A Good Testimony Through Faith
“Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” (Hebrews 11:6).
This is the truth about our God, but one might ask, has God rewarded all the worthies and faithful ones of old down through the countless generations of all believers to the present day? Hebrews 11:39-40 has a satisfying answer for such questions. It says, “And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the Promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.” A good testimony which was obtained through faith is fully revealed in the Bible.
If we read with attention the family history of the Fathers of old, starting with Adam, then Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David and the Prophets, we will find that when all that was promised to them is accomplished, they will all be living witnesses of these promises. That means they will be resurrected from the dead and then receive the gift of eternal life.
The testimony of the apostles, which is not at all different from the testimony of the Old Testament worthies, helps all of us today who rely on the Bible as the true Word of God. We believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing we might also have life through his name - because our faith should be directed by the things concerning the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, as explained in Acts 8:12. We should labour to give a good account or testimony of ourselves so that in the end Jesus Christ will say of us, “Well done, good and faithful servant, you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord.” (Matthew 25:21).
Such words will not be said to those who lose faith. Take a little time and consider the early generations of shining examples of faithfulness – the likes of Abraham, the Father of the faithful and many more, which Hebrews 11 records, and you will see how little we do. Surely there is no comparison. These all served the Lord in hunger and in thirst, in cold and nakedness, in toil and weariness, in prayer and in meditations and in persecution. They preached the gospel of the Kingdom and the name of Jesus. They were strangers to the world, but they were God’s witnesses through their works of faith. After you have seen such examples of faith, it will be difficult for you to fall asleep spiritually.
Paul, through his letter to the Thessalonians, also exhorts us not to fall asleep by saying, “You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep as others do, but let us watch and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation. For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him.” (1 Thessalonians 5:510).
Such faith is the kind that sees the invisible things, the kind that believe the incredible things. For with God everything is possible and in Christ everything is “Yes”.
Bro Green Mumbelunga (Ndola, Zambia)
