Paul wrote that"without faith it is impossible to please" God (Hebrews 11:6).
Why is it impossible to please God without faith? Because God's sole motivation is our acquisition of greater joy, and the only way we can have increased joy is through improvement, and improvement cannot come except through faith.
To have faith is to believe and act according to what you are given sufficient reason to believe. There are many people who will not believe a particular cause will lead to a particular effect until they have already experienced that effect. These people will be incredibly limited in who they become, what they obtain, and what they do for others in this life because their outcomes will only occur through the faith of others.
What we can obtain by choice far exceeds what will happen to us by chance. Those who plant seeds will always have a far greater harvest than those who only receive the harvest of others. God desires us to bear our own fruit, not to simply receive the fruit others give us.
A while ago, I published a book on faith. You can find it in print on Amazon here. If you prefer, from this blog you can
download a free pdf and a free audiobook, and you can even listen to the first few chapters
on YouTube.
If you haven't read that book, I highly encourage you to.
Recently I have not been spending much time writing blogposts. One of these is that I have only so much time, and am under the same divine injunction we all are to spend my time in the things of greatest worth. For me, the time I would write blogposts is consumed by writing books. One of the many reasons for that assessment is that what I have written here at such great cost has been taken so lightly. [1]
I have many more books to publish. Two are written but not yet published. One will come out as soon as it is proofed, the other has to wait for others that are higher priority to be published (there is a sequence). I hope you read what has already been written. Doing so will prepare you in the present, while preparing you for what is to come. The more familiar you are with what has already been written, the more you'll gain from what will be published later.
God is beginning to expose more people to a greater share of the consequences he has so graciously held back for so long.
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[1] - And I sent messengers unto them, saying, I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you? (Nehemiah 6:3)