Faith part 2

    In our last blog we noted that faith was the tangibles of hope.  We also mentioned a few sayings that we associate with faith such as "taking a leap of faith," and "Going by blind faith."  I want to point out in this blog how both of these sayings do not really fit with the Christian's faith.  

    First look at the idea of blind faith.  The term most often refers to accepting something with no evidence to support it.  Many people claim that for a Christian to believe there is a God they must do so on blind faith. God's Word tells us in Romans 1:19-20 "because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.  For since creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead."  In Psalms 19:1 "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork."  Christians do not believe there is a God based on blind faith, but they understand the evidence left in creation to point to a creator.  Lee Strobel put out a book, you can also watch a DVD version of the book, called The Case for a Creator.  In this book he goes through and gives the evidence found in nature pointing to the existence of God.  Ben Stein also put out a documentary called "expelled" that does much the same thing.  If you saw a computer in the middle of the woods, would you assume this computer was naturally occurring there, as in the parts randomly fell together to make this complex machine?  No, you would assume someone left it there, and if you are a nerd you are probably asking who made it, Dell, Gateway, or Alienware.  We assume the computer had a designer because of the complexity of the parts that make it up, there is no way it could have accidentally just grown there.  How much more complex are we, yet we are told that to believe we have a creator must be taken on blind faith.  We believe in God not because of blind faith, but because the evidence points to His existence.

    "Well" the skeptic may say "we can agree you could follow the evidence to a creator, but it is a leap to go from an impersonal creator to a personal God."  Albert Einstein, who believed in an impersonal creator, said "We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how.  It does not understand the languages in which they are written.  The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn't know what it is."1  If God were to write all these books it seems He would not have left them there for us to find unless He wanted us to get to know Him.  The agnostic would be right in saying that there is no way to know God, except that He reveals Himself to us.  Why would an impersonal god place all these signs in creation that point to him?  Why would he place in the hearts of men a desire to know who he is?  Our ability to ask and reason through these questions point to a creator who wants us to know Him.  As John 6:44 says "no one comes to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him."  

     Even the things a Christian does are not done out of blind faith.  Sometimes God may ask us to do things that we do not understand, and may by all human reasoning seem stupid and unwise, yet through faith we follow Him.  My wife and I left the church we were at in December, because we believe God called us out of there.  We do not have another church lined up as of yet.  Most of the books you read suggest a pastor should not leave until he has a new church.  Most people thought I should have another job before leaving the church I was at.  God on the other hand told us to go.  To an outsider this may be madness and you may consider it blind faith.  I may be stepping into the unknown, but it is in no way blind.  I do so out of my intimate knowledge of the One who has called me out.  My faith is based upon the understanding of who my God is, and the knowledge that if He has called me out He has a plan.  Until God reveals the next step in His plan to my wife and I, we are getting involved in a local Bible-believing, Bible-teaching church, doing what we can to grow closer to Him, and to help others do so as well.  We trust He will send us to the perfect place He has for us, because we know Him and follow where ever He leads.  A Christian's faith is never really blind.  It is a trust that comes through a relationship with God himself.  If your best friend asked you to do something that you would not normally do and asked you to do so based on your relationship with him, wouldn't you give him your faith and step out and do what he is asking?  That is exactly how a Christian operates by faith.  Our best friend Christ, the Creator of the universe, directs us and we follow.

    You see there is no leaping, nor is our faith blind.  We follow the evidence step by step.  We walk by faith.  We live by faith.  Each step towards the unknown past where we can see is taken in a faith grounded in our relationship with a faithful God who cares very much for us individually.  God directs our path and shines a light upon the way for us.

    Where is your faith today?  Are you walking by the light of God's Word?  Are you letting God direct your path, or are you insisting to do it on your own?

   

¹ G. S. Viereck, Glimpses of the Great (Macauley, New York, 1930), quoted by D. Brian,  Einstein: A Life , p. 186.

 

Faith part 1 . . .

