It's Your Faith

In Luke 18, Jesus relays a parable about an unjust judge, who had a widow coming to him for justice, 
and she was determined and persistent. Jesus taught:
4 And he would not for a while; but afterward he said within himself, 'Though I do not fear God nor regard man,
5 yet because this widow troubles me I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.' "
6 Then the Lord said, "Hear what the unjust judge said.
7 And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long 
with them?
8 I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?"

I think of Jesus teaching that evil people know how to give good gifts to their children, but how much more will our Heavenly Father give to us?  There is a distinct difference between human strength and understanding and the strength to which we have access in Christ.  He wants us to bring our needs, our decisions, and our struggles to Him.  He is faithful, and calls us to be faithful to Him, throughout our lives, until the time when He comes to take us home to be with Him.

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James 5 contains a powerful passage about the potential of prayer, and reminds us that we are invited to partner with the Lord in prayer. We can read:
16 Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.
17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months.
18 And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.

The Atlanta Braves are back in the postseason, but arguably the team leader, back in July, was in a position in which it was unclear whether or not he would be playing at all in the shortened season that had just been announced.

You see, according to Sports Spectrum, that leader, Freddie Freeman, had contracted the coronavirus. The story relates that in a video conference call, Freeman shared that his temperature one night spiked at 104.5 degrees; it says he also experienced "...body aches, chills, headaches and a temporary loss of smell and taste."

The article states:

It was prayer that gave Freeman comfort when doubt crept in about whether he would survive the ordeal.

“I said a little prayer that night,” Freeman said on the conference call. “I’ve never been that hot before. My body was really, really hot so I said, ‘Please don’t take me.’ I wasn’t ready.”

The 30-year-old said his fever broke after a couple of days and that Saturday was his ninth consecutive day without symptoms. The day before, he had received his second negative coronavirus test, which gave him clearance to play.

The story points to Freddie's trust in the COVID situation and compared it to the loss of his mother when he was 10, stating:

During a time in his life when he seemingly had nothing but questions, as Freeman recounted to Priority Magazine, God granted him a realization about the loss of his mother.

“My mom was in pain, and He took her to a nice place, and she’s not in pain anymore,” he said. “I finally truly believed that a couple of years later. Then I was just like, ‘I have to do this for Him because He did what’s best for my mom.’ Faith plays into it a lot.”

That Priority Magazine story offers this glimpse into Freeman's personal faith:

'I was born into The Salvation Army,' Freddie says. 'My whole family is in The Salvation Army.'

Freddie and his family were at the corps several days a week when he was growing up.

'When I was kid, that was all I knew was the Lord,' he says. 'My parents instilled in me that this is what you need to believe.'

But Freddie's belief is not 'grandfathered.'

'I truly do believe the Lord died for us and was on that Cross,' he says. "I will always believe that.'

The story reports that "Freddie's roots in The Salvation Army go back six generations."

I think one of the obvious concepts in this story is how we should respond to fearful situations, including health scares - we need to be in prayer; certainly, we should take the necessary steps of prevention and treatment, but our prayers and the prayers of others for us can be incredibly powerful. 

There is an interesting element of what Freddie Freeman prayed at the peak of his coronavirus experience...he asked God not to take him, that he was not ready.  Now, we can be confident that if have prayed the prayer to receive Jesus into our hearts that He will take us into heaven.  And, if you are not sure, you can call out to God this very moment and restore your confidence; if necessary, you can make things right.  But, there may be another meaning - that we have not fulfilled the entirety of our purpose on earth; perhaps we feel we have more to do here. We can live our lives in such a way that we are being faithful when the time comes to be taken out of this world.  We don't know when it will be, but we can live with a sense that it could be any day. 

We can be confident in our faith because it is a personal commitment we have made to follow Christ. Freeman is part of six generations in the Salvation Army, but what determines his relationship to Christ is what he himself has done - it's not about growing up in church, or our parents' or grandparents' faith - it's between you and God.