When!

Judges 13:12 So Manoah asked him, “When your words are fulfilled, what is to be the rule that governs the boy’s life and work?”

Faith in action takes many forms. But when it happens, and you are looking for it, it is pretty easy to recognize. It doesn’t take any special formulas or have any bells and whistles. Faith just acts.
We often wonder and struggle to understand faith. We seem to want it to be more difficult than it really is. We think it must be for the super-spiritual people. But faith is something we do every day. We believe the people in the cars coming our direction are fairly rational people, that they are planning on staying in their own lane of traffic and not purposely cross into our lane in an attempt to kill us. We have faith they will drive responsibly.
An angel of the LORD appeared to a woman who couldn’t have children and promised her that they would have a son. The angel, a messenger who spoke on the LORD’s behalf with a specific message, gave her prenatal care advice. Don’t drink alcohol while you are pregnant and eat ceremonially clean foods. Not bad advice for a people who didn’t know about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome!
So the woman tells her husband about the encounter and he wants the opportunity to speak to the angel and hear the message directly. And when the angel does show up, the husband has faith.
“When you words are fulfilled,” he begins. That is faith. He didn’t doubt the word his wife had received. He believed his wife’s report. He simply trusted that if the LORD were involved, what the messenger had said would happen. That is faith.
We might not have a heavenly messenger show up at our door this week. We might not see bright lights in the sky as the shepherds in the fields did the night of the announcement of Jesus’ birth. But we can hear the voice of the LORD every day when we read and study the Scriptures.
So what is stopping you from listening and doing?