The Real Kind of Faith

I have more blessings than you can possible imagine! For someone as ungrateful and selfish as I am, it is truly amazing how faithful God is to give me so much to enjoy. I have close friends to share in mutual encouragement with, and people older and younger than me that I can lead or follow in Christ. God lets me feel His presence in a deep way almost every morning. He regularly gives me the chance to worship Him, and stand or kneel or lay face down in awe and wonder at who He is, despite my personal lack of spiritual understanding. If my certainty of God's love was dependent just on my experience of His spiritual blessings, then I would have more than enough proof.

But here's the thing. I'm not okay with that. I don't want my understanding of God's love to depend on what I can see and touch and feel. Who God is is infinitely greater than my experience of who He is, because I am finite and very limited in my scope of vision.

In my Bible reading this morning, I got to revisit an example of what kind of person I want to be. In John 4, we read of a man who was in dire need. This man was an official in high position who lived in Capernaum. Whatever power this man may have felt he had, there was one circumstance in his life that he was powerless to deal with. His beloved son was sick and dying, and the official could literally do nothing about it. So this man went to the One who could do something.

When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to Him and asked Him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.

This man was acknowledging that he could do nothing for the one he cared about so deeply. His attitude was one of humility and desperation. Yet he was still not at the place Jesus wanted him to be. He was ready for a miracle from God, but faith in and desire for this miracle was not all that God wanted.

So Jesus said to him, "Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.”

The official had no problem believing that Jesus could do a miracle. His problem was believing in Jesus if He didn't do a miracle.

The official said to Him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”

Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.”

Now the official faced the dilemma that we all come to at some point or another. He had felt hopeful and confident on his journey to Jesus, as long as he expected that Jesus would come back with him. If the official could see Jesus lay hands on his son, that was more than enough. But now Jesus had done the unexpected. He refused to come back with the man. Instead, the official was to go home, alone, with no guarantee but a word from Jesus.

This is where our faith is tested. It is good to have a firm belief that Jesus is at work in your life. But as long as you are seeing His work clearly from day to day, your faith, though genuine, is still untested and unproven. When real faith comes into play is when you are asked to face a day with no certainty of Jesus showing His hand. Without any clear sign that He is near, armed with nothing but the ancient promises of His word, you are asked to “Go.” Go back home. He won't show you a sign. He won't give you a blessing or a token of His involvement in His life. Just walk back the way you came, by yourself, and believe not in what you will see when you get there, but in the One who sent you.

The man believed that word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way.

As he was going down his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering. So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” The father knew that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” And he himself believed, and all his household.

Sometimes Jesus wants us to do more than just believe He'll work. He wants us to believe in Him even when we aren't feeling His presence, or feeling used in others' lives, or feeling encouraged by the believers around us.

The official from Capernaum passed this test. By the time he got back to the servants who told him the good news, he had already proven he didn't need good news. He had gone to Jesus, left Jesus, traveled for two days and probably even slept a whole night—all without any knowledge of his son's state. But a word from Jesus had been enough to sustain him, because he trusted in who Jesus was.

How I want to be like this man! Sometimes I think that the only faith I've been proven to have is the kind that is instantly rewarded and rarely tested. Who's to say that my faith in God has what it takes, if it might just be dependent on the blessings I'm used to receiving?

But my prayer and my hope is that God has given me a better faith. Who He is is more than enough. And if today I lose some blessing I thought I needed, I hope I can keep His character in view and, like the the man from Capernaum, “Go.”

That Kind of Love

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.  The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him.
--1 John 3:1

People in the world are not used to being loved unconditionally.  Forgiveness doesn't come cheap.  And when a relationship is hurt there is no telling how long it will take for it to bounce back--if it ever does.  Contrast this with the God who sent His own Son to die for us while we were yet sinners.  That's what unconditional love is--we were in no state to earn it when we first received it, and still aren't.

The world doesn't know our Father, so it can't possibly comprehend our love.  Loving believers will certainly appear amazing to the unsaved if they ever really get to see them in action.  One of my favorite things to do is to tell people who don't know Christ about my friends who do.  The Christlike love that is on display at my church is unlike anything the world has to offer.  And I want to wear that love on my shirtsleeve.  So what if somebody makes fun of me because I believe in my Father who loves me?  I'm going to turn around and love them back.

The trials of being  mocked, rejected and hated are fading fast.  After the last person has rolled their eyes at me or called me naive I'm going where my Father is.  And I'm never coming back.  I get to enjoy the kind of love that made me His child--and I'll enjoy it forever!  Until I do, I want to broadcast that love to a watching world.

