The Faint of Heart

When we hear the word faint these days one of the first things that comes into out minds in the picture of a person loosing consciousness and falling to the floor, or maybe we can see a desert in our minds eye with a person that has run out of water…it is hot and he is tired, the sun is scorching him and the end is very close….the only way for that man to be saved would be if he somehow found a crystal stream of cool clear water. In the Bible we find that the word faint is used in some slightly different ways, sometimes in the physical sense, sometimes the word is used in such a way that you will just have to stop and reevaluate the way you have been living your life, it’s used in a spiritual sense.

Many times in the Christian life people just seem to lose heart, they give up the fight in one way or another…the trials have been too much for them; they have either tried to fight with whatever power they thought they had or else they just did not trust God to get them through. Fainting in the Bible is not just used in the spiritual sense; it is also used on the physical sense as well:

"And Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison: but Rebekah loved Jacob.
And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint:
And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom.
And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright." Genesis 25:28-31

Here we can see that Esau had put in a hard days work in the fields and when he came home he was all tired out, and with good reason, working in the field is no easy task. We can see that faint in this passage of Scripture if referring to tired or if I may use the word exhausted.

There are other verses that talk about people being faint in the middle of a famine, other places that talk about faint just being weak physically, etc. What I want to look at now however does not have to do with the physical, let us take a look at faintness in a spiritual sense. One of the things that faint means in the Bible is sin. "And they said unto Joshua, truly the Lord hath delivered into our hands all the land; for even all the inhabitants of the country do faint because of us." Here the people were fearful they were afraid but the words fear is not used here but the word faint.

There are so many things that can make a person faint, as we have seen there are many physical things but there are also things in our spiritual lives that make us say: "No more, I can’t do it any more." Maybe it is disappointment, fear or God’s chastening for some mistake that you made, sometimes it can come because of your unbelief. There are ways to make things better though!
"If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small." Proverbs 24:10

If you faint in the day of adversity, your faith is small… We have to have faith in the Lord in this life, People have the tendency to not like Christians very much and there will be plenty of people that will be against you in your life of faith, the key to getting through is to have faith in the Lord, He is all that is needed to get us through. When we cut off the line of support that the Lord has for us…when we stop believing in Him and when we stop doing His will then we are just like that man that was in the desert…the man in need of water…we might not die physically but we will certainly wither spiritually.

Take heart, encourage yourself and say like the psalmist: "Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. "Psalm 43:5