   What is faith?  We hear the word often in our world today.  "Take a leap of faith." "Take it on blind faith." "I will do it in good faith."  "Have a little faith." Though we toss the word around it seems so many people have a poor understanding of what faith really is.  Saddest of all, many people in our churches barely understand what faith is all about, and we are suppose to be a people of faith.

   Often times when you talk to people in the church about faith it is as though faith is an action they did in the past, or a possession they currently have.  When asking about faith you will hear a response such as "I placed my faith in Jesus," or "I have faith in God."  If you were to press them on that, I am not sure how many would really be able to explain what it is to have faith in God, or to have placed their faith in Jesus.  They might equate faith with trust or believing, but there is more to faith than that.

   The Bible defines faith in Hebrews 11:1 as "the substance of things hoped for. the evidence of things not seen."  Faith is trusting to the point of knowing that the promises are a done deal and living upon that understanding.  It is the substance, the Greek word here is hupostasis which was a scientific term used for the physical substances that would be found in liquids, like curds in milk, or sand settling in water.  The idea is that this is the tangibles.  Faith is the tangible part of hope, the evident part of a belief.

   Faith is not just a thing of the past, or possession to be held, but the very way you live your life.  James says in James 2:20 "faith without works is dead."  Faith that does not produce one to action, is not any kind of faith at all.  We do what we believe.  Everything we do is done out of faith in one regards or another.  If you were told that you were about to be punched you would move or do something hoping to not get hit.  Your action is the substance of your hoped for outcome, the evidence of what you believed to be true.

    For the Christian we hope for the Salvation God has promised.  We hope to stand before the God of heaven and earth and hear Him say "well done my good and faithful servant."  If our hope is truly in that, our faith should permeate our lives in every action we do.  Everything we do should be for the glory of God.  Paul writes this in 1 Corinthians 10:31 "whether therefore you eat or drink, or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God."

    What are you hoping in today?  What do your actions show you to believe?  Where is your faith?

Cleaning House

     Sorry that I have not posted this past week.  My wife and I have been busy preparing our house for company.  My cousin who use to live above us when we were in Tennessee was able to come by for a few days.  As we were diligently cleaning the house, making sure there was no clutter, dust, or dirt to be seen, I started thinking about another visitor, and had to question if I am putting this much effort into preparing for Him.  The Bible is very clear that Jesus is coming again.  Are you preparing for His return?  When He comes, what will the state of your spiritual house be? 

   There was a lot around the house that needed to be done.  One of the first things we did was outside.  For quite a while we have been saying that we needed to redo the flower beds in our front yard.  They were overrun with weeds and some flowers that made it look more like a jungle than a yard.  So we went out and dug up most of what was there.  Once we were done with the garden the outside of the house looked okay.  People driving by could say "that looks like a nice house."  However inside still needed quite a bit of work, perhaps more important work than the garden.   How often do we find ourselves dealing with the superficial sins that everyone can see, while neglecting some of the more meaningful sins in our lives that remain hidden.  Jesus says in Matthew 23:27 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness."  They took care of the things that made them look good on the outside.  Their actions appeared righteous, but their hearts were filled with immorality. 

    We may say the right things, do the right things, and hang out with the right crowd, but what does your inner-life look like.  Though the outside of our home looked nice, the inside still needed to be cleaned.  The serious work of preparing the house was inside.  The same is true spiritually.  Christ says in Mark 7:20-23 "What comes out of a man, that defiles a man.  For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness.  All these evil things come from within and defiles a man."  When working at cleaning our spiritual house we need to look inward to our hearts.

    As a typical man, when it came down to cleaning the inside of the house, my thoughts were simply let's pick up the clutter. However my wife felt differently. The floors needed to be vacuumed. Stuff needed dusting. Linens needed washing. Bathrooms needed scrubbing. Things needed to be cleaned even if they didn't at first glance appear dirty. 1 Samuel 16:7 reads "but the LORD said to Samuel, 'Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the LORD does not see as a man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.'"  Our lives should not just appear clean, because God sees the truth.  We should strive to truly be clean inside and out.

