What was the undergirding force making the fearful bold and the broken strong? It was, we must acknowledge, faith in God. The story ended happily. The Ammonites and Moabites in a bizarre twist of circumstance unraveled and started butchering the Edomites and when that wasn’t enough to quench their collective fury, they destroyed each other. Without lifting a hand against her enemies Israel was saved. How would things have turned if the people had doubted the prophet’s call to trust? If Israel never came out in battle formation and hid behind its town walls instead, what might have happened? Would the Edomites and Moabites and Ammonites still have ruthlessly attacked one another had the armies of Judah stayed home or would they have remained a united force and destroyed God’s people? We don’t really know, do we? Therein is the befuddlement of faith. How far do you go with faith’s stretch? Does faith just make you feel better or is it the most dramatic change agent available to God’s people? Is it the crossover into the supernatural or just a psychological quick fix to stress?
Imagine needing to travel three thousand miles in three days or lose the dream career opportunity of a lifetime back in 1850 and stumbling upon a BMW roadster with the keys left in the ignition and a gas tank big enough to carry you across the United States. What would you have done? Certainly you would have hoped in the car, turned the key and made your way as fast as you could across the prairie. But what if you didn’t think the car could move, didn’t believe it could take you anywhere at all and walked away from it and given up on your dream career? Would you have been a fool in 1850? Perhaps not… Yet you certainly would be thought one now! Faith operates always with the future in mind; it never really stands in the present. Faith is the ultimate enigma, the unsearchable premise. Place the BMW in Middle Ages Germany and it is faith, put it on the Autobahn and it is science.
But, you may argue, the BMW in Middle Ages Germany is just as much science as it is if it is sitting in one of our showrooms today but that is because we misunderstand the nature of faith. Faith is not confidence in a non-entity that we dream about; faith is confidence in the very real God who keeps your heart pounding and your mind working. Turn the key even back in the Middle Ages and the BMW starts. Turn the key of faith today and you become Jehoshaphat. Your life starts. It is impossible to guess at what we miss when we don’t trust God moment by moment and pray in faith. Certainly the people of Nazareth didn’t know what their lack of faith in Jesus meant to them…but now we do. The same holds true today. A lack of faith seems so very inconsequential right now…or at least we are not sure what harm it may cause us. The truth is that because faith always lives within the future and we cannot see into the future, we make our most fatal mistakes within the realm of faith. At the time it doesn’t seem to matter if we have faith or not. But for the people of Nazareth and even earlier for the citizens of Judah, it did…and it does for us too!
There are three signs that our faith is growing too low to change our circumstances and causes us to miss the same things the people of Nazareth missed, God’s miraculous interventions. The first is fear. If we have become fearful, we are low in faith. When the disciples panicked over the horrific storm they found themselves swept into on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus ridiculed their response. "You of little faith, why are you so afraid?" Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. (Matthew 8:26 NIV) It isn’t that the storm wasn’t real or that people don’t die in storms like that. Jesus gave no hint that the disciples were behaving insanely. Bills are real, bankruptcy is real, rapists are real, broken pipes and broken arms are real. Christian faith doesn’t deny reality. What Christian faith does though is look to God for complete help. Like water and oil, faith and fear cannot mingle, they may co-exist in the same heart but one always works to push out the other. Open up faith and fear slips off, nurture fear and your faith bubbles away.
A second sign that faith is low is a concentrated gaze on stuff. Part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was dedicated to the problem of God’s people spending too much time and effort collecting goods, clothing, food and drink. Little faith and a preoccupation with what we eat and wear and what we have go hand-in-hand. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? (Matthew 6:30-31 NIV) The fuzzy line that defines just enough and too much money and property collected and considered is the line between unbelief and faith. A new may be just what God wants me to purchase for myself. Yet the amount of thought I put in my wardrobe may be the chief hindrance to having enough faith in God to do much for the Kingdom through prayer. Spend too much time debating the benefits of one computer over another and your hope in God could diminish and your faith weaken. Do not take the time to pursue God’s guidance in what to buy or not buy and you may have a great sound system but nothing to help you with your cancer or your new boss.
A third sign that my faith is weak is when I complain. On another occasion the disciples were boating with Jesus and Christ wanted to teach them about how bad it was to follow the same approach to God as did the Pharisees. This was a crucial lesson for the disciples to grasp and Jesus wanted their full attention. However, the disciples were bitterly obsessed with the fact no one had brought bread along for the trip. Stomachs growling and fatigue setting in on them, the bread crisis kept them from listening to God. Jesus’ rebuke of them was sharp. Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked, "You of little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread? (Matthew 16:8 NIV) Bread is not the issue when we complain about something nor is a messy house, a touchy supervisor or a whining child. When we complain, our lack of faith is being proven. “You of little faint”, Jesus remonstrated, not, “wow, we are having a horrible day. Who forgot the bread?”
All faith begins with this one decisive moment. Without real hope available anywhere else, I cry out, “God help me.” Whether I need to buy a tie for a wedding, get my car running, take a sick aunt to the hospital or decide how I will spend eternity once I die, the plea, “Jesus, please help me” is the one and only way to enter into the supernatural of Christ. I can wag my finger at a store clerk who won’t let me return a Christmas present, beg for a bank employee to give me more time to pay off my debt, work for hours on a new resume but nothing enters me into God’s world if I do not in faith turn to Him for help.
At the very edge of Easter was perhaps the purest picture of the sort of faith we must embrace if we are to know the power of God mingled with our earthy moments. Having watched Jesus’ blood splatter down before her and then in agony groan out His last breath, Mary Magdalene did what even the disciples were not willing to risk, go to the grave of Jesus and honor His memory. How could she go down to His tomb Easter Sunday when so many others could not who loved Jesus just as dearly? What strength gave her power to risk the wrath of the guards stationed at the tomb? How was she able to manage the journey there when no one else would? We must call it…faith. Take what seems to be empty hope, mix it with the unwashed promise of God to always be with you and help you in your times of need and you have faith…It was faith that gave Mary Magdalene, when everyone else was gone, the first sight of the risen Savior.
No comments:
Post a Comment