 22:42).
We need faith in God’s goodness and love. We need to believe that he works all things together for our good. We need to see suffering as an opportunity for us to grow to be more like Jesus (Romans 8:18-25). We believe that God exists and that He rewards those who seek him (Hebrews 11:6). Our God is generous. He keeps his promises. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear (1 Corinthians 10:13).
We need faith in God’s power. Miller explains that the beginning of faith is knowing that we are powerless in and of ourselves to love and that we need God’s help. His power is made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). God is glorified when we must depend on him. Our power to love others comes from God, not in the people we are loving.
Miller explains, “In overwhelming situations where you are all out of human love, you discover that you are praying all the time because you can’t get from one moment to the next without God’s help. You realize you can’t do life on your own, and you need God and his love to be the center. You lean upon God because you can’t bear the weight of love. So faith is not a mountain to climb, but a valley to fall into.”
May our peacemaking be fueled by a trust in our resurrecting God. May we trust and obey him, even taking all that we hold dear to the altar, if he so wills.
But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. – Philippians 3:7-11.
