Forty: The Road to Faith

Forty: The Road to Faith

It is quite interesting how often and where we find the number 40 in scripture. Whenever and wherever we come accross it we seem to find ourselves in a place of challenge and testing, a place where we are often cornered with seemingly no way out. It is at this place where we find God and feel compelled to trust Him, usually because there is no other way. It is in this place of despair that empowers us to discover that which is beyond our reason and logic and takes us on a journey into the realms of the unknown and endless possibilities. This journey we call “The Road of Faith”. Let us look at a couple of examples in scripture.

Acts 1:3 To these He also presented Himself alive after His suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.

Luke 24:1-53

Acts 1:1-11
The purpose of the forty days was to bring the disciples to a place in their lives where they would believe without having to see, that they would learn to see beyond the eyes of the body and see with the eyes of faith. They were to learn to live by a new perspective, the life of the spirit (internal life of relationship), and to free themselves from the limitations of the life of the natural (external life or sense realm).

Gen 8:6 Then it came about at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made;

This is forty days from the time that the ark landed on Mt. Ararat.

Gen 8:11 The dove came to him toward evening, and behold, in her beak was a freshly picked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the water was abated from the earth.

The dove represents the spirit and the olive branch new life. So after another forty days Noah entered into a new life in the spirit and it was at this time that God made a covenant with Noah through the rainbow. The rainbow is found after the forty days of testing.

Acts 1:6 So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?”

They still were not getting it, they were still looking for a natural kingdom with a natural king.

What are we looking for today? Are we waiting for a natural king to restore the kingdom to the Christians? Or are we looking to a spiritual kingdom that is lived through us? Our lives still have many forty days to go through until we come to a place of maturity in faith, where we can live the kingdom now from the inside out. It is only through the faith journey that we will see the coming of the King and when the King returns the scriptures say that what He will be looking to see if He can find faith in the earth. Remember that we are the earth!

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