    You may be saying by now "Okay we got that we need to clean the house inside and out, but how do I clean my spiritual house?"  People try so many different things to clean their spiritual houses.  Many of these attempts are superficial.  We try simply stopping the actions and thoughts that we know to be sin.  This however is like pulling up the weeds in our garden. If we didn't make sure we got out the roots the plants would just come back and often times worse than before.  The same is true with sin in our lives if we do not deal with the root of it, then we can expect the sin to soon come back.  People also try to clean their spiritual house by doing good things to counteract the sin.  However our good deeds are like filthy rags to God.  No good deed will ever wash out sin.  It would be like trying to clean the mirror in the bathroom with the same cloth I used to wash up with after the gardening.  All that would be accomplished would be the spreading of mud.  So how do we clean this spiritual house?

    The only way to get clean is to turn to Christ.  He is the only one capable of cleaning our house.  However we have to allow Him to work in our lives.  He does this through the interactive working of His Holy Spirit and His Word.  Ephesians 5:25-27 "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and with out blemish."  As you study His Word, and you allow Him to convict you of sin and alter the way you perceive the world, conforming your views to that which He has laid out for you in His Word, then you will find your heart and mind truly being cleansed.  This is a process.  Paul puts it this way in Romans 12:1-2 "I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.  And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."  Allow God's Word to transform your mind so that you will feel and think as He does.

    Christ is coming back.  I don't want to be embarrassed because I neglected to clean my spiritual house.  I want Him to come and see His face shining in the faucets and off the hard wood floors of my heart.  How clean is your house?

The Theology of a Children's Song.

    So I was driving home from my parents today a little past my son's bed time.  He woke up when we were leaving their house and started screaming.  He is only eight months old so I can excuse this behavior.  My heart broke for being the good father, or the guilty dad who kept him up late, decided I would sing his favorite song to him, Jesus Loves Me.  As it is a 30 minute car ride you can imagine with me only knowing 5 verses that I had to repeat them quite often.  However towards the end I found he only wanted to hear one verse, and that is the one we all know and love.  

        Jesus loves me this I know, For the Bible tells me so.  

        Little ones to him belong, They are weak but He is strong. 

        Yes Jesus loves me, Yes Jesus loves me.

        Yes Jesus loves me, The Bible tells me so.

    The words repeated over and over again.  It hit me that it really is this simple.  Jesus loves me.  You know something, He loves you too.  The Bible tells us in fact that God loves the whole world so much so that He sent His only begotten son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.  Jesus said "greater love has no man than this that he lay down his life for a friend."  Yet Paul tells us in Romans 5:8-10 that Christ died for us while we were yet enemies with God.  His love is so great that we can't even fathom its depths.  He loves us, it is that simple.

    How do we know He loves us?  The Bible tells us so, that is what the song says.  I find it sad that so many people can sing this song and then turn around and start denying the authority of the word of God.  This song indicates that the Bible is a trustworthy source.  You can rely on what the Bible has to tell you.  Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:16 that the Bible is the inspired word of God.  He uses a Greek word that is a compound word Theopneumas the two parts being Theos meaning God and Pneuma meaning to breath.  So literally translated that reads "all scripture is breathed out by God."  Jesus noted the importance of the very parts of the letters in scripture when He said in Matthew 5:18 "for assuredly I say to you till the heavens and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled."  The "jot" and "tittle" are parts of the Hebrew letters.  We can trust the Bible to be true, after all God breathed it, and He assures us it will stand the test of time.  We know He loves us because the Bible tells us so.

