The Great and Glorious I AM

I asked the Holy Spirit to give me a one-paragraph description of faith so that the boys in our Teen Challenge drug center could understand it. I have a book in my library that uses over three hundred pages to define faith, and I never understood it. Frankly, I don’t think the man who wrote it understood faith either.

Moses once asked the same questions we ask: “Who am I? Who is God? Describe him.” God answered Moses in two words. “God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And he said, ‘Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, “I AM has sent me to you.”’” (Exodus 3:14, NKJV). According to modern thinking, God oversimplified himself.

Can you imagine Moses telling people when they ask, “Who sent you?” that “I AM sent me”?

I AM who? What do you need?  Deliverance? I AM deliverance. Faith is God saying, “I AM” and my answer that “HE IS.” Faith simply accepts God’s description of himself. God says, “I am delivering you from the storm.” I say, “He is delivering me from the storm.” Faith is taking God at what he says.

What is the storm in your life? How do you face it? Ask the Lord to give you faith to believe. Ask him no matter what happens, no matter what conditions you face. This is how Paul wrote, “Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:11-13).

I believe that the moment faith gripped Paul, he was content. He was in the center of God’s will, and he had the promise of God. He had prayed through. It didn’t matter what happened from that moment on; God had taken the sting out of the storm. He can take the fear out of the storm for you too. Will you let him? God is not about to let you go under. Ride out your storm.