Where Do I Find My Faith?

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 gave^a 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?

Ask Anything?

I want to take a look at the role of prayer in the Christian's life, and there is too much to put into one post, so I'm going to spread it out a bit.

The question always comes, if God knows everything already, then why should I pray?  Or put another way, does prayer really work?  I’ve prayed and nothing happened—therefore, I’ve concluded that prayer doesn’t actually work and furthermore, there must not be any God.

Part of our problem with prayer comes perhaps, from a misunderstanding of prayer.  We read verses that seem to tell us that God will give us anything if we just ask. Matt. 7:7-11   “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
Matt. 7:9     “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

Or Mark 11:24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

Or John 15:16  You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.

John 16:23 In that day you will no longer ask me anything. I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.

1John 5:14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.


We see all those “whatever you ask” verses and we say ok…I’m asking…but I’m not receiving.  And we wrongly conclude that God isn’t there because He didn’t do anything.

Ever asked your parents for something and were told no?  You didn’t conclude that since you didn’t get it, they must not exist.  They simply said no.  You might not have been happy with the answer, but you never questioned their existence.

Did you know that sometimes God says no.  Look a little more closely and notice something else.  Jesus actually taught that there were some conditions on prayer.  Go back to 1 John 5:14 "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us."

Do you see the first one? If we ask anything according to HIS will.  Too often, we are asking according to ours.  He's not a vending machine...He is the God of the universe who wants RELATIONSHIP...with YOU!  More to come.

Vending Machine God

Dad holding my son, Donnie to get a drink

"If you let Dad die, God, I’ll quit the ministry,” I muttered to myself as I sped down I-205 towards my parent’s house in Portland, Oregon. Up to this point, my life had been one of pleasant memories, successful youth ministry and happy times with my family. To be sure, we had our moments, but now, suddenly I was faced with one of the most difficult situations of my life.  We had watched as a rather large lump under dad’s right arm had turned into an ugly, oozing, bleeding, ulcerous tumor that was approximately 7-9 inches across. The diagnosis: melanoma, the worst form of skin cancer.  The prognosis: 3 to 6 months.

We prayed. We wept.  We encouraged others to pray with us.   Thousands from all across the country, even across the world, prayed that dad would be healed.  I felt sure that healing was in the bag.  If it had to do with the amount of prayers or the sincerity of prayer, then dad should have been healed.  If it had to do with faith and seeking the Lord, then dad should have been healed. But he wasn’t.  He died.

A few Sundays before dad died, he could not stand up without two or three people helping him out of bed. I had spent the greater portion of the night praying.  I really wanted God to work a miracle.  I had read the stories in the gospels of all the people that Jesus healed. I had read the stories in Acts where Peter (Acts 5:15,16) was walking through crowds and people were clamoring to put their sick in his shadow as they passed and they were healed. I had read stories of
Paul (Acts 19:11,12) walking through crowds who were passing their handkerchiefs and aprons over to Paul so that he might touch them and send them back, and Acts declares that all of them were healed.

Then there were the proclamations of Jesus, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”( Matt 21:22) “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Matt 7:7) “Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.” (John 15:16)

I had believed. I had asked.  I didn’t doubt that God could do it. I had prayed hard and long that night, yet somehow, was still like the disciples in the Garden. Somewhere along the line, I had fallen asleep.  Now doubt plagued me. Would my sleeping preclude my miracle?  Never mind that I had only averaged only 3-4 hours of sleep for the previous 3 weeks as I sat by the bedside of my dying father. Never mind that I was driving 40 minutes one way to go home at least once during each 24 hour period and see my family, and that usually for only an hour or two. This particular night, I had decided that I would keep a prayer vigil and pray all night. Yet, I found myself waking up on the floor of my study at 4 am loathing the weakness of my humanity. “Lord, I believe!” I cried, “Help my unbelief!”

About 6 o’clock, I felt an impression to go to dad’s and say to him, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and be healed.” And so now I sped down I-205 wrestling with myself and God. The struggle raged.  Inwardly, I said, “If I go and do this thing, and nothing happens, I’ll be really embarrassed.  How would that look for a pastor?”  On the other hand I thought, “But if I don’t, that could be the very thing that saves him.” I thought of Namaan’s servant saying, “If he had asked you to do a big thing, wouldn’t you have done it?” I wrestled.  I prayed.  And then the thought came, “If you let Dad die, God, I’ll quit the ministry.” The turmoil continued to rage for most of the trip down.  As I turned into dad’s neighborhood, a peace overtook me, and I was resolute that God wanted me to go in and pray and ask Him to raise dad up. I was confident that God would do that.

