Over the past two weeks, my FaceBook inbox, my email inbox and many comments left on my Facebook feed have all begun to point at one main question. “Where is my faith?” Or “Where can I find peace.” Is it possible? And the answer is “Absolutely.” I know that many others are talking about it, but for the sake of my friends who are asking, I’d like to take a stab at it.
First of all, I think many of us get confused when we hear the word faith. Where is it found and what is it? Well, it’s found in the dictionary, which is where most people would logically start. Oxford defines it this way:
faith | fāTH |
noun
1 complete trust or confidence in someone or something: this restores one's faith in politicians.
2 strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof: bereaved people who have shown supreme faith.
• a system of religious belief: the Christian faith.
- a strongly held belief or theory: the faith that life will expand until it fills the universe.
It starts out good by saying, “complete trust or confidence in someone or something”, but then goes downhill when it mentions politicians. Then we see “strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion” but then we see stuff like “based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.” The we see “a system of religious belief, and Strongly held belief or theory.” And none of those are really helpful in restoring my faith. No wonder we are confused. I don’t want a faith that is simply based on my spiritual apprehensions or blind trust or simply chanting the mantra, “I believe, I believe” over and over as if God were Santa Claus and I really want to see him at Christmas.
Here’s the problem. While the dictionary can take a great stab at defining it, the type of faith we are talking about is not centered in a system or doctrines or even just strongly believing and hoping. None of those is where true faith lies.
True faith lies in a relationship with a Person. And the funny thing about relationships is that you can never really prove that they exist, you can only give evidence of them existing. For instance, I can say that my wife, Sandy, loves me. But I can’t prove it. I can believe it to be so. I can hope it to be so. But I can only point to the evidence of that love. She treats me nice. She continues to stay with me after almost 40 years. She cooks and cleans for me. She says nice things, etc. But all of those are not proof—only evidence.
Each of you could point to examples where the above evidences were only in place until that person could gain what they wanted or something of greater importance to them. Let’s look at them one at a time.
“She treats me nice”...you already know intuitively that people can treat you nice because they want something from you. So that is not necessarily a proof of love. “She continues to stay with me”...maybe she has no where else to go and she is comfortable with the lifestyle. “She cooks and cleans.” Could be she just sees that as a trade-off for a roof over her head and some groceries. “She says nice things”...maybe she doesn’t want to mess up her good gig.
So you can’t point to any of those and say you have conclusive proof. BUT...if I take all of those pieces of evidence and put those together, and combine that with the ongoing nature of such evidences, I can conclude that my wife loves me.
Nice, Pastor, but I still haven’t found my faith. Ok. Since we are talking about God, why not see how HE defines faith. And since the Bible is His self-revelation to us, let’s see what it says.
In Romans 10, Paul points out that the Jewish people were having some of the same struggles that we have when it comes to walking in faith.
Romans 10:1 Dear brothers and sisters, the longing of my heart and my prayer to God is for the people of Israel to be saved. 2 I know what enthusiasm they have for God, but it is misdirected zeal. 3 For they don’t understand God’s way of making people right with himself. Refusing to accept God’s way, they cling to their own way of getting right with God by trying to keep the law. 4 For Christ has already accomplished the purpose for which the law was given. As a result, all who believe in him are made right with God.
Here is often where we get stuck. We want to know God. We want to follow Him. We want to have faith in Him, but we don’t understand God’s way of making people right with Himself. Why is that? Because many well-meaning people in our past have obscured it with well meaning words and rituals and practices that hinder a true view of Jesus.
In my faith tradition, especially during my youth, we often confused a relationship with Jesus with following of rules to help us live better lives. Nothing wrong with the rules per se, but it caused me to miss Jesus, the person I need to have faith in, as I focused on being a good member of my church community. And, as I am friends now with clergy from many other denominations, our comparing notes has led me to conclude that most of them have had a similar time in their history where following rules was more important than following Jesus.
So does that mean they were bad people? No. I believe they were wanting to follow Jesus, but simply bought into what someone else had told them they needed to do, ultimately leading to a type of legalism in the church. And in their misguided zeal, the true picture of God was marred and many were led to conclude, “well if God is like that then...” The problem with that conclusion is that the premise was never challenged. If God is like that. Perhaps instead, we should have asked, “Is God really like that?” And then gone looking in Scripture for the answer.
Other things that keep us from understanding God’s ways are expectations that we have learned or deduced or heard that may or may not be true. I had such expectations when my dad got cancer and then consequently died while I was begging God to spare his life. It really made me question if I could remain a minister. I mean, why minister to the goodness of a God that you suddenly didn’t feel was so good? If you are interested in reading that story, it’s here on my blog from a few years back.
I have realized in the ensuing years that the devil can create a lot of misunderstood passages and misguided expectations that can lead us to the wrong conclusions, and when we don’t get the desired outcome, he can twist our consequent pain into a blaming of God and an anger at Him that is neither accurate nor deserved.
I prayed and believed and nothing happened...therefore God doesn’t care and He can no longer be trusted. It spirals downward from there. God could have done something but He didn’t so I hate Him! And on we go, spiraling away from where the only real hope is found.
So what does God look like?And how do I find my faith? The simple answer is God...looks like Jesus. Notice this question and Jesus’ answer in John 14:8,9 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” 9 Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don’t know who I am? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father! So why are you asking me to show him to you?
John 1 calls Jesus “The Word”. Starting in verse 1 of John 1 we read:
1 In the beginning the Word already existed.
The Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
2 He existed in the beginning with God.
3 God created everything through him,
and nothing was created except through him.
4 The Word gave life to everything that was created,a
and his life brought light to everyone.
5 The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness can never extinguish it.a
John is saying that Jesus IS God and Jesus was basically saying to His disciples, if you want to see what God is like, look at Me. Watch Me. Hang out with Me and I will show you a pure undistorted picture of what God is like and what we want for you!
So, how did Jesus treat people? Matt. 14:14 Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. Over an over we see that Jesus led with compassion.
How did He deal with those that made mistakes? Read the story in John 8:1-11 of the woman caught in the very act of adultery and then read the ending. You will see Jesus response.
John 8: 7 They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” 8 Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.
v.9 When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. 10 Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”
v.11 “No, Lord,” she said. And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”
And of course most people have heard the greatest statement about what God is like in John 3:16…but don’t often read what John 3:17 says. And John 3:17 was the continuation of Jesus’ thought when he was talking to Nicodemus. Check this out.
John 3:16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gavea his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
Yep…that’s the part I’ve heard. But let Jesus continue that thought.
17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.
One of the biggest lies that Satan has perpetrated through the centuries is that God hates you and is just sitting up there trying to catch you doing something wrong. But Jesus didn’t come to judge the world…but to save it. That means that God wants you to be saved more than you can ever even have the desire to be saved. He won’t be throwing obstacles in your path. The devil does that. Jesus calmly, relentlessly pursues us as we continue to look at the distorted picture of Him that Satan has been pushing ever since the Garden.
All that is required of us is to see a picture of Jesus/God who loves us, wants to save and redeem us and who continues to pursue our hearts in love, and then simply stop and respond in returned love.
Here’s the capstone verse, in my opinion:
1John 5:11 And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life. 13 I have written this to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know you have eternal life.
So the questions on the road to faith that we each have to answer are these: Do I have the Son of God in my life? Have I accepted His forgiveness and am I willing to take the next step of faith that He lays out for me?
