There is a saying, “love is blind and lovers cannot see.”
The real meaning of love is “A strong feeling of personal affection, care, and desire for the well-being of others.” It is a primary characteristic of God’s nature (1 John 4:8)
If you are only physically attracted to your opposite sex it is not love it is called lust. Real love involves knowing the person for who he is or who she is. You need to know the good and the bad characteristics of that person. Real love is not easy it takes time to develop.
What about faith, is there a blind faith? Yes, there is a blind faith. The dictionary says, blind faith is a faith without true understanding. It means blind faith has no basis or no foundation.
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Search for the truth
When the writer and his family arrived in Canada he passionately searched for God’s truth, he attended multiple Bible studies with different Christian denominations.
In his search for the truth he found out that the Bible, the best-selling book but not a favorite read for many, has answers of the frightening developments in our world today like: major calamities, worldwide increase of criminal and terrorist activities, economic crisis, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and diseases without cure.
Human knowledge and wisdom cannot cope up with the increasingly complex problems of the world. If you went to the libraries or bookstores, you might find thousands of books claiming to provide the answers. Most often one book contradicts another; others give seemingly valid answers but later become outdated, replaced or revised.
But the Bible, which can be read in acrostic as “Basic Instruction Before Leaving Earth”, contains guidelines on how to live a fulfilled life during our temporary existence here on earth. It is an advanced science and the only “how-to” book that can foresee or foretell the future accurately!
After knowing the truth (spelled out in the Bible), it becomes the foundation of the writer’s faith, no longer traditions, cultures, and beliefs of his ancestors handed to him since childhood. Before knowing the truth, his faith had no basis and foundation for he simply accepted traditions, cultures and beliefs handed to him without asking any question. His faith in God then was blind.
When the foundation of our faith is solidly grounded on the truth of God – the Bible, our faith in God would not be derailed regardless of trials and temptations that would come to our way, for God would sustain our faith. Jesus said in Matthew 28:20, “…And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
The apostles were constantly with Jesus for three years and a half healing the sick, feeding the hungry and teaching the kingdom of God. They witnessed the miracles Jesus performed including raising the dead like Lazarus who was in the grave for four days.
They believed that Jesus is the Messiah and yet when Jesus was arrested they all ran away. They abandoned Jesus, for they were afraid that they too would be arrested. In fact, Peter who told Jesus that he was willing to die to protect His life, denied three times that he was a follower of Jesus.
They were afraid, because their faith in Jesus at that time was not on solid ground. They did not fully understand God’s plan of salvation. They thought that Jesus would not die and would establish His kingdom during their lifetime despite Jesus telling them many times that He will die and be resurrected after three days.
At the crucifixion of Jesus, the apostles did not have a complete picture of God’s plan of salvation. The reason Jesus stayed for 40 days after resurrection before going to heaven for the apostles to fully understand God’s plan of salvation. Thereafter, the apostles became bold in preaching the gospel for their faith this time was with solid foundation.
At that time the Bible was only the Old Testament. Today, we have a complete Bible, the Old and the New Testaments. The Bible we have today has a complete plan of God’s salvation.
To have a genuine faith in God, we need to study more and know more the God who created the heaven and the earth, and the giver of perfect gift. The more we know God, the more we know how loving and caring He is. And the more we know that He is perfect God, we cannot find any weakness in Him.
When we have a genuine faith in God, we are even willing to die to defend our faith in Him just like the apostles. Most of them died martyrs as they boldly preached the gospel:
1) Matthew killed by a sword in Ethiopia; 2) Mark, died in Alexandria, Egypt after being dragged by horses; 3) Luke, was hanged in Greece; 4) John, he was boiled in huge basin of boiling oil during a wave of persecution in Rome. However, he was miraculously delivered from death. He was exiled to the Island of Patmos, where he wrote the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation. He died an old man. He was the only apostle to die peacefully.
5) Peter, he was crucified upside down; 6) James, the leader of the church in Jerusalem, was thrown over a hundred feet down from the top of the temple when he refused to deny his faith in Christ, when he survived the fall, his persecutors beat him to death; 7) James, the son of Zebedee, was beheaded in Jerusalem; 8) Bartholomew, also known as Nathaniel, was killed for his preaching in Armenia; 9) Andrew, he was crucified in Patras, Greece; 10) Thomas, he was stabbed in India during one of the missionary trips; 11) Jude, was killed with arrows when he refused to deny his faith in Jesus Christ; 12) Matthias, the apostle to replace Judas was stoned and then beheaded; 13) Paul, was tortured and then beheaded by the evil Emperor Nero at Rome in A.D. 67.
Christians’ sufferings today are indeed minor compared to the intense persecutions and cruelty faced by the apostles and disciples during their time. They never deny their faith in Jesus because of their genuine faith in Him.
Genuine faith is not blind for it is based on the foundation of God’s truth. While blind faith is based on traditions, cultures, and beliefs handed to us from our ancestors – we automatically accepted without asking any question. Genuine faith is the result of reasoning, remembering, research and study. Genuine faith is hard work.
Look at what Jeremiah 29:13 says:
“You will seek me and find me when you seek with all your heart.
In conclusion, Prophet Jeremiah simply says, the only way we can have a Genuine Faith in God is when we seek God with all our hearts. When we have genuine faith in God, we will love God with all our hearts, mind, soul and strength.
The writer had struggled in searching for the truth of God and even became an agnostic (not sure of God’s existence), he only started to believe in God when God performed miracles in his life. He wrote those experiences in a book. You can request a free copy by email to: adam.aspilla@bellnet.ca
The subject for the next issue – “Failure is Not Final If…”.
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