Farewell of Faith

This book has been solely written about faith and has hopefully given you a glimpse into what faith looks like. The stories in this book have all been true, about real people from the past and today. Each story has its unique lesson for you to learn from, and hopefully, you have. Hopefully, each story has inspired you to live each day with a new and deeper level of faith.

This last story is also about faith but is a little different from the rest. The story is about a man named Paul and how much faith he had in Jesus Christ. A story about how he was willing to give up everything including his life to preach the gospel to any and everyone who would listen. His journey of faith and how it drove him to finish what Jesus had started in him. His life in this story was about to change for the sake of the gospel and yet he ran to it, not from it. His faith in knowing what he was doing was what God had purposed him to do is what gave him the strength and courage to carry out God's will for his life. He knew his future was uncertain and yet he approached it with great zeal and excitement. In Acts chapter 20 he is giving his farewell speech to the elders of the church of Ephesus and it went as follows:

“You know how I lived among you the whole time from the day I first came to the province of Asia. I served the Lord with great humility and with tears and in severe testing by the plots of my Jewish opponents. You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house. I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus. "And now compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; and my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me- the task of testifying to the good news of God's grace.

Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again. Therefore I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of any of you. For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God. Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.

“Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I have not coveted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing. You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.” When Paul had finished speaking, he knelt down with all of them and prayed. They all wept as they embraced and kissed him. What grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face again.

This had to have been a hard speech to give and yet even harder for his friends to hear because at that point everyone knew they would never be together again. Paul is to be admired though because he couldn't think of doing anything else other than what God had put in his heart to do.  What an enormous amount of faith and love he had for Jesus and for who Jesus was. He believed in Him so much he was willing to go through anything to tell others about Him. His life was not only about what faith in God could do for him but how faith in God could inspire him to do whatever he needed to do to tell others about the name of Jesus Christ. He wanted others to have the same chance to know and serve Jesus Christ as he did.

To have the faith as Paul, you have to know beyond anything else that what your doing is God's will, or else you won't be able to do it wholeheartedly as he did. Each of us has been given a role to play for the Kingdom of God, and once we fully know what it is we must be willing to go all the way for it.

Now for the most part sharing our faith doesn't put us at the same level of risk as Paul and yet we still have a hard time sharing our faith- how sad. When we look at Paul and his life we can see he regarded it a privilege to lose his life for preaching the gospel and he continued anyway and as we know he did eventually lose his life over it. Our lives are not on the line like Paul's was and yet we have the hardest time even doing the simplest things God had asked of us. Oh, to know God's will for us and to be so passionate about it that we are willing to go all the way for what we believe in should be our daily prayer.

Each of us must find out from our God what His will and plan for our lives is, then do all we can to fulfill that mission with His help. We may not know all the details, but one thing is for sure that we will be passionate about it once we have decided to fully walk in it. The faith of Paul is inspiring and should give each of us the courage to do all God wants us to, and to do it as though if we couldn’t a piece of us would be empty.

So as stated earlier this book has been about faith and, hopefully, it has brought your faith more to the level you want and need it to be. Hopefully, also this last story about Paul's love and faith for the God we serve will encourage you to go for all that God has for you. Think back to Paul for a moment – what if he wouldn't have done what God had purposed for him to do? Think of all the books of the New Testament that were written by him and now we can read them anytime we want. Oh, how we would be suffering if we didn't have those books to teach, inspire, and encourage us in our walk with the Lord. So, for you, the purpose of God needs to be fulfilled not only for you, but also for the sake of others. Whatever the Lord's plan is for your life know that it is perfect for you and you will be the happiest when you are doing it. Know that God has not picked out something for you to do that will bring dread upon you- it will be just the opposite. The difference for some of us is that some know the purpose of God for their lives and do not fulfill it, and others do not know their purpose and need to find out.

Know that each day is a gift from God our Father and should be made good use of. Use each day to be a living example of God and His goodness and minister to others. Each day will require faith and on some days more faith is even yet required, but remember God is always there for you and is always watching over you. Know with God all things are possible and through Him, you can do anything, and your faith will inspire others just as Paul's has inspired us.

May your life be filled with an abundance of faith bringing God honor and glory because each day your alive is a day for you to shine as a living testimony of the goodness of God!!! May God bless you and keep you as you walk each day in a new and stronger level of faith!

From Gardens of Splendor by Gina Burns