*Author’s note: A lot of my ideas came from Erwin McManus’ book "The Barbarian Way."*
For the past two weeks, we have been talking about the church, what it looks like, what it does. For the next 3 weeks, we are going to put some skin on the bones so to speak. There has been one verse that has driven me as a Pastor for the past several years. We talked the first week about our dreams for the community, and for the next 3 weeks, I am going to lay out my dreams for the community.
In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul is writing about all the things Christians do. But he has says, all of these things will end, except 3 things. In verse 13, read this with me: So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. So today, we will talk about what it means and looks like to live by faith.
If you have your bibles, you can turn to Hebrews 11. You can follow along as I read, or just listen. The book of Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians who were struggling with their faith. They were struggling because they were being persecuted, mistreated and so the writer of Hebrews spends the entire book encouraging them not to go underground, to not quit. Don’t we feel like that a lot, often we feel like we want to throw in the towel, when it comes to God and our relationship with him, but the writer is saying, keep going, don’t quit. This is what it says in Hebrews 11: 1-2The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.
3By faith, we see the world called into existence by God’s word, what we see created by what we don’t see.
4By an act of faith, Abel brought a better sacrifice to God than Cain. It was what he believed, not what he brought, that made the difference. That’s what God noticed and approved as righteous. After all these centuries, that belief continues to catch our notice.
5-6By an act of faith, Enoch skipped death completely. "They looked all over and couldn’t find him because God had taken him." We know on the basis of reliable testimony that before he was taken "he pleased God." It’s impossible to please God apart from faith. And why? Because anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that he exists and that he cares enough to respond to those who seek him.
7By faith, Noah built a ship in the middle of dry land. He was warned about something he couldn’t see, and acted on what he was told. The result? His family was saved. His act of faith drew a sharp line between the evil of the unbelieving world and the rightness of the believing world. As a result, Noah became intimate with God.
8-10By an act of faith, Abraham said yes to God’s call to travel to an unknown place that would become his home. When he left he had no idea where he was going. By an act of faith he lived in the country promised him, lived as a stranger camping in tents. Isaac and Jacob did the same, living under the same promise. Abraham did it by keeping his eye on an unseen city with real, eternal foundations—the City designed and built by God.
11-12By faith, barren Sarah was able to become pregnant, old woman as she was at the time, because she believed the One who made a promise would do what he said. That’s how it happened that from one man’s dead and shriveled loins there are now people numbering into the millions.
13-16Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing. How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world. People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home. If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back any time they wanted. But they were after a far better country than that—heaven country. You can see why God is so proud of them, and has a City waiting for them.
17-19By faith, Abraham, at the time of testing, offered Isaac back to God. Acting in faith, he was as ready to return the promised son, his only son, as he had been to receive him—and this after he had already been told, "Your descendants shall come from Isaac." Abraham figured that if God wanted to, he could raise the dead. In a sense, that’s what happened when he received Isaac back, alive from off the altar.
20By an act of faith, Isaac reached into the future as he blessed Jacob and Esau.
21By an act of faith, Jacob on his deathbed blessed each of Joseph’s sons in turn, blessing them with God’s blessing, not his own—as he bowed worshipfully upon his staff.
22By an act of faith, Joseph, while dying, prophesied the exodus of Israel, and made arrangements for his own burial.
23By an act of faith, Moses’ parents hid him away for three months after his birth. They saw the child’s beauty, and they braved the king’s decree.
24-28By faith, Moses, when grown, refused the privileges of the Egyptian royal house. He chose a hard life with God’s people rather than an opportunistic soft life of sin with the oppressors. He valued suffering in the Messiah’s camp far greater than Egyptian wealth because he was looking ahead, anticipating the payoff. By an act of faith, he turned his heel on Egypt, indifferent to the king’s blind rage. He had his eye on the One no eye can see, and kept right on going. By an act of faith, he kept the Passover Feast and sprinkled Passover blood on each house so that the destroyer of the firstborn wouldn’t touch them.
29By an act of faith, Israel walked through the Red Sea on dry ground. The Egyptians tried it and drowned.
30By faith, the Israelites marched around the walls of Jericho for seven days, and the walls fell flat.
31By an act of faith, Rahab, the Jericho harlot, welcomed the spies and escaped the destruction that came on those who refused to trust God.