The Price of Our Joy

No one has ascended into heaven except He who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.  And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.
--John 3:13-14

Have you ever given up something you wanted, so someone else could get what they wanted?  Maybe you said no to hanging out with your friends because you knew someone else really wanted to talk.  Maybe you didn't accept an exciting opportunity you were offered, and waited for someone else to jump on it, without even acknowledging that they were taking what you wanted for themselves.  Maybe you gave up your morning of sleeping in because someone needed help moving, or doing yard work.  I've done something along all of these lines before.  But let me tell you, what Jesus gave up to give us eternal life makes any sacrifice I've ever made seem not even worth mentioning.

Jesus descended from heaven.  Do you have any idea how wonderful heaven is?  I wish I knew.  I only will know when I get there, and I want to be there more than anything.  But once I am, I'm sure of one thing.  I won't want to come back here.

Now imagine what it was like for Jesus to leave.  If the joy of heaven is the presence of God, Jesus had been reveling in that joy since before the beginning of time.  He willingly left it all, confining Himself to space and time and suffering.  In many ways, His life was miserable even by our standards.  But imagine those trials from the perspective of living in paradise for all of eternity.  I will never understand the depths of Christ's perfection, so I'll never realize just how much He suffered.

And Jesus carried the awareness of what He had given up with Him even to the end.  John 13:3 tells us that, when His hour had come, Jesus knew that "He had come from God and was going back to God."  Finally, after enduring the worst trial imaginable, Jesus would be on His way back to the Father's side--this time to sit down and remain forever, glorified.

I am so thankful to Jesus for the sacrifice He made.  He gave up heaven for decades of a grueling earthly existence, so that I could enjoy heaven, with Him, forever.  I can barely believe that He would sacrifice so much for me.  I am in awe of the depth of joy I get to experience for eternity, and the price it took to buy that future for me.

He Knows

John 2:24-25 But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because He knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for He Himself knew what was in man.

It strikes me as amazing that there could be someone who truly knows what's in my heart and actually loves me regardless.  I am sure that if my friends knew what was going on in my mind, they would be shocked and disappointed.  They would find out that I am a person who serves begrudgingly, sometimes only acts like I'm listening, and looks to them just for what they can give me.  Although I love them, that love often seems to lose out to my sinfulness and love of self.  This is horrible to think about, but it's true.

Yet here I find a hope far beyond anything I deserve to have.  Jesus actually knows all the things my friends don't--And He loves me anyways!  Just as He did with His disciples, Jesus chose each one of us with a full knowledge of how we would fail Him and others.

So it's obvious that when Jesus chooses followers, He isn't choosing them based on their own merit.  That is really encouraging to me.  I'm not disappointed, as in, "What?  I really don't have anything to offer God?!"  I'm totally relieved that the whole "following Jesus" thing is initiated by Him, totally independent of what I can do.  By that line of thinking, I can say with confidence that I will grow as a follower of Christ and I will get better at loving other people, not because I am self-motivated but because Jesus never fails to complete anything He starts.

Thank you, Jesus, for knowing me and loving me anyways.

To Suffer Like Him

I know of no one who has ever suffered a trial that is comparable with what Jesus suffered the day He died. Being rejected by all He loved (that included the whole world), being whipped and beat up and killed, and experiencing for the first time separation from God. My sufferings are infinitesimal.

Nonetheless, I have been known to freak out when just a little a trial comes into my life. I was expecting to live my normal, self-serving day, and then (suprise!) one of my favorite blessings gets taken away. Because I often live for pleasure, even a little trial can throw me completely out of whack.

It wasn't that way with Jesus! He wasn't just minding His own business on earth, when suddenly it dawned on Him that these men really were going to kill Him. No, as early as John 3—at the setting for Christ's first recorded miracle—He makes a reference to His death. “Woman,” he says to His mother, “what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” “My hour.” The hour of Christ's suffering. The hour of the greatest trial ever endured by a human being.

Twice after this in the book of John, we hear that the forces of the world could not touch Him because “His hour had not come.” A normal human being, when escaping imminent arrest, would breathe a sigh of relief and hope everything could just be okay now. For Jesus, it was different. He knew that these men, who wanted to take Him away and kill Him, would get Him someday. He even knew exactly when that day was coming. If He was spared from an untimely death a few times, it was just to preserve Him for the one time, the climactic day of His life when He would die. And Jesus knew this.

Finally, after years of divinely preserved earthly life, Jesus' hour came. John 13:1 says,

“Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.”

Jesus loved His disciples with the purest and best kind of love. He knew He would die for them, and that their sin was going to be His burden as He did. Yet He loved them to the very end. In the face of the ultimate tragedy, the end of His life that He had always known was coming, Jesus stooped down and showed love one more time.

