The Mirror

 

When the Mirror Speaks

After my last post, I found myself looking in the mirror once again. This is what I saw.

I will step out when the time is right. As I said in a previous post, I will obey and trust. I connected that thought to faith, but is faith not really an extension of who we are once we are saved? I think that is an obvious conclusion.

The more I reflect on my life, the more the words of our beloved brother James hit home:

“Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
James 2:17

That is such a direct and uncompromising statement.

And as I say those words, our beloved brother, another thought confronts me.

Would he say the same thing about me?

Would he look at my life and recognise the same living faith he wrote about, or would he see the gap that so easily opens between what we profess and how we actually live?

But how can we deny that faith must be a true reflection of who we are in all areas of our lives?

I have yet to find a true Christian who lives without intent, that God-given awareness that presses on the heart and cannot be ignored. Yet outsiders measure something else entirely. They measure movement.

Are we walking in the light, or are we continually retreating into the shadows? God forbid that we become content with such a lifestyle.

One of the greatest traps for the babe in Christ, and sadly sometimes even for those who should know better by now, is the quiet settling of the heart that says, enough is enough, a place where we stop short of what God is calling us to.

I know that I am not exempt from that position in certain areas of my life.

Enough talk. It is time for action.

Consider the account in the Book of Numbers, when twelve spies were sent to scout the Promised Land. Ten returned with a fearful conclusion:

“We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”
Numbers 13:33

The giants were real. The fortified cities were real. Their observations were accurate.

But Caleb saw the same reality through faith:

“Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.”
Numbers 13:30

The facts were the same. The difference was in faith.

If I bring that thought into my life, I must face my reality.

I am a white male, sixty years old, living in South Africa, where finding work at this stage of life can feel almost impossible. That is simply the reality of the circumstances around me, shaped by the complex legacy of Apartheid and everything that followed it.

Those are the giants in the land who stand before me.

But the question is not whether the giants exist. Scripture never denied their existence. The question is what conclusion I will draw from the reality I see.

Will I say, I cannot?

Or will I say, God is able?

Then we read about Gideon in the Book of Judges. When the angel of the Lord appeared to him, Gideon was hiding while threshing wheat.

Yet the Lord addressed him with these words:

“The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”
Judges 6:12

Later, God reduced Gideon’s army from thirty-two thousand men to three hundred so that Israel would know the victory belonged to Him.

“The Lord said to Gideon, ‘With the three hundred men that lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hands.’”
Judges 7:7

When God moves, He often removes every possible place where man could claim the glory. He strips away the numbers, the strength, and the logic we naturally rely on. What remains defies human reasoning yet leaves no doubt about who deserves the glory.

Again, the circumstances were real. The enemies were real.

But faith moves differently.

Faith is not something that exists outside of who we are. It is an extension of who we are. Yet in the end, we must come to rest on one of two guiding posts that direct our lives:

Intent,
or movement.

What I love about the Word of God is the way Jesus Christ speaks directly into our situations. The same account can confront hundreds of different circumstances in different people’s lives, yet when it reaches your heart, it feels as if it is speaking only to you.

Fascinating, the brilliance of God.

Bless His name now and forevermore.

Amen.

Signing off,
Tyrone

Where Faith Is Proven 2 of 2

 

 

Where Faith Is Proven 2 of 2

There comes a point where intention is no longer enough—where faith is no longer theoretical.

Genesis 22 brings us there.

God asks Abraham to offer Isaac—the very promise God had given him.

It made no sense.
It felt contradictory.
It was deeply costly.

Yet Scripture records something striking:

Abraham rose early.

No delay.
No debate.
Just movement.

That reveals something powerful—his heart was already settled in obedience.

Hebrews 11 tells us Abraham believed God could even raise Isaac from the dead. This wasn’t blind faith; it was deep trust in God’s character.

He trusted the Giver more than the gift.
He trusted the promise more than what he could see.

Meaning to obey would have stayed at the bottom of the mountain.
Faith climbed it.

James makes it clear:

“Faith and actions were working together, and faith was made complete by what he did.” (James 2:22)

Not replaced by works—completed through obedience.

That’s where many of us struggle.

We mean to pray.
We mean to forgive.
We mean to trust.

But meaning is not moving.

Abraham’s faith was never just internal—it was visible, lived, acted out at every stage.