I entered the room. No one was with dad at the time, so I told him that I felt impressed that we should pray for his healing once again, only this time I felt that God was calling on us to demonstrate our faith in Him by actions.  Dad said, “I think you are right.  I appreciate that about you...always being a man of faith.”

I prayed. Hard.   And then I said, “in the name of Jesus Christ, I say to you, get up and be healed.” Without hesitation, dad holding on to my hand, swung his feet off the bed and began to feebly stand. About halfway up, he gathered strength from somewhere and straightened all the way up.  We both stood there holding on to each other for a magical moment wondering if indeed the healing was happening, and then he said, “Help me lay back down.  God may heal me in stages.”  I helped him back into bed and then he said, “Thanks for your faith.  Thanks for your love that would prompt you to pray for me. And don’t worry.  God will heal me.  Now or then.”

I left the room very bewildered and very embarrassed.  Angry with God for asking me to do that.  Angry with myself for possibly misreading His cues. Angry because it felt as if the devil was just taunting me.  Throwing my faith in my face as totally preposterous.  Was it a lack of faith?  Was I acting on what I believed God wanted me to do? Why would God have me do something that He wasn’t going to answer.

I don’t think dad ever mentioned it again and I wondered if he was embarrassed by it. He didn’t seem to be.  The thing that got me was that his trust was immediate.  He was willing to try whatever means were available because he loved us and he loved life so much.  And he truly believed that God was going to heal him.  So to him, I don’t think he was embarrassed, even though I was.

After much thought, here is what I think the point must be. (Or at least some thoughts that can be drawn from the whole experience.) First, I think that God may have been testing me to see if I would trust Him no matter what. I had thought that if dad died, I would leave the ministry.  What use would it be to serve a God who didn’t answer prayers?  Why minister to the goodness of a God that wasn’t so good?  I think God’s point was, “Hey, no matter what happens, I will still be in control and you don’t h
ave to worry. I will take care of your dad.  And I will take care of you.  So do you believe me or not?”

Second, I would have regretted never trying it if I had kept silent and dad had died. I could truly say that I had tried everything, and could rest knowing that God had another plan.  If I had never experienced that, I could never have forgiven myself, and so I think God gave me the urge to go ahead and try what I had read in the Bible. I think God wanted me to see that sometimes all of the notions that we have, or all of the “magic” words we want to speak do not hold the power. Only God does.   I figured that if those words worked in the Bible, they just might work now, and that if I didn’t try them, they might have been the words to save dad.  But such is not the case.  

God is not moved by our “magic” words. He is moved by our heart.  He isn’t interested in our notions. What He wants is to be loved freely.  With no strings attached. With no “magic” words.  And He risks being misunderstood and spurned rather than perform to my tune. The love He wants me to share with Him is not a love based on manipulation or insecurity. It is a love based on a deep abiding trust.  And the question comes back, “Do I trust Him no matter what?” If I only trust Him when things are going my way, then I have a conditional love. If I only trust Him when He responds to my “magic” words, then I have reduced Him to a vending machine God; put in the right amount, say the “magic” words and out will pop your desired outcome.  That’s not a relationship.   It’s manipulation.

When I say to God...”do this and I will love you” or “don’t do this and I will not love you,” I am basing my relationship on my own immature desire to manipulate Him to get what I want.  God has never worked that way.  Not even when it would have saved Jesus’ life.  Herod wanted Jesus to perform a miracle in exchange for Jesus’ freedom.  He didn’t yield because He wanted our love to be from a genuine response to His love, not from a manipulated response based on what we might get.

And so, I am finding a deeper relationship with God, even though dad died. Even though healing didn’t occur the way I wanted.   Why?   Because I can’t blame God for all of the misery...we chose it.  WE sinned, not God.   But He commended His love towards us in this, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

Love only wants a genuine response.  So Love stretched out His arms and died.   To show us He loved us.  To show us that though the devil has made death to be a fearful thing, we need not fear it.  To show us that he understands even the worst of what happens to us, and yet has promised us a better day. And because of that promise, I still have something to share in the ministry. And because of that Love, I’ll stay in the ministry until that day. A day when all will be made right.   A day when we will see why things didn’t work out here.  A day for joy instead of tears.   And a day when dad will be raised up.