DON'T LIMIT GOD (PART 2)
"According to your faith be it unto you." - Matthew 9:29 (KJV)
God cannot reach out to you beyond your faith! He considers your faith to reward you. In the Gospels, we hear the Lord Jesus telling people,
"thy faith hath made thee whole." or "according to your faith be it unto you" (Matt 9:22, 29). What is more, even faith as it were, is categorized into "little faith" (Matt 6:30, 8:26), "weak faith" (Rom 4:19, 14:1), "strong faith" (Rom 4:20), "Great faith" (Matt 15:28), etc.
Dear child of God, I counsel that you go on to build your faith because by your faith, you can limit God! This sounds unbelievable because, a lot of times, people think that insofar as something is God's will for them, they will get it anyway. But that's not true! For instance, 1Tim 2:4 says that God "will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth." (KJV). Here, we see that it's the desire and will of God that all men are saved, but in reality, that's not the case. The truth is that God "is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe." - 1 Timothy 4:10 (KJV). Since it's not everyone that believes the Gospel of God through His Son Jesus, many aren't saved; despite that it's God's will and desire that all men are saved.
Besides, there are those out there who believe that all is it, in as much as they are saved. No, no, no! If you read 1 Tim 2:4 well, you'll come to understand that apart from God desiring to have all men saved, He wills also to have all men "to come unto the knowledge of the truth." This is where so many Christians have it wrong. Majority of God's children are starkly deficient in the knowledge of God and of His Christ. The Bible tells us to "grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ'' (2Pet 3:18). At other times, God's verdict about His people is that they perish for the lack of knowledge (Hos 4:6, Isa 5:13) According to the Lord Jesus, it's the knowledge of the truth that sets us free; not the truth itself (Jn 8:32).
Now, the point I'm stressing is this: when we aren't functioning well in the knowledge of God, we can limit Him. This is so because God's Word reveals our inheritance in Christ, and by our ignorance of it we can limit God.
Secondly, it's very well established that only by faith can we draw out from God! "But without faith, it's impossible to please Him" (Heb 11:6). "According to your faith be it unto you.", Jesus says in Matt 9:29.
But "faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God" (Rom 10:17). In other words, your faith level is tied to what you know of God. Hence the Bible admonishes us to let the Word of Christ dwell richly in us (Col 3:16), failing which we can limit God's ability to "do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think." (Ephesians 3:20, KJV).
When as Christians we are ignorant of God's Word, the difference between us and unbelievers become very slim because the tendency is to "walk as other Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:" - (Eph 4:17-18). This is very serious! Yet, this is the state of so many Christians, all because of their ignorance of God's Word. Under these circumstances, although they are God's children, having the pulsating life of God in them, they get the same results as unbelievers get. When believers' understanding is darkened, they are, according to the Bible, "alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart" (Eph 4:18). Dearly beloved, I encourage you therefore to go for God's Word!
Believers who don't understand and who don't apply the knowledge of God in their lives are tended towards carnality. When your mind is starved of God's Word, it will automatically gravitate toward sensuality, ie, what you can see, hear, smell, taste and feel. Your life becomes sense ruled; whereas in reality, as God's child, you should walk by faith and not by sight (2 Cor 5:7).
Such people function mostly in what I call Thomas' kind of faith, which doesn't believe until it sees. (Jn 20:24,25)
By adopting this kind of attitude, you've allowed your five senses to dominate you more than God's Word.
This situation is at best a spiritual quagmire into which many Christians have fallen, with the result that they limit God and don't see Him the way they expect to see Him move for them in life.
PRAYER:
Dearest Heavenly Father, I make efforts daily to grow my faith so that I can enjoy my inheritance in Christ, without limiting You, in Jesus name.