Silas
Beloved of All
What you are walking through right now would break most people. To have your children removed from your home because of your allegiance to Jesus Christ is a sorrow that cuts to the deepest place in a parent's heart. And yet here you are, still holding on. That tells me something about the faith God has placed within you.
There is a proving that happens in moments like this, not for God’s benefit, because He already knows the truth about you, but for yours. You said you believed. Now that belief is being tested in a furnace, and the testing is showing whether that faith is real. A faith that crumbles under pressure was never saving faith to begin with. A faith that endures, even through tears and agony, is the kind that God accounts as righteousness. That is the faith of Abraham, who became the father of all who believe. And if you belong to Christ through faith, you are his children too, heirs of every promise God made to him.
Do not be surprised if your faith feels weak right now. Some of the greatest men and women of faith in Scripture had moments where they ran, hid, and failed. Elijah hid in a cave. Abraham, the father of the faithful, once pawned off his wife as his sister out of fear. A lapse does not mean the gift has been revoked. God gives faith in the moment it is needed, and often we do not possess it until the trial demands it. You may not feel strong, but the strength is not in the feeling, it is in the object of your faith, Jesus Christ Himself.
The world looks at your situation and sees only loss. A man without faith sees only what is visible: a bureaucratic decision, a closed door, an empty room where a child used to sleep. But faith sees far more. Faith sees a God who is still on His throne, who keeps covenant, who raises the dead and calls those things that are not as though they were. Joseph, by faith, gave instructions concerning his bones when he died, because he knew the promises of God stretched centuries beyond his own burial. His faith was not blind, it was seeing what God had said and counting it more real than the Egyptian palace around him. You are being called to that same kind of sight right now.
It is also no accident that persecution binds believers together and causes faith to grow exceedingly. The church has always thrived under pressure. When the world pushes hard against the people of God, the chaff blows away, but the wheat remains and puts down deeper roots. The love you have for each other, the support of the body around you, this is not accidental. It is the Lord knitting you together so that your faith does not fail. Let that love abound. Let others carry you when you cannot stand. And do not let anyone tell you that your suffering means God has abandoned you. The very passage that lists the heroes of faith also tells us that some were delivered from the lion’s mouth, while others were tortured, refusing release so that they might obtain a better resurrection. Same faith. Different outcomes. All commended by God.
Your works cannot produce faith. They never could. But a genuine faith always produces works, and your refusal to deny Christ is a work of faith. It is evidence that the root is alive. A dead faith can save no one, but a living faith clings to a living Lord even when every earthly comfort is stripped away. You are justified through faith in Christ, not by this trial, but this trial is making the reality of that faith visible to a watching world. Your children will know one day that their parents feared God more than they feared the government.
Hold fast. The One who began a good work in you will complete it. Your faith may feel small, but it has a mighty object.
There is a proving that happens in moments like this, not for God’s benefit, because He already knows the truth about you, but for yours. You said you believed. Now that belief is being tested in a furnace, and the testing is showing whether that faith is real. A faith that crumbles under pressure was never saving faith to begin with. A faith that endures, even through tears and agony, is the kind that God accounts as righteousness. That is the faith of Abraham, who became the father of all who believe. And if you belong to Christ through faith, you are his children too, heirs of every promise God made to him.
Do not be surprised if your faith feels weak right now. Some of the greatest men and women of faith in Scripture had moments where they ran, hid, and failed. Elijah hid in a cave. Abraham, the father of the faithful, once pawned off his wife as his sister out of fear. A lapse does not mean the gift has been revoked. God gives faith in the moment it is needed, and often we do not possess it until the trial demands it. You may not feel strong, but the strength is not in the feeling, it is in the object of your faith, Jesus Christ Himself.
The world looks at your situation and sees only loss. A man without faith sees only what is visible: a bureaucratic decision, a closed door, an empty room where a child used to sleep. But faith sees far more. Faith sees a God who is still on His throne, who keeps covenant, who raises the dead and calls those things that are not as though they were. Joseph, by faith, gave instructions concerning his bones when he died, because he knew the promises of God stretched centuries beyond his own burial. His faith was not blind, it was seeing what God had said and counting it more real than the Egyptian palace around him. You are being called to that same kind of sight right now.
It is also no accident that persecution binds believers together and causes faith to grow exceedingly. The church has always thrived under pressure. When the world pushes hard against the people of God, the chaff blows away, but the wheat remains and puts down deeper roots. The love you have for each other, the support of the body around you, this is not accidental. It is the Lord knitting you together so that your faith does not fail. Let that love abound. Let others carry you when you cannot stand. And do not let anyone tell you that your suffering means God has abandoned you. The very passage that lists the heroes of faith also tells us that some were delivered from the lion’s mouth, while others were tortured, refusing release so that they might obtain a better resurrection. Same faith. Different outcomes. All commended by God.
Your works cannot produce faith. They never could. But a genuine faith always produces works, and your refusal to deny Christ is a work of faith. It is evidence that the root is alive. A dead faith can save no one, but a living faith clings to a living Lord even when every earthly comfort is stripped away. You are justified through faith in Christ, not by this trial, but this trial is making the reality of that faith visible to a watching world. Your children will know one day that their parents feared God more than they feared the government.
Hold fast. The One who began a good work in you will complete it. Your faith may feel small, but it has a mighty object.