And this is not just history—it’s deeply personal.

There will always be pressure—moments where obedience costs something. Moments where compromise is easier. Moments where belief must become visible.

At that point, intention won’t matter.
Private belief won’t matter.

What will matter is alignment.

Will we trust what God said?
Or secure what we can see?

Faith does not negotiate with circumstances.
It aligns with the Word—fully, even when everything else disagrees.

That’s what made Abraham’s faith endure.
That’s what made it move.

And that’s the question for all of us:

Do we anchor ourselves in God’s Word—or in what feels safer?

Because faith that only intends will fold under pressure.
But faith that has learned to move with God will stand.

Not comparison, but conviction—
how I pray to have even a fraction of Abraham’s faith.

Signing off
Tyrone

Moving Faith -1 of 2

 

Moving Faith -1 of 2

There is a real, weighty difference between meaning to do something and actually doing it. In faith, that gap is not small—it is vast.

We often comfort ourselves with intention:
“I will trust God.”
“I will obey.”
“I will step out when the time is right.”

But Scripture does not measure faith by intention. It measures it by movement.

When God called Abraham in Genesis 12, He gave no roadmap, no timeline—just a command and a promise.
And Abraham went.

He didn’t wait for clarity. He didn’t negotiate understanding. His obedience came before explanation.

That alone challenges us.

We want to understand before we move.
Abraham moved before he understood.

In Genesis 15, God promises descendants as numerous as the stars. Yet time passes. Silence stretches. Reality contradicts the promise.

This is where intention usually fades.

But Abraham believed God—not because circumstances supported it, but because God said it. He anchored himself in the voice of God, not the silence around him.

Faith is not optimism.
Optimism hopes something might happen.
Faith stands on what God has already said—even when nothing visible agrees.

But then comes Genesis 16.

Abraham still believed the promise, yet he tried to help God fulfill it. Through human reasoning, Ishmael was born.

And here is something deeply sobering:
When we intervene where God has spoken, we don’t cancel the promise—but we often complicate the path.

Faith waits.
Flesh manufactures.

We still do this today:
God speaks—we agree.
God delays—we step in.
God promises—we strategies.

The danger is not always unbelief.
Sometimes its premature action dressed in spiritual language.

True faith is not just agreeing with God.
It is trusting Him enough to wait, and bold enough to move only when He says move.

Signing off

Tyrone

Moving Faith

 

Faith That Moves, Not Just Means To

There is a real, weighty, spiritual difference between meaning to do something and actually doing it. In faith, that gap is not small. It is vast.

We often comfort ourselves with intention.
“I will trust God.”
“I will obey.”
“I will step out when the time is right.”

But Scripture does not measure faith by intention. It measures it by movement.

Belief Before Understanding

When God called Abraham in Genesis 12, He did not give him a full explanation, a roadmap, or a timeline, just a command and a promise.

And Abraham went.

That alone confronts our modern mindset. We want clarity before obedience. Abraham obeyed before clarity came. His feet moved before his circumstances made sense.

He did not say he would go; he went.

Trusting the Promise Through Silence

In Genesis 15, God promises Abraham descendants as numerous as the stars. Yet time passes, years pass, and silence stretches. The visible reality contradicts the spoken promise.

This is where intention usually fades.

But Scripture says that Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness because he anchored himself in what God said, not in what he saw.

Abraham did not build his confidence on circumstances; he built it on the character of God. The stars were visible, the promise was spoken, yet the child was absent. Everything around him argued for delay. His body argued for limitation. Time argued for impossibility.

Yet he chose to place his trust in the Word, not in the evidence.

Faith is not optimism. Optimism looks to what might happen. Faith grasps what God has said, even when nothing around you supports it.

He anchored himself in the voice of God, not in the silence of his surroundings.

And that is why his belief held.

The Weakness of Human Intervention

Then comes Genesis 16, Hagar and Ishmael, a moment that exposes something deeply human.

Abraham still believed in the promise, yet he attempted to assist God’s plan through human reasoning. This is what happens when faith agrees yet struggles with surrender. We believe in God, yet we still try to manage outcomes.

This has been my struggle. Not at Abraham’s level, not with the same weight of obedience, but in the quiet, everyday places of my own life, I have believed God yet still found myself stepping in, trying to manage what He has already spoken, trying to help what never needed my help. And here is where the weight of that decision stretches far beyond a single moment in history.

