Faith - Desiring God
- Dan Haakenson
- Apr 10, 2011
- Series: Faith, Hope & Love
Further Reflection, Discussion, and Application
- What has God been doing to stretch your faith during this series or during the past few weeks? What have you been doing to cooperate with God in the strengthening of your faith?
- Re-read Hebrews 11 and note all the references to desiring God’s reward. How was that desire / looking forward a motive for their actions of faith? How can that be true in your life as well?
- Moses stands out as an example of preferring God’s reward above passing pleasures (Heb 11:24-26). Those verses mention three things that Moses “refused” – what do you think it was really like to walk away from those things? Are they things that you have refused in following Christ by faith? What do you still need to refuse?
- Moses did not just refuse the passing pleasures of this world; he also “chose” two things (v25, 26) – note those and consider what it means for us today to choose those things. Are there current examples that come to mind (your own life or other examples)?
- Did Moses think he was getting ‘ripped off / a bad deal’? How are acts of faith (Moses’ and ours) motivated and sustained by “greater value” and “reward”? How does that work in your life?
- Moses’ example of faith also makes references to overcoming fear with faith (Heb 11:23, 27) – how have you found those two (fear and faith) to work against each other? What can you learn – and grow in – with regard to having faith replace your fears?
- Pray for one another – for growing faith and for God’s grace as we seek to live by faith.
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The following two quotes – both from C.S. Lewis – are helpful in our consideration of preferring God’s reward over passing pleasures:
If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. – C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
This continual looking forward to the eternal world… does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next… It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
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