    So who belongs to God?  Little ones do.  Often times we think of that as a reference to children but what if we broadened our understanding of who or what a little one is.  Matthew 18 tells us of an account where the disciples were having an argument over who would be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.  Jesus responds to this dispute by calling a "little child" to Him.  Often we see on the flannel-graphs and the children's material the picture of maybe a five year old, but the idea behind the Greek is more a helpless baby.  Jesus then proceeds to tell the disciples that they need to humble themselves as this helpless baby to enter the kingdom of heaven.  When you have come to the place in your life where you realize that you stand helpless before the throne of God a guilty sinner and can do nothing yourself, and are ready to place your life completely in the hands of Jesus, you become a "little one."  To me I think it is hard sometimes to be that humble.  We want to do things on our own, and be a big kid, or even an adult, but God asks us to fully rely on Him and to allow Him to have control.  Little ones to Him belong.

    We are weak, but He is strong.  When we realize that we stand before God guilty, we realize that we have no strength of our own to remove this sin debt we have acquired.  Hebrews 10:1 tells us that the Law could in never make us perfect.  In other words the works you and I do can never truly fill the holes sin leaves in our lives.  We do not have the strength.  Ephesian tells us that we are spiritually dead and must rely completely on Christ to quicken us to newness of life.  We are unable to pay that debt, but He is more than able.  Christ died on the cross offering His own life as a sacrifice to pay a debt you and I could not.  We are weak, but He is strong. 

    Such a simple song we teach our children.  Jesus loves us.  The Bible is true.  We need to humble ourselves before Him.  We can not earn our own salvation, but He offers it to us as a free gift.  Next time you start singing with the children, take a moment, think about what the words mean, and perhaps you will find God speaking to you.

"Start Working"

    Today a friend of mine called me up and Said "we need to start working."  After a slew of jokes I had with him about how I was working, just not getting paid, I gave in to the fact that he was referring to exercise.  I have been saying this very thing to myself lately, but have not taken the initiative to really "start working."  I really needed to though, as an overweight middle-aged man with a family history of heart problems I know the importance of exercise all too well, but so often times I just don't want to do it.  After we finished working out today I reflected upon what we just did.  During that reflection it came to me that many people do the same thing in their spiritual lives. 

    People are prone to sin, you could say it is a spiritual condition that exists in our family history.  We also have this knack for having a lack of faith.  Christ often calls the disciples "ye of little faith."  We do not differ too much from them in that regard.  If we were to look at the spiritual health of many of the people in our churches I would bet that we would find people as unhealthy spiritually as I am physically.  It is time to "start working."

    So we ask ourselves this question why is it that many people who call themselves Christians don't exercise their spiritual faith as often as they should?  I think part of the problem is that people think that they are exercising enough.  My wife, bless her soul, has been trying to get me to go for a short walk with her for weeks now seeing that the weather is so beautiful here.  A walk may be better than what I was doing, sitting at a computer writing sermons, working on this blog, and witnessing to people via the internet, but a short walk just would not be enough exercise for me.  Many people feel simply showing up in church on Sunday morning is enough spiritual exercise for them, but it is just a short walk.  People need more than just a short walk.  We need to get our spiritual blood flowing.  Other people read from a daily devotional filled with fluff and feel they are really exercising hardcore. Yet this is like watching an 80's exercise video and doing only the parts that are easy and skipping most of the video.  Sure they are getting a little bit out of it, but is that enough? 

    We need to think of our spiritual health and really work those faith muscles.  We need to find ourselves working through the hard parts, digging in to the Scriptures on more than just Sunday morning.  It is hard to do that though.  We may feel that we don't have the time.  If it is important to you, and your spiritual health should be important to you, we should make time.  Time to pray and study God's word, not just a fluffy devotional.  We may feel that it is too hard and we can't really get anything out of a personal study.  Currently I am doing the p90x program for my physical training.  I can not do it all yet, but I try to do everything and I get help on the things that I cannot do on my own yet, mostly the pull-ups and chin-ups.  As we do our personal study when we come across things that we cannot figure out on our we can get help.  There are many great study Bibles out there.  You can also get assistance by writing down the questions that come up and asking someone who is spiritual more mature than you are, like a pastor or an elder, if they can help you with the question.

