Converting to present continuous tense

Try an experiment with me. Open your Bible and read Galatians 2:20:

"I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Now turn to 1 Peter 1:5:

". . . who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time."

See anything different from the last hundred times you've read those verses? I didn't either till recently.

I am undergoing a paradigm shift and I don't think it's a mid-life crisis: When I read verses that have the word "faith" in it---or related words like "believe" or "trust"---I think I need to try hard to see that they refer to active, present, this-moment-on-the-clock believing what God says. Whenever I do that, vive la difference!

With this in mind we go back to Galatians 2:20: "The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son. . . ." Make that: "The life I now live in the flesh I live by . . . actually believing right now this minute on the clock that God has truth to tell me about this anxiety I'm feeling regarding my meeting in Maryland on Monday."

The "faith" that "I live by" is not something in the far-off domain of religious ideas. Nor is it some old dusty voter registration card faith. It is not the old decision I made in some excited mood in my 20s. I am believing the Son right now---I am going to believe Him against all the other voices swirling in my head at the present moment.

1 Peter 1:5: By God's power I am guarded "through faith." That is to say, the "guarding part" is operative as long as the "through faith" part is operative. To be sure, God has mercifully guarded me many times that I was slumming in unbelief. But to know the full benefit of God's guarding promise, the means prescribed by God is the instrument of faith. If I want to be guarded by God's power, then the way to do it is through believing Him this moment, and then the next.

Francis Schaeffer writes in True Spirituality:

"If we are to bring forth fruit in the Christian life, or rather, if Christ is to bring forth this fruit through us by the agency of the Holy Spirit, there must be a constant act of faith, of thinking: Upon the basis of your promises, I am looking for you to fulfill them. . . ."

Faith is always believing what God has said.

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