Washing feet in trials. What a concept! Even in my little, paltry trials, there is usually only one person I'm thinking about. I'll try to reassure and comfort myself, “You're gonna be okay, Car.” Maybe I'll even spend some time one-on-one with the Lord, to find His comfort for my troubled heart. But serving others? Comforting others? Reaching out with compassion and sympathy to all the other human beings who are suffering too? That just seems unnecessary.

I will never suffer like Jesus suffered. Compared to the trials He endured, anything I endure for Him will be minor and easily forgotten once I am safe in heaven. But on a different level, maybe I can suffer, at least a little bit, in the way He suffered for me. And what was that way? It was the way of expecting trials, trusting God to bring them at the right time, and loving others deeply in the midst of them. I want to be like Him, the Man of sorrows who suffered with unshakable faith, hope, and love.

Grace That's Enough

I love church.  I love my church, because I see it fulfilling God's will for the church in countless ways.  The world is full of lamentations about people who don't practice what they preach.  Even many supposedly Christian churches are full of hypocrisy.  While no one can live out their faith perfectly, I find countless examples within Racine Bible Church of the word being taught, believed, and applied in ways that truly honor God.

In Sunday school this morning, Todd Kellner taught a lesson on some verses from James 1, including these:

James 1: 2-4 

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

These are verses that most Christians claim to believe.  I think just about all Christians would say that having faith in God is the only way to persevere in trials.  And many Christians even would say that the trials in our lives always have a good result, even if they are extremely difficult as we go through them.  But in everyday life, I don't know many people who, at least outwardly, express thankfulness for the trials that God has placed in their life.

Today, I found one.  I had a five-minute talk this morning with Mary Kullberg. I haven't talked to her in a long time, and I think that maybe that has been a mistake.  

Mary just had a book published last month, called "That's Life at the Barclay - Living with MS."  Mary is wheelchair bound thanks to the disease.  She had to give up a successful school-teaching career about 10 years ago.  This book has come out of 10 years of the progressive worsening of the biggest trial in her life, and I am just amazed at how God has produced a steadfast and more perfect person from such a fiery trial.

First of all, when I complemented Mary on her book being published, she told me what she finds most important about it.  What is exciting to her is not just that she's "on Amazon," as she jokingly said, but that unsaved people have already been impacted by the message of her faith.  She has already heard, she said, of some reading clubs with unbelieving members who will be discussing her book.  

I told Mary how the testimony of her trust in God in the face of trials over the past decade has exemplified James 1 to me.  What she said next really got me thinking.  Her words illustrate so perfectly exactly what it is about Mary that I want to emulate in my life.  She said, "His grace is sufficient."

God's grace is sufficient for her.  Here is a woman who has had to give up some of the best things in life, and who all the while has been confident that God is enough.  Legs that move?  Sure, that would be nice, but God's grace is all that Mary needs.  The ending of the verse Mary started is "for [God's] power is made perfect in weakness."  What if the trials that God wants to use to refine my faith involve giving up my strength?  Could I say with Paul, and with Mary, "Your grace is sufficient for me.  I don't need independence, self-determination, or even the strength to stand.  I just need You."

I said to Mary that if God perfects us with trials, then maybe I want a few more in my life.  And she said to me, "If You ask Him, He'll give you some."  Maybe I better ask.

The Lamb of God

But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year.  For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
Consequently, when Christ came into the world, He said:

"Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me;
in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.
Then I said, 'Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,
as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.' "
--Hebrews 10: 3-7

I looked up this passage yesterday, because I wanted to know more of what is meant by "The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world" in John 1:29, since we looked at that verse in youth group on Wednesday night.  These verses in Hebrews tell us how Christ's sacrifice exceeds any other sacrifice.  Any sacrifice that we try to make--any attempt undo the severity of our sins--doesn't work.  The sins always come back.  There can be no freedom outside of Christ.

To make the ultimate sacrifice, Jesus says that God had to prepare a body for Him.  Jesus made the sacrifice of His own life.  Unlike the old lambs and goats, whose blood could only hold off the wrath of God for a short period of time, the blood of Jesus removes God's wrath from us forever.  Jesus "does away with the first in order to establish the second (vs. 9)

And here's what really got to me.  Verse 10:

"And by that will [the will of God that Jesus came to do] we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all."

Although I'm being sanctified day by day, in a broader sense my sanctification is as sure now as if it has already been completed.  The sacrifice of the Lamb of God was perfect; and thus it is my indisputable assurance that I will one day be perfected.  This life full of sin is just a prequel to my real life, forever, in heaven.

Freedom from sin was accomplished once for all by the sacrifice of the Lamb of God.  Victory is mine, now and forever in Him.