God had already spoken. The promise was clear. The lineage was specified. Yet impatience, pressure, and visible delay created an opening for human intervention. What was birthed in that moment was not outside God’s awareness, but it was outside God’s instruction.

This is a sobering principle. When we intervene where God has spoken, we do not cancel the promise, but we often complicate the path.

The consequences of that intervention did not end in Genesis. They echoed through generations. Scripture records tension between the line of promise and the line born through human effort. What began as a way to delay became a source of long-standing conflict.

Not because God failed.
But because man refused to wait.

This is not merely historical; it is spiritual. It reveals how flesh tries to accelerate what only God can establish. When faith grows impatient, it produces substitutes. And those substitutes carry consequences.

The hostility towards the covenant line of Israel and the resistance to the cross cannot be understood purely through politics or history. At its root lies a spiritual tension tied to promise, inheritance, and covenant. What God ordained through promise, the flesh attempted to reproduce through effort.

Intention said, “God will do it.”
Control said, “Let me help God do it my way.”

And that tension did not just reside in Abraham’s tent; it resides in the human condition.

We still do it today.
God speaks, we agree.
God delays, we intervene.
God promises, we strategise.

Faith waits.
Flesh manufactures.

And the danger is not always unbelief; it is premature action dressed in spiritual language.

The Ultimate Collision, Isaac on the Altar

Genesis 22 is where intention dies and true faith stands exposed.

God had already said the promise would come through Isaac. Then God asks Abraham to offer Isaac, the very son tied to the covenant, the very embodiment of the promise.

Logically, this request made no sense; prophetically, it seemed contradictory; emotionally, it was devastating.

Yet Scripture records something striking. Abraham rose early.

He did not linger in philosophical debate.
He did not stall in spiritual language.
He moved.

Rising early reveals a heart already settled in obedience.

Faith That Walks Before It Sees

Hebrews 11 tells us that Abraham reasoned that God could even raise Isaac from the dead. This is not blind obedience; it is deep theological trust in the character of God.

He trusted the Giver more than the gift, and he trusted the promise more than the visible reality.

Meaning to obey would have stayed at the bottom of the mountain, but faith climbed it.

Where Faith Is Completed

James makes it unmistakable that Abraham’s faith was made complete by his action in offering Isaac. Not replaced by works but completed through obedience.

“You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did.” (James 2:22)

This is the missing distinction in many walks of faith today.

We mean to pray,
we mean to forgive,
we mean to step out,
we mean to trust.

But meaning is not moving.

The Spiritual Weight of Action

Abraham believed God when he left, believed God when he waited, believed God when he climbed the mountain, and believed God when he lifted the knife.

At every stage, his faith was not merely internal agreement; it was external alignment.

That is the core truth.
Intention soothes the conscience.
Obedience reveals the heart.

And this is not merely ancient history. It may become intensely personal in our lifetime.

Scripture speaks of a coming pressure, a system that will demand allegiance, not quietly but economically, socially, and spiritually. Compliance will make life easier. Refusal may carry a real cost.

At that hour, intention will not be enough.

It will not matter that someone once meant to stand firm. It will not matter that someone believed privately. The dividing line will be visible allegiance.

Just as Abraham faced a mountain where theory became action, the Church may face moments when faith is no longer abstract and conviction must translate into costly obedience.

The mark of the beast is not merely a prophecy of the future; it is also a revelation of allegiance under pressure. It exposes the same tension seen in Genesis.

Will we trust what God has said?
Or will we secure what we can see?

This is the crux of faith: the Word of God is the final authority. It is not a suggestion, a guideline, or a reference point. It carries the weight of God’s character, His promise, and His power. Faith does not negotiate with circumstances. It does not hedge on evidence. It aligns with what God has spoken, even when everything visible argues otherwise.

Abraham’s example shows this clearly. He obeyed because God had spoken. The visible reality offered no guarantee, yet he anchored himself in the authority of the Word. That is why his trust endured and why his faith moved mountains—because he treated God’s Word as final, even when every human instinct screamed otherwise.

Do we anchor ourselves in the Word or in the system?

Faith that only intends will fold under pressure.
Faith that has learned to move with God, even when outcomes are unknown, will endure.

This is why Abraham’s story matters.

