Of horseshoes and anvils:

Have you ever watched a farrier make a horseshoe and then shoe the horse?

A lot of work goes into making sure that the shoe fits the horse’s hoof. The raw metal is heated in a furnace until it is red-hot, soft and pliable, and then it’s shaped over the horn or pointed end of an anvil, beaten by a six pound hammer ‘till it begins to take on the rounded shape that we are all familiar with. The process will be repeated time and again until the shoe fits.  

So it is with our faith. God permits the maturing of our faith by tests and trials. He wants us to acquire patience, and equally importantly, faith that’s real. If you and I are constantly out of the fire of affliction, we become brittle and, eventually useless. God wants to reshape us according to His image, for in the fall of Adam we lost our divine shape, our faith edge.

From the time of Abraham onwards, believers have faced one constant… refining by fire!

Our faith is worked and re-worked on the anvil we call life. Faith begins for each of us as new-sprung, and must it grow through exercise. It was through the trials of life that the Lord purified and strengthened Abraham’s faith. The Lord allowed Abraham to use his human reasoning to face those trials and snares so that he would be wounded. Those wounds would teach Abraham how foolish he could be when he relied upon his own wisdom and strength. Only then would he understand the necessity of obedience without reservation or human reasoning.

Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” And he was called the friend of God. James 2:21-23 NKJV

Abraham slowly, painfully learnt the “secret of the ages”… faith is not faith when it is mixed with human reasoning! Substituting our efforts for God’s will in our lives will always end in disaster. There are no shortcuts!

As we mature in faith, the Lord weans us from human reasoning. Abraham and Sarah had it all figured out… they reasoned that the promised heir would come through the son borne by Hagar. Years later, by the time Abraham was ready to put Isaac on the altar, human reasoning was finally abandoned. Abraham had at last learnt to trust faith!

 

There must come a time in our own lives when faith finally rules both our heart and mind, else-wise we will forever walk by flesh and not by the Spirit, living as spiritual midgets, subject to all the vagaries of a temporal life. We must learn to look at life with faith, and more importantly walk our walk with faith.... 

 

 

Till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting. Ephesians 4:13-14

The dictionary defines reasoning thus: The act or process of exercising the faculty of reason; that act or operation of the mind by which new or unknown propositions are deduced from previous ones which are known and evident.

Faith is defined simply as: to trust, believe or obey; belief in things which we do not see.

The Bible says: For we walk by faith, not by sight. 2Corinthains 5:7