This year is the year and season of restoring and recapturing the real, radical, risky faith we all knew when we first met the Lord. For faith to be faith, there must be situations of no visual evidence and circumstances that challenge the substance of our hope. Jesus said those who bear fruit must be pruned so they can bear more fruit. It's the principle of the sabbath year. Six years in a row there is increasing fruit, and in the seventh year, the sabbath year, everything goes to fallow, i.e. nothing, nada, zero. Can you imagine the bewilderment of people who have known us during the six years of blessing who pass by on the seventh year and see what appears to them as our "crop failure?" I wonder what their thoughts are toward us? "He was doing so good and now look at him. I wonder what he did wrong? Did he sin? Has God abandoned him? What did he do to allow the devil to steal his blessing?"
This is what the beginning of the year of Faith looks like. It's the end of one season (the old one) and the beginning of the new one. He must bring to close the old so He can bring the new - much like spring must end so summer can begin. The new season looks nothing like the old. We tend to think the new season is just the continuation of the old, just better.
This is where so many of us are right now. It is the year of leaning on the Lord of our Faith. Faith, not in the understanding of His principles and how His laws work (which He taught us), but it is a returning to believing and knowing that He cannot and will not fail us. It is returning to the only thing we knew when we first met Him; that He WILL accomplish all that He promised because He cannot deny Himself and will perform His covenant oath that He swore to Himself and to us. He does this through the only thing we can do to please Him, which is our faith in His undying, unchanging love for us; and our blind confidence (faith is blind) and trust in believing in and on Him and knowing His unchanging character as our loving Father God.
This is the analogy of the high flying eagle who molts and loses all his feathers and reverts (though he is mature and seasoned) to his initial condition before he grew his original feathers and learned how to fly. For all practical purposes and to all onlookers, he is a scrawny chicken and is subjected to the scorn of their doubts and his own self doubt. He is being renewed by the rediscovery of his weakness and the knowing that his strength comes from the Lord, His Creator, as he waits expectantly for the promise of new and stronger feathers. He is forced to hide himself in the cleft of the rock and wait and trust on the goodness of the Lord for his resurrection. The same occurred to our Lord Jesus as He hung on the cross, reduced to total helplessness. His onlookers said, "He saved others but himself He cannot save." He waited three unbearable, dark and lonely nights, subjected to death, the grave and hell. But as He waited, He renewed Himself in His Holy Faith in the nature or name of Ha Shem.
Psalm 16: 5-11 and Acts 2:25-28 paints for us the picture of Jesus during those three days and nights. David speaks with reference about Him also in Psalm 16:8-11: "I was seeing the Lord in my presence continually, because He is at my right hand that I may not be shaken. For this reason my heart WILL cheer and my tongue WILL rejoice greatly. Furthermore, my flesh WILL also dwell in hope, because (NOW I KNOW) YOU WILL NOT abandon my soul to Hades, nor give Your holy One to see decay. You have made your ways of life known to me. You WILL make me full of gladness with Your presence. Therefore, (my paraphrase) - KNOW THIS, THAT BECAUSE HE MAINTAINED HIS CONFIDENCE IN THE GOODNESS OF HIS GOD, EVEN IN THE DEPTHS OF WHAT SEEMED LIKE BEING ABANDONED, HIS FATHER ANOINTED HIM WITH AN EVEN GREATER ANOINTING THAN HE HAD BEFORE AND INCREASED THE REALM OF HIS AUTHORITY.
This applies to all of us as well. Encourage yourself as Jesus did in the pangs of His hell. Let His faith be your Faith (Acts 2:25-28). Stand in your confidence that He will anoint your weakness with fresh oil and you will mount up higher than before with the wings of the great eagle that He has made you to be. Hold fast to your profession of faith because it has a great recompense of reward. This is where you are re-compensated and rewarded with a new dose of His Faith.
"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20)
This is where His faith becomes your sight. This is where you experience: "HIS VICTORY IS OUR FAITH! FAITH IS OUR VICTORY."