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* Having heard countless teachings on faith and perused bookshelves full of offerings on the subject from very sincere authors, I seemed to walk away even more confused, or at the very least, with less clarity (which may prove true for you as a result of today’s teaching!) * I have always heard that without faith it was impossible to please God, (and, pleasing God seemed like something I might be interested in), but I seemed to be encountering conflicting messages on how to get it. * Most of the encouragement seemed focused on stepping up your effort (i.e. getting up earlier- because God is a morning person, subjecting ourselves to more rigid disciplines,- which were apparently meant to ‘suck’ any trace of joy out of the process, read between the lines in the Bible- I didn’t seem to need to search for deeper, less obvious truth because I was having a hard enough time with what I could understand!) * I noticed that the Bible describes people as having… Great-little; good faith, lack of, no, full of, weak-firm; growing, sincere, shipwrecked, true, rich in faith, most holy, etc. * To me, when all was said and done, it just appeared that faith was something that God arbitrarily distributed; ‘you either had it, or you didn’t’! (like rhythm or dimples!) Text: Hebrews 11:1-3, 6 (read) * Apparently, faith requires (2) fundamental postures: A belief that God IS, and, A belief that your search for him will be rewarded. Mark 9:22b-24 (demon-possessed young boy) “But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us." `If you can'?" said Jesus. "Everything is possible for him who believes." Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!" ►Mostly our faith resides somewhere between “belief” and “unbelief”. For the sake of this consideration, let’s define faith this way…
“Faith”… ►Faith involves some level of belief before you understand. Faith is not about understanding so that you might believe; it requires believing so that you might understand. * Let me outline briefly for you a few fundamental characteristics of God I have discovered from his story, which I think will assist our approach. GOD IS… Nowhere in the Bible does it seek to outline a series of proofs for God’s existence. The story merely assumes his presence and calls upon the hearer to make a decision. A “yes” (no matter how undeveloped and shaky) to that premise is the beginning of the journey of faith to discovering “who” he is. ►My continued pursuit, then, is not so that I might believe (once presented with a series of irrefutable evidences), but because I believe. “confidence of what we hope for”- “What do we hope for?” Faith is the belief that what we see is not all there is; that things can and will be different… better. It’s the only hope that we have! “assurance about things we cannot see”- believing in realities which are unseen. * Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t real. It just means that God is not limited by our (5) senses; that there just may be another way of “knowing” that is not dependent solely on human logic and reason (we would assume that to be true of a ‘mysterious’ God). OBJECT PERMANENCE- a developmental term that refers to a child’s ability to understand that objects still exist when they are no longer in sight. “Separation anxiety”- once the child learns to appreciate what they have lost (i.e. “peek-a-boo”: the child appreciates that even though the other person is out of sight, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist). * “Separation anxiety” is apparently what the disciples were experiencing as Jesus said, “In a little while, you will see me no more…” (John 16:16). They would now need to learn to trust in that which they could not see; another sense. * And Jesus says of us, “You believe because you have seen me (Thomas). Blessed are those who believe without seeing” (John 20:29). * Maybe the greatest determinant is what we sense in our hearts; not the heart as some ‘sentiment’ or ‘good feeling’ about God, but the heart as the vital center… the only place God will be content to occupy in our lives. Ecclesiastes 3:11 “God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end.” “Eternity in our hearts” speaks of intimacy. When we enter a love relationship with someone, we identify that exchange as “giving our heart to them”. * Some have suggested that the first step to faith is a… “Hello!? Is anyone out there?” ►It appears that in order to find out if there is a God, I have to act as if he is already there. * Like a “Where’s Waldo” game. In order to even begin to search for him, I have to first believe that he is there (seemingly hidden in a collage of misunderstandings and misrepresentations). Most often, faith starts out in a rather rudimentary (basic; simple; undeveloped) fashion. It’s usually very ‘linear’ (i.e. 2 + 2 = 4) and it’s usually very academic in its approach to God (i.e. like our ‘tables’ in math… we don’t attempt to determine how we arrived at the answer, we just memorize it! The emphasis is on “getting the answers right”. The weakness of such an approach? It leave us disillusioned when our faith-equations face the inevitable exceptions (“i” before “e” except after “c”). * If faith is to develop in a healthy manner from here, one must learn to incorporate doubt. If faith makes it past this first elemental stage, we often pursue a faith that is more “demanding”. The emphasis on effort and involvement; more study, deeper revelation (if you can’t give it to me, I’ll go to someone who can). The failure of our simplistic notions and equations has caused us to conclude that we have got the wrong ‘technique’ (A.C.T.S. prayer, Prayer of Jabez, read through the Bible in a year, wake up earlier, etc.) We need to find out what makes God “tick”. The weakness of this approach? Our faith gets too complicated! This is where faith gets really interesting. We begin to discover that although we’ve become really steady, our faith is diminished because it hasn’t proven able to withstand our boredom! We move into a season of ‘struggle; inner-conflict’. With all of our methods failing and our techniques proving less than effective, we wonder if we can know anything for certain, except that we can’t know for sure! We conclude that God was just the product of our parent’s good intentions at keeping us out of trouble. Maybe we’re embarrassed that we were so gullible in the first place! We figure that we’ve outgrown our infantile need to believe in God. * This time of inner-struggle is like attempting to stay between the lines on a stormy night. We drift from lane to lane because the boundaries are hard to clarify. We occasionally find ourselves on the ‘rumble strip’, but not off the path completely. * Sometimes in our faith, the best we have to offer is that we’re still on the road; still journeying. You’re barely able to see through the windshield, clutching the wheel and not really enjoying the trip due to all of the anxiety that you feel. Your goal? Survival. Important: You need someone with you who’s been on this particular stretch of road before; they’re not panicked by your struggle and confident of your ability to recover. In survival mode, our faith becomes ‘argumentative’ and ‘cynical’. We don’t’ really pursue answers anymore. We sense that God might still be there, but we have learned to ignore him! (which appears to me, often, a state more hazardous than rejecting his existence). Matthew 16:13, 15-17 (read) Ephesians 3:14-19 (read) GOD’S LOVE EXCEEDS KNOWLEDGE. Knowledge itself can only take you so far. It can bring you to a point of discovery or decision, but can never in and of itself define relationship with God. ►Sometimes, the most important discoveries we make come when we’re not even looking! Isaiah 65:1 “The LORD says, "People who never before inquired about me are now asking about me. I am being found by people who were not looking for me. To them I have said, 'I am here!'” Result? Humble faith (next week)
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