Faith

Faith is the willingness to look foolish. Noah looked foolish building an ark in the desert. Moses looked foolish asking Pharaoh to let his slaves go. The Israelite army looked foolish marching round Jericho blowing trumpets. David looked foolish attacking Goliath with a slingshot. The wise men looked foolish following a star. Peter looked foolish stepping out of the boat in the middle of a storm. And Jesus looked foolhardy hanging on the cross. But the results speak for themselves, don’t they? Noah stayed afloat during the flood. Moses delivered Israel out of Egypt. The walls of Jericho came tumbling down. David defeated Goliath. The wise men found the Messiah. Peter walked on water. And Jesus rose from the dead. There comes a moment when you must quit hedging your bets, quit playing it safe and doing what you’ve always done. You need to build the ark, or at least plant some trees or saw some planks! Faith is acting as if God has already answered our prayers, and acting as if God has answered means acting on our prayers even if, as in the case of Noah, it takes over a century. Jesus said, ‘Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours’ (Mark 11:24 NIV). What has God told you to do? Start doing it!

Source: The UCB Word For Today, 15/12/2017 adapted from Mark Batterson, All In

Charles Blondin was a famous tightrope walker and stunt artist in America. Some years ago he stretched a wire rope across the top of Niagara Falls and walked across it several times, always with a different theatrical variation: He walked across blindfold; he went across on stilts, he carried a man on his back and he even sat down mid-way across while he cooked and ate an omelette! A newspaper reporter came up and asked him what he proposed to next. Blondin said he was going to wheel a man across in a wheelbarrow. “Do you think I can do it?” Blondin asked. “Oh yes, said the reporter. “You are the greatest tightrope artist of all time. I believe you can do it.” Blondin replied, “You do; you really think I can do it?” “I know you can,” said the reported. “Well then,” replied Blondin, “you get in the wheelbarrow!”

There is a difference between head knowledge and heart knowledge or faith. You can believe that the Christian message is true but unless you are willing to step out in faith and put your trust in Christ, you are never going to know what it’s really like; you’ll miss salvation by a foot, 12 inches, which is the distance between the brain and the heart; between head knowledge and heart knowledge. Faith is trusting in God.

450 years ago in England, under the reign of the Roman Catholic, Queen Mary, or Bloody Mary as she became known, and during the reformation of the church here in England, 288 people were burnt at the stake for their Protestant faith. Few of the martyr’s final words are more stirring than those of Bishops Hugh Latimer to Nicholas Ridley as they were tied together at the stake and burnt alive in Oxford, on 16th October 1555. As the fire was lit Latimer said to his friend, “Be of Good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”

To understand the importance of the protective powers of the shield of faith, consider a space capsule re-entering earth’s atmosphere. When a space capsule returns to the earth after having completed its mission, it would not be able to reach the earth if it were not surrounded by a shield. The heat generated upon re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere would burn up the capsule and everyone inside it in a matter of seconds if it were not completely protected. With the shield, flames and smoke can engulf the entire capsule, but nothing inside is damaged at all. Similarly, taking up the shield of faith enables a believer to live a life of victory in an atmosphere that has the potential to bring harm.

Tony Evans, 2011, Victory In Spiritual Warfare, Oregon: Harvest House Publishing, p.94.

Imagine a young boy stuck up in a tree and his father comes to rescue him. “Let go and I will catch you,” the Dad says. Now the boy may agree in his head that his dad can catch and hold on to him, but until he trusts him enough to let go of the tree he will remain stuck. – Faith is letting go of the branch and trusting in God.

Romans 8:28 says: ‘in all things God works for the good of those who love him.’ This is the modus operandi of the God we claim to love and serve. It’s not the exception; it’s the rule. God is working for our good in everything we go through – good and bad, successes and mistakes. God is in charge. He’s in control. There seems to be a paradox here: God loves us and is working for our good; He is in charge and in control of events and yet, He allows us to mess up, and He allows his people to suffer… but in all things God works for our good! How does that work? Well, because God turns things around to accomplish what He desires.

‘God never has to say, “Oops!” because he never makes a mistake. Everything that happens in your life fits into God’s plan for you. He uses every situation – even the problems and heartaches and difficulties that you bring on yourself – to work out his purposes in your life. He fits everything perfectly into his plan for you… All that God expects from us is that we trust him without trying to figure everything out. God is in control.’ Sometimes, we have to completely abandon to God.