32-38I could go on and on, but I’ve run out of time. There are so many more— Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the prophets....Through acts of faith, they toppled kingdoms, made justice work, took the promises for themselves. They were protected from lions, fires, and sword thrusts, turned disadvantage to advantage, won battles, routed alien armies. Women received their loved ones back from the dead. There were those who, under torture, refused to give in and go free, preferring something better: resurrection. Others braved abuse and whips, and, yes, chains and dungeons. We have stories of those who were stoned, sawed in two, murdered in cold blood; stories of vagrants wandering the earth in animal skins, homeless, friendless, powerless—the world didn’t deserve them!—making their way as best they could on the cruel edges of the world.
39-40Not one of these people, even though their lives of faith were exemplary, got their hands on what was promised. God had a better plan for us: that their faith and our faith would come together to make one completed whole, their lives of faith not complete apart from ours.
So the writer of Hebrews basically gives the Jewish Christians the entire history of the Jewish nation saying, don’t forget your past, don’t forget who you are, where you came from. Look at your past, look how people went through what you went through, keep going.
But what is the faith that God calls us to? What does that look like? We could literally spend weeks talking about the idea of faith, the questions that go along with it. Today I want to focus in on the kind of faith that the world around us needs to see in us, the kind of faith that they are dying and hoping we have.
At the end of Hebrews 11, after going through all of these amazing people of faith and talking about the rewards that they received here on earth, the writer says in verse 39 says: And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised.
So does that mean if we follow what God wants, we might not get everything we want? The names that are listed, they met a nice ending to their life, even though they went through some tough times. What about those of us who don’t have an easy time?
In his book, The barbarian way, Erwin McManus describes followers of Jesus, the ones who really get the heart of God as barbarians. He says, we will not make sense to the world around us, we will stand out. He also says, those who really get the heart of God and follow him passionately, will not make sense to the church and the religious establishment.
John the Baptist was one of those guys. He was Jesus’ cousin and he was the person that God chose to prepare Israel for Jesus. This is how it describes John in Matthew 3, verse 1:
1In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, 2"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." 3For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ’Prepare[a] the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’"
4Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. (which if you are wondering, was not the common dress or diet for people) 5Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, 6and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
7But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. 9And do not presume to say to yourselves, ’We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. 10Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
11"I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
If you notice in verse 7 when he calls the religious leaders of the day vipers, it was obvious that he didn’t like them. That isn’t the best way to warm up to people. Basically, he was saying, you are more concerned about the rules of following God, than actually following God.
Even though John followed God so passionately, he had his moments when he wondered if it was worth it. Turn over to Matthew 11. John has been arrested and is sentenced to die. This is what it says in verse 1:
1When Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in their cities.
2Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples 3and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?" 4And Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers[a] are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. 6And blessed is the one who does not fall away on account of me."
Did he answer John’s question? Which is a fair one. John is saying, I am going to die because I follow you, are you worth dying for? So Jesus goes through all of the things happening, all the miracles that are being done. But how could the good things that Jesus is doing hurt John’s faith? After he talks about the miracles, he says, “blessed is the man who doesn’t fall away because of me.”
Can you imagine someone saying, “That’s it, I’m having a crisis of faith, there are too many blind people seeing.” “If one more paralyzed person starts walking, or if one more deaf guy starts hearing, I’m out of here.”
This is what one author has to say about this dilemma: “What Jesus is saying to John has been far too barbaric for us to keep in mainstream Christianity. Jesus was saying, “John, I’m not coming through for you. I’m not getting you out of prison. I’m not sparing your life. Yes, I have done all this and more for others, but the path I choose for you is different from theirs. You’ll be blessed, John, if this does not cause you to fall away.”
So what is this faith that John had and the faith of those we read about earlier in Hebrews 11. What kind of faith does the world around us need to see? And is it possible for us to have this kind of faith. Listen to what it says at the end of Matthew 11, verse 11: 11Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. Meaning, it is possible for us to have greater faith, to lives of more meaning than John did. To have a barbaric faith in our day and age.
I think William Wallace from Braveheart sums up what this faith looks like when he says, “All men die, but very few men ever live.” Isn’t that what we want? I don’t know about you, but I want to be part of the few who really live.
This is how one author described the lives most of us live. We wake up and look in the same old mirror at the same old face. We go downstairs and eat that same old breakfast. Get in that same old car, go to that same old job, sit at the same old desk. Talk to that same old boss, hear that same old boss tell the same old jokes in the same old way. Drive home in the same old car, sit in the same old traffic. Get home, eat that same old dinner, sit in that same old chair, watch the same old TV, fall asleep in the same old chair, watching the same old TV. Get in that same old shower. Go into that same old bed next to that same old wife, ask that same old wife, the same old question, get the same old answer. Go to sleep and do it all again in the morning. And that’s life. But what if there could be more.
