What Keeps You Back?

 

Matthew 17: 19 NIV

Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, "Why couldn't we drive it out?"

Are You Being Held Back From Something?

When our family was much younger, Noah was four or five and Jacob seven or eight and Rachel was a newborn, we went camping up into the Sierra Mountains to a National Park that is our favorite as a family.  At the western edge of the park down around two thousand feet, the Marble branch of the Kaweah River weaves through the Buckeye Flats campground.  We felt just as adventurous as Lewis and Clark as we stumbled upon a magnificent pool of water formed in a crevice of the mountain that ran along the north of the river.  There was a natural water slide created by a groove in three giant boulders over which the rushing river flowed down into the pool of water below.  The pool itself was thirty to forty feet deep and although icy cold was refreshing in the hot summer sun.  Holding Noah, I rode down the water spilling off the giant boulders that served as a water slide and together we plummeted into the water, coming out laughing and shivering from the cold of the chilly water.  Jacob took the slide down too and for a while it was both a bit scary and exhilarating for him.  But then as we played around in the water, a father and son that had come before us climbed the rock cliff on the other side of the river and came to an outcropping and stood there staring down at the water below.  They were about fifty feet above the river and to our astonishment, first the father and then the twelve year old boy jumped out into the clear mountain air and plunged down to the pool below.  We gaped at one another in amazement at the daring of the two.  To accomplish this safely, they had to leap out from the cliff so they wouldn’t land on the shallow rock directly below the narrow ledge.  When the two came out of the water, we expressed our amazement at what they had done.  But both the boy and dad acted like it wasn’t that big of a deal; the water where they landed was deep and actually the jump was quite safe.  We had a hard time believing them but Jacob kept looking up at the outcropping and then down at the water, clearly trying to decide if he was going to take the leap too.  The question for him was how much faith he had in the pair who had taken the plunge, that it really was safe for him.  After several minutes pondering whether or not to believe he could jump off the cliff without killing himself and following an extended period of questioning Mary Jo and me if we thought he could survive the jump, Jacob decided what he would do.  The question of jumping or not was answered by the faith or lack of faith he had in what we thought and what the father and son said to him.

Faith is at the core of many decisions we make.  It determines whether or not we will apply to a certain college.  It powers the move to pursue a better job or start homeschooling.  Faith is what leads us to choose a career we really want rather than the one everyone else thinks we should select.  Faith is what decides whether or not we ask that particular girl out, or if we should “pop the question”.  Faith is at the center of the decision to finally start writing that book or begin a conversation about God with a co-worker.  Faith is the determining factor in tithing as well as the decision to take a tough class or build a friendship with a grumpy co-worker no one likes.  Faith attempts the impossible, tackles the challenge accepts responsibility.  Faith has reshaped kingdoms, toppled dictatorships and led to research that has changed the course of civilizations.  It is faith or the lack of faith that has decided whether or not couples stay together and determined if a failing student would go one more term to college. Faith is at the center of many of the most important decisions we make.

One of best examples of how faith operates is found in the Bible.  In Numbers 13 and 14 is the famous account of the twelve spies who were sent out by the people of Israel to explore the land that the nation was about to invade.  None of the Hebrew leaders had ever been to the land of Canaan and for that matter nobody among the more than a million Israelites hoping to move into Canaan had ever been there either.  Not many of us would relocate to a city or a country sight unseen.  The twelve spies were given the task of finding out exactly what sort of land Canaan was, how fertile the soil and the sort of defenses the people of the land had built.  Moses commissioned the spies and off they went.

The report they gave upon arrival back to the Hebrew camp was split.  Ten of the spies reported the land to be fertile but the inhabitants giants and the towns where they lived mountain fortresses.  The infamous “grasshoppers’ line came from these spies too. 

We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them." (Numbers 13:33 NIV)  This group of spies downplayed the quality of the land and emphasized the impossibility of conquering the people who lived in Canaan.  The other two spies gave a contradictory report.  They talked glowingly of the fertile soil and the succulence of the fruit grown there.  The cities they said were easily conquerable and the people of Canaan unprepared for a fight.  Now how can two groups of people who went to the exact same places together have such differing takes on what they saw?  It is simply this.  Faith defines understanding, not knowledge.

The spies who said it would be impossible to conquer Canaan and disparaged the suitability of it as a new homeland had one sort of faith and that faith determined what they saw.  The spies who reported the land preeminently lovely and the inhabitants easy to conquer had another kind of faith and in that faith each group possessed, came differing outlooks.  This is not an isolated case but illustrates how everyone thinks.  The sort of faith you have decides for you much about what you see and how you interpret what you experience.