Because the difference between meaning to obey and actually obeying may one day carry more than inconvenience, it may carry consequences.

And when that day comes, it will not be decided in a single dramatic moment. It will be decided by a lifetime of choosing obedience over intervention, surrender over control, and promise over pressure.

Faith that speaks sounds strong.
But faith that moves stands strong.

Not comparison, but conviction, how I pray to have even a fraction of Abraham’s faith.

 

Signing off

Tyrone

Intent vs Action

 

Commitment vs Intent — The Line Scripture Draws

Commitment is one thing, while intent is another. Let’s break this down biblically.

To understand the difference, we must start where Scripture starts, not with modern language, but with its origin.

In the Bible, intent is rooted in the heart, the unseen formation of thought and motive. “The LORD looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

Commitment, however, goes beyond the inward. It is not merely what is formed within, but what is carried out. In Scripture, to commit is to act, to entrust, to obey, to walk something out in reality. “Commit your way to the LORD.” (Psalm 37:5)

Only once these foundations are clear can we begin to understand how these words are lived out.

Firstly, we need to look no further than our great Saviour. He is perfection personified, a truth no one can deny.

He had passions just as we do. He felt hunger, sorrow, pressure, and temptation. “Yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).Firstly, we need look no further than our great Saviour. He is perfection personifie, a truth no one can deny.

He had passions just as we do. He felt hunger, sorrow, pressure, and temptation. “Yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

That is where the line is drawn.

None of us can make that claim. Not one of us.

So, we look further to men who were not perfect yet stood before God.

Jacob was bold enough to wrestle with God, and he would not let go. “I will not let You go unless You bless me.” (Genesis 32:26) That is intent laid bare, a man refusing to walk away unchanged. But it cost him. His hip was struck, and he limped for the rest of his life.
Intent brought him to the struggle - commitment kept him there until God marked him.

David, a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14), shows us another side. He fell — not through ignorance, but through desire acted upon. His intent did not keep him from sin. Yet when confronted, he did not justify himself. “I have sinned against the LORD.” (2 Samuel 12:13) He broke. He repented. Not perfection — but commitment revealed in return.

Samson stands as both warning and mercy. Called and set apart, he walked in his gifting with undeniable power. He was not weak in what God had given him, again and again, he fulfilled it.

Yet alongside that, he was repeatedly drawn to what God had forbidden. The issue was not his calling but his consecration. He carried the power but played with the boundary.

It cost him. His strength left him, his freedom was taken from him, and his eyes were put out.

Yet Scripture does not end there. “The hair of his head began to grow again” (Judges 16:22). And in his final moments, stripped of pride, he called on God: “O Lord GOD, remember me, I pray” (Judges 16:28). In his death, he destroyed more of the enemy than in his life (Judges 16:30).

Not a lack of commitment to calling, but a life that exposes the danger of power without full surrender.

It is not for any man to speak on God’s behalf. What has already been spoken in Scripture stands as the authority, not opinion, not feeling, not interpretation shaped by preference. If anything is to be measured, it must be measured against the Word.

God does not measure by appearance or words.

He sees the intent of the heart, the forming, the desire, the inclination.
But He responds to what a man does with it.

Jacob held on.
David returned.
Samson surrendered.

Each one moved beyond intent.

Action is what is needed.

James leaves no room for interpretation.

“Faith without works is dead.” (James 2:17)

Not weak. Not struggling.
Dead.

That is the dividing line.

Intent can sit comfortably in the heart. It can sound right, feel right, even convince others. But Scripture does not measure a man by what he intends, it measures him by what he does.

A man can intend to obey and never move.
A man can intend to repent and never turn.

That is not faith.

Not hearers only, but doers. Not agreement, but action. Not words, but evidence.

Grace is the gift 
action is the evidence that it has been received.

Intent may speak 
But action is what God answers.

Abraham removes all doubt.

When he was called, he did not hesitate. “He went out, not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8).

And when he was tested, it went even deeper.
“Take your son… and offer him.” (Genesis 22:2)

Intent could have reasoned.
Intent could have delayed.
Intent could have questioned.

But Abraham rose early. (Genesis 22:3)

That is not intent 
That is commitment in motion.

“Faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect.” (James 2:22)

Abraham did not mean to obey 
He obeyed.

Signing off

Tyrone