Throughout my life as a Christian I have heard a common theme. I have heard it in sermons, people’s prayers and in conversations. Have you ever heard anyone say, “The safest place to be is in the center of the will of God?” Let me ask you something, when John the Baptist was beheaded, was he in the center of the will of God? The people that are talked about in Hebrews 11 who were killed and persecuted, sawed in half, crucified; were they in the center of the will of God? So much of our lives as Christians is to experience safety and security. It is hard to imagine that Jesus went to the cross so that we could safe and secure.
One of my favorite movies of all time are the Rocky movies. In Rocky 3 Mick, Rocky’s manager says to him, “The worst thing happened to you that could ever happen to a fighter, you got civilized.” Many of us have civilized faith, calm faith, easy to understand faith, easy to live with faith. Yet the faith that God wants us to have, the lives that He is dreaming and hoping we will live will require a faith that is not safe, that is not civilized, that is not calm, and it will not be easy. I think this gets at why so many students and kids who have grown up in the church walk away from church when they get older. “If our children are going to walk away from Christ, we need to raise them in such a way that they understand that to walk away from Jesus is to walk away from a life of faith, risk, and adventure and to choose a life that is boring, mundane, and ordinary.”
Here is how this faith works, how we live it out. It’s starts with saying, “Wherever. Wherever you want me to go, I’ll go, whatever you want me to do, I’ll do.” For many of us, this will be a big step. But it is important for when life is difficult, for when it seems God is not “coming through” for us, we will have to be able to come back to this original commitment. This has been important for me, since I still have family members who think I am nuts.
When I was 18, I knew that I wanted to be a pastor. I started by working in the church I grew up in. When I started out, ministry was pretty easy. The churches I was a part of grew and I had a lot of doors open up for me to speak and write. When I graduated college I went on staff at a church in Maryland, where we lived for 3 years. In 2005, we left there to go on staff at a church in Wisconsin. Which began the hardest 2 years of my life. Needless to say, the church in Wisconsin was not a good fit.
When we left Wisconsin, to give you an idea of what we were leaving. One of our friends said to us, the good thing about this year is that Ava will be too young to remember it. The things that were said about us and to us were unbelievable. When we left there, I began to feel completely depressed. The first book I read when we left there was called How my faith survived the church.
After a couple of months of searching for a job, we thought we had one in Colorado. In fact, I drove one of our cars from Kansas City to Colorado with some of our stuff a week before the move. When I got there, I was told that the church was taking back their job offer. I remember driving the 10 hours back to Kansas City thinking, are you kidding. God, what is the deal? That night, I had the most honest conversation with God I think I have ever had. Throughout this time, I kept coming back to a quote that said, “God is more interested in the journey than the destination.”
We finally landed at a church in Florida. Part of my job was to help the lead pastor with preaching on Sunday mornings. After my first time speaking, I learned that it would be the last time I spoke. He told me that if I wanted to use my teaching gift, I could research and write his messages. The next day, he called me and told me it would be best if we didn’t come back to the church.
So there we sat in Florida, no family, not many friends. We kept coming back to God, you called us to this right? This is what we are supposed to be doing isn’t it?
The day after this, I was on a bike ride and for whatever reason, beginnings church came to mind. I had sent my resume to them months ago, but the board said no. So I shot them an e-mail to see if the position was open and so we started talking.
I remember when we came out here to interview and Scott, who leads the board said, “We love that you have gone through this stuff. We are sorry you had to experience it, but many of us have been hurt by Pastors and churches.” You can relate to us.
There are so many times in life when it is easy to quit. When it is easy to give up on our dreams and calling that God has on our lives and cash in on the easy life. One of my problems was that I believe the church should be a force in the culture, that people should know the church exists and that the church should be making a difference. I am not interested in doing church or just showing up each week for a nice service. I don’t want that to happen, I want us to have huge dreams that we can’t do, that we have to count on God to accomplish. That is what living a life of faith is. To say, I am stepping out and I don’t care what others say. Remember, living a life of faith will make other Christians uncomfortable.
Life is full of stories of ordinary people who have lived lives of unbelievable faith.
When I think of barbaric faith, I think of Christy. She went to my college and wanted to be a missionary in the 10/40 window. The 10/40 window encompasses Northern Africa, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Egypt and China. When I was 18 the average length of time a Christian stayed alive in the 10/40 window stayed alive was 2 weeks. Now what would make an 18 year old want to go there? Barbaric faith. Do you know what the missions department at my school did? They tried to talk her out of it. When she graduated, she couldn’t find a missions agency who would support her to go there because she was single and why support somebody who would probably die once she got there. Do you know what she did? She found a missionary over there, and asked if she could come and help. She bought a ticket and left.