Rick Warren

Rick Warren, God’s Power To Change Your Life, 2006, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, p.93

Every lifeguard knows you can’t save people as long as they are trying to save themselves. If somebody is drowning and flailing around in panic, a lifeguard knows to just stay back for a few seconds and wait until that person gives up. Because if you try to save others while they’re trying to save themselves, they will pull you under, too. When they finally give up, they relax; you put your arm around them and just swim back to shore. It’s really quite easy. God wants to save you. Jesus Christ wants to save you from your hurts, your habits, and your hang-ups. He wants to save you for his purpose and by his grace. But you’ve got to quit trying to do it yourself. You’ve got to relax. You need to let go and let God be God.

Rick Warren

Rick Warren quote taken from a daily reading plan from YouVersion Bible app.

Bill Johnson says, ‘Although I no longer play football, I love to watch a good game. I have my favourite team and I love to watch them play on TV, rooting, sometimes loudly, from our sitting room. Occasional shouts of joy are heard when my team does well, as well as deep groans of travail when they have done poorly. Often my schedule doesn’t allow me to watch games live and so I catch up on [Match of the Day] or watching a recorded game. If it’s not live I like to know the outcome before I sit down to watch it. If my team lost, I usually won’t watch the game. This approach gives me an advantage… If my favourite player shoots but misses a penalty, or the opposition score first and take the lead, I already know it doesn’t change the outcome because my team has already won the game. There’s very little stress, if any, when I see my team make an error or fumble the ball. Why? I know the outcome. The one thing we are assured of in walking with the Lord is the outcome. He has already recorded the score of the game in His book of records, and we win! Because of this, adversity, conflict, or problems need not lead to panic or despair. I know ahead of time how it turns out. “All things work together for good” (Romans 8:28)!

Bill Johnson, 2016, God is Good, USA, Destiny Image Publishers, p.200-201

Faith is trusting in God, but we are not called to have blind faith – we are called to have faith in God’s Word. Christian faith does not depend upon our feelings, which are always changing, but on the facts of what God has done and promised.

‘Imagine being lost is the dessert and having a compass with you. You could do one of two things: You could rely solely on your sense of direction to tell you which way to go or you could rely on the needle of your compass pointing north. No matter how strongly you ‘felt’ about which direction to take, you’d be stupid to trust in your feelings over and above your compass. Why? Well, because our feelings go up and down depending on our mood. Feelings are important, but we must not rely only on our feelings. We must instead rely on God’s promises which do not change; we must rely on the Word of God… because God does not change. North is always north.’

Let me illustrate further. ‘Imagine three men walking along the top of a narrow wall. The first man is called FACTS, the second FAITH and the last, FEELINGS. As long as the middle man, FAITH, keeps his eyes on FACTS, he can walk securely and steadily on the wall. But if he turns around and keeps looking over his shoulder for FEELINGS, he starts to wobble and feel insecure. Similarly, in the Christian faith, solid faith is based on the facts of Jesus as learned in the Bible. If we go too much by our feelings, our faith will always be unsteady and weak.’

[Note: Christianity Explained, New Malden, Surrey: The Good Book Company (1985), p.55]

John Dickson, Hanging in There, Matthias Media (1991), p76

In 1997, a team of IBM engineers designed and developed Deep Blue, the computer that outmanoeuvred chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. Deep Blue was equipped with thirty-two processing engines that could calculate 200 million chess moves per second. Now, I don’t know about you, but I have a tough time with the fifty-fifty stuff: true or false; right or left; chocolate or vanilla? I can’t even imagine contemplating 200 million contingencies in a split second. But 200 million contingencies is laughable compared to our Omniscient, all-knowing God; the One who took every contingency into consideration before a nanosecond had even ticked off the clock of time. Think of your life as a game of chess. You are the pawn and God is the chess grandmaster. You have no idea what your next move should be. But God already has the next 200 million moves planned out. Some of His moves won’t make sense to us, but that’s because we can’t compute 200 million contingencies at a time! You’ve just got to trust in the LORD and stop trying to figure everything out.

Mark Batterson

Source: Mark Batterson, 2006, In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day, Colorado: Multnomah Books, p.29-30

If you have ever seen people riding a tandem, the person in the front steers and the person behind offers peddle-power. We, all too often, want to steer and have the control and just call upon God to give us the extra ‘umph’ to get us up the hills! But we need to give control to God and let him steer.