    Spiritual health is not something that just happens.  It takes work just like your physical health does.  The process can be painful.  The process can seem inconvenient.  The process can seem trivial and not worth your time.  However like your physical health, it is better to take care of your health while you are healthy to prevent disease and illness.  It is easier to already be spiritually strong, having a strong faith, when times get rough, than to try to find your faith in times of trouble.  It is easier to stay in shape, than to try to get back into shape after letting yourself go.  So it is time to spiritually "start working!"

   

What does it mean to be a Christian

"And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch" [Acts 11:26b]

    What does it mean to be a Christian?  Some believe they are Christians because they know they are not Jewish, or Islamic, so they must be Christians, right?  I have heard it said that America is a Christian nation, and I am an American so I must be a Christian.  Many people believe they are Christians because they go to church. Others feel that to be a Christian is to be a moral person.  Have you ever heard someone talking about their atheist friend say something like "He's more of a Christian than most people I know at church?"    So many people have no idea what it is to be a Christian.  Even people, supposedly Christian people, who have grown up reading their Bibles and attending Church whenever the doors are open, are in the dark about what it means to be a Christian. 

    The Scripture seems to be pretty clear about what a Christian is.  Why is there so much confusion over what it is to be a Christian?  Here in our verse Christians was a name that people gave to the Disciples.  One of the problems today is that many people call themselves Christians, but are by no means disciples of Christ.  Perhaps there is confusion over what it is to be a disciple.  

    We must remember that there were more than twelve disciples of Christ. The disciples that are being called Christians at Antioch in our verse are not the twelve that most people associate with the word "disciples" but are the people being taught by Paul and Barnabas.  You and I are presented with the opportunity to be disciples of Christ if we should accept and respond to His teachings that are found in the Scriptures.  A disciple by definition is one who accepts and assists in spreading the doctrines of another.  So a disciple of Christ is one who accepts His teachings and shares them with others.  I want to point out there is a difference in one who accepts the teachings and one who studies the teachings.  Many people study the Bible, they read it and out right deny it, or try to twist its meaning to be something it's not.  A disciple however will study it and accept what it says, they may question what it means, but ultimately will accept its teaching instead of trying to force their views upon it.  

    Christ had this to say about being one of His disciples "'If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple'"[Luke 14:26-27] In other words to be His disciple we must make Him the greatest affection in our lives.  We must be willing to give up everything to follow Him.  Matthew puts it this way"Then Jesus said to His disciples, 'If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.'"[Matthew 16:24-25]  So often we fall short in that willingness to lose our own lives, or our own ideals, our own sense of what is good and just.  We are unwilling to let that go and accept His teachings.  However He requires exactly that.

    So if being a Christian is to be His disciple, and to be His disciple is to follow Him, what is it to follow Him?  Jesus tells the fishermen Simon and Andrew that if they should follow Him, He would make them fishers of men[Mark 1:17]. When we follow Jesus we allow Him to make us into what He desires us to be.  We allow Him to form us as the potter forms the clay.  Not only do we allow Him to mold us, but He unites us to Himself.  "Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, 'I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.'"[John 8:12]  Christ's promise here is that if we follow Him we will have the light of life, which is how John describes Christ in the first chapter of his account of the gospel.  As we follow Christ we allow Him to mold us, shape us, and conform us, to be united with Him. Paul writes it this way "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.  For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.  Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these he also glorified."[Romans 8:28-30]  In other words Paul is saying that a Christian is one whom God is conforming to His image, whom he is justifying, so that he maybe glorified with Christ.  

    Christians are not just people who go to church, but they are people who long to know Christ better and strive to be like Him.  Christians are not just moral people, but a people who have been rejuvenated by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, who die to self and live for Christ.  Christians are not just born into the faith like a nationality, but have made a personal decision to humble themselves and accept that they can do nothing of themselves to save themselves and so they submit themselves to the Lordship of Jesus Christ as their savior.  Can you be called a Christian according to this, or is it just something you call yourself?