What Is the True Evidence Of Your Faith?

I believe the true evidence of your faith is how you handle a crisis of unimaginable proportions.  It's easy to handle the good times.  It's how you handle things when life heads south that counts. 

That was never more evident to me than this past weekend.  You see a 25 year old man was murdered last week.  This man was the child of some friends of mine.  He was a med student at the U of M where he was murdered in his apartment.

We have known this young man and his family since all of our kids were in high school.  By all accounts it would be hard to find a finer, more gifted young man out there.  He was a young man that touched more lives than might be expected for someone his age.

There are a couple of lessons that I think we can learn here.  Number one is the example that Paul set in the way he lived his life.  He was a man of God who lived life to the fullest, and he did it with a great big smile on his face.  Scripture tells us to run the race to win and Paul certainly did that. 

The second lesson leads back to the question I asked in the title.  What is the true evidence of your faith? 

It's no wonder that Paul turned out to be such a fine Christian young man.  You see he is from a fine Christian family who live their faith every day.  And that faith was never on display more than it was this weekend.

You see Paul was a runner.  The community held a vigil at the high school track on Saturday night. 

http://photos.mlive.com/kalamazoogazette/2013/07/lovee_your_familyzip_2.html

Put yourself in his families place.  Just days before they had learned that their son/brother had been murdered.  How would you handle that?  It's hard to know for sure so let me just tell you how they handled it.  

With a grace and hope that could only come from the comfort of their faith in God.  The whole family, while sad at the loss, still had a smile on their face and you could see the joy that they were experiencing, even in the middle of their pain, hearing all the people in the community share their memories of Paul. 

At the funeral today it continued.  They talked about all of the miracles that have come about in the middle of this tragedy.  They were praising God for all of the good things that were starting to come out of their son's death.  They were praising the fact that someone came up after the prayer service on Sunday night and let them know that he/she had just accepted Christ because of Paul.

Could you do that?  Would your faith carry you through like that?   Faith in Christ has many times been described as the comfort or peace that surpasses all understanding.    Do you have that kind of faith?  Would you like to?

Then maybe you should meet Paul's friend and Savior, Jesus.  I know nothing would make Paul happier.  Nothing would make Jesus happier.  And, you'll have to trust me on this, but nothing will make you happier in the long run than having Jesus beside you the rest of your life and into eternity.

So if you don't know Jesus yet then just simply introduce yourself to Him.  Ask Him to give you the salvation and comfort that he gave Paul.  Just have a conversation with Jesus.  "Dear Jesus…."