New Morning Mercies for Teens: A 10-Day Gospel DevotionalSample

God calls you to believe and then works with zeal to craft you into a person who really does live by faith.

Doubt is natural. Fear is natural. Living based on your brain’s thoughts and your body’s senses is natural. Pushing the current catalog of personal “what-ifs” through your mind before you go to sleep is natural. Envying the life of someone else is natural. Looking horizontally for the peace that you will only ever find vertically is natural. Anxiously wishing for change in things that you cannot change is natural. Giving way to despondency, discouragement, depression, or despair is natural. Numbing yourself with busyness, material things, media, food, or some other substance is natural. Lowering your standards to deal with your disappointment is natural. But faith simply isn’t natural to us.

As Paul says in Ephesians 2:8, faith really is “the gift of God.” To the average, sin-damaged human being, there is nothing more counterintuitive than faith in God. So God gives us the power to first believe. Yet he doesn’t stop there. By grace, he works in the situations, locations, and relationships of our everyday lives to change us. He’s crafting us into people who hold the radical belief that he really does exist and he really does reward those who seek him (Heb. 11:6).

Next time you face a difficult or unexpected moment, remember: your situation reflects a God who is near to you and doing in you a very good thing. He is rescuing you from relying on the inadequate resources of your wisdom, experience, righteousness, and strength. He is transforming you into a person who is shaped by radical God-centered faith. He is the ultimate craftsman, and we are his clay. He will not take us off his wheel until his fingers have molded us into those who really do believe.

But when they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out, for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” (Mark 6:49–50)

Reflect: What difficult situation in life might God be using to build greater reliance on him? How are you tempted to respond to this situation naturally?