In Matthew 17: 19, the disciples were frustrated by the lack of success they had casting out a demon.  Jesus’ response was pointed.  "Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." (Matthew 17:2 NIV)  What we see in many arenas of life is confirmed by Jesus.  There are certain things we don’t do because of too little faith and there are other things we can’t do because of the lack of faith.  The disciples were unable to heal a boy with a demon because of the obvious shortage of faith they had.  Jesus though asserted that they could easily have cast out the demon if they had even a small amount of faith.  It did not require even great faith to do something so astounding as free a crazed child of an afflicting demon.

Now here is the difference between generalized faith that is popularly promoted in self-help articles, TV shows and infomercials, or as it should really be defined, “self-confidence”, and what the Bible means by faith.  Jesus never told the disciples or anyone else that they needed to believe in themselves.  In fact, we are reminded again and again at various points in Scripture to not trust ourselves.  What we are to do however in regard to faith is trust God.  Jesus makes this crystal clear in John 14: 1. Trust in God; trust also in me. (NIV)  Without getting terribly technical, the word translated “trust” is the same Greek word as is translated “believe” or “have faith” in other parts of the Bible.  We are told here to have faith constantly, always in God; at every moment have faith in Jesus.  Let’s get just a bit more technical.  The Lord tells us to keep believing “into” Him, always getting deeper with our faith into God.  Nothing should diminish our faith in Christ, no circumstance or trouble is to get in the way of burgeoning faith in God.

The justification for this demand of God is really quite amazing.  In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. (John 14:2-3 NIV)  Before we can express the justification for our building faith in God, a correction to the translation of this passage needs to be respectfully noted.  The word “there” as in “I am going there” is not found in the Greek text.  It more accurately reads, “I am going to prepare a place for you.”  The implication of the NIV is that Jesus was going to the place of many rooms to prepare a place for us but that was not what Jesus was saying.  Jesus was going to the Cross to prepare a place for us. The cross was what His very next step was.  He was not about to go up to heaven.  He had a much more earthy task before Him; to die for our sins.  It was at the Cross that Jesus Christ gave faith its power, its crushing strength.  Jesus demanded our faith in Him because by dying on the Cross, He put us in our place.  We are in this work of God given the very power of the Lord in all we do.  What Jesus did at the Cross was enable us to be joined to Him that His knowledge of what we can and cannot do is ours, His assessment of what we are capable of accomplishing is what we can see through what He sees.

Because our sin separated us from God and kept us from His mind, the Cross broke apart that terrible barrier.  The Holy Spirit became free to enter us fully and make us the very body of God once our sins were removed.  This was not possible before the Cross.  The prophet Isaiah expresses precisely what every person faced before the Cross. But your iniquities have separated you from your God… (Isaiah 59:2 NIV) We could not have faith before Jesus died for us because faith had no object; no place where it could land.  Once we were free of the broken state of our life with God when Jesus died for our sins, we had God in whom we could have total faith.  This is not some mental gymnastics where we fool ourselves into thinking we are something we are not; this is the change that comes over us when we put all our hope in Jesus Christ to save us.  Our salvation is a totality salvation, a salvation to heaven but more importantly a salvation to God.  We are saved from our sins in order that we might be joined to Christ and that His works, His miracles, His accomplishments could take place through us.  Salvation comes to us that we might be put together to Christ and then we can do what He does.  Impossibility has only two explanations when we are combined with Christ and we acquire His mind.  We are either attempting something God doesn’t want done and we have rebelled against Him or we have failed to wait upon Him to act through us.  We have done something impulsively, without God’s authorization to move forward.

Faith is not based on what you can do or who you are but rather faith is solely a total dependence upon Jesus Christ to work through you and in you.  As He shows you, He also empowers you.  As He pushes you, He also enables you.  Faith is the assumption that we do not act independently but in union with God at every point.  That is possible only because Jesus Christ died for your sins.  You are joined to Christ and so you act now according to what He guides you and when He does, every time you can do it.  This is not mystical gibberish but how it is when you are made alive in Christ.  You can do whatever God gives you to do at the time He tells you to do it.

Take time this week to pray fervently.  Take each moment it comes to you and join your mind to that of Christ.  Pray as you walk and pray as you drive and pray as you work and even as you talk with people.  Pray at the restaurant, during the movie, when you are online and while you are eating.  Pray to Christ that He might pray with you and join His mind to yours.  As you do this, the work of God will begin to happen through you and miraculous works will happen.  Faith is not in your abilities but in Christ who lives in you.  Once you begin to put this into practice, praying through the mind of Christ, you will begin to see perfectly how God will work through you.