Here is something else about missionaries I think is interesting. In the 1900’s when they left their home country to become a missionary, did you know that they packed their stuff in coffins? They were lifers, they weren’t coming back. That is barbaric faith. Being a lifer.
I think of Scott. Scott owned his own real estate company and did really well. He also had 4 kids and a nice house, a good retirement. He and his wife gave up the house, and the company and moved to Papau New Guinea to be missionaries there. You see Scott and Christy had a dream and a vision that couldn’t be taken away. Even when all of Scott’s friends told him he was nuts. Why throw away your safety and security? I remember a conversation I had with him before he left and he said, “It doesn’t seem to take a lot of faith when we have all this safety and security, we kind of take faith and God out of the equation.”
Not that to follow God means we live lives that don’t provide for our families, but think about it, how much faith are you living on when it comes to your life? Your family? Your dreams? Your finances? Your time?
Tory is someone else that comes to mind. Tory was a student in the jr. high ministry I led in Maryland. She came to our church as a 7th grader, didn’t know God. Every week, she always had these incredible questions. One week, I was talking about purpose and in the middle of my talk she raises her hand. I said, “yes tory.” She stands up and asks, “So if we all have a purpose and God has a plan for everybody and I die tonight, is that God’s plan? What about the innocent people who die in Iraq? Is that God’s plan?” Those were the type of questions she asked. After several months of coming she came up to me and said, “I’m a Christian, I believe this stuff.” In the next year I watched as Tory led almost 20 of her friends to Christ. I got an e-mail from her a couple of months ago, she is now living outside of Chicago. The church she went to didn’t have small groups for high school students so she started one in her house. In 1 month, she had over 70 people coming to her small group. That is what living by faith looks like.
All of us are going to die, but not all of us are going to live.
Erwin McManus closes his book The Barbarian Way with this illustration. If you have ever been to the zoo, you have seen all the animals. Did you know that there are words to describe a gathering of different animals?
For example, what do we call a lot of bees? A swarm
A group of ants? A colony
A group of whales? A pod
A group of fish? Schools
Cattle? Herds
Birds? Flocks
Lions? Pride
Crows? Murder
Tigers? Ambush
Buzzards? Committees. Which explains a lot about churches and our committees
Flamingos? Flamboyants
My favorite is what they call rhinos. You see rhinos are the big animals with the horn. Rhinos can run at 30 miles an hour, which is faster than a squirrel and is pretty scary when you think about their size. It gets scarier when you learn that while they are running at 30 mph they can only see 30 feet in front of them. They could care less what is at 31 feet, because they can’t see it. Whatever is at 31 feet needs to care. Do you know what they call a group of rhinos running at full speed? They call it a crash. That is life I think God wants us to live as Christians.
We need to live lives of impossible dreams, not caring what others are saying. As I said before, I have friends and family who think I am nuts. In fact, some of them want to save me from this. I am driven by a belief that God is not done with me yet.
When I was a freshmen in college, soon after becoming a Christian one of my mentors told me to spend some time alone with God. The purpose was to come up with a prayer request that I would pray for the rest of my life, what would drive me as a Pastor.
I came up with 2 that I believe God clearly gave to me that day. The first one is that when I became a lead pastor of a church like I am here, that I would retire from that church. And the second one is that God would use my ministry to reach millions of people.
So what keeps you going? What dreams is God building up inside of you that if you don’t do them, you will explode? Maybe you don’t have one yet. I would encourage you get alone with God and ask, what are you calling me to? He might just be saying to you today, just step out, stop waiting.
As Ryan and the band come up, I want to close with reading a poem that I found a couple of years ago. If you want a copy of this, you can find it on our discussion blog. It is called The Fellowship of the Unashamed.
I am a part of the "Fellowship of the Unashamed." The die has been cast. The decision has been made. I have stepped over the line. I won’t look back, let up, slow down, back away or be still.
My past is redeemed, my present makes sense and my future is secure. I’m finished and done with low living, sight walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, mundane talking, cheap giving and dwarfed goals.
I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits or popularity. I don’t have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded or rewarded. I now live by faith, lean on His presence, love with patience, live by prayer and labor with power.
My face is set, my gait is fast, my goal is heaven, my road is narrow, my way is rough, my companions are few, my Guide is reliable and my mission is clear. I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, deluded or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of adversity, negotiate at the table of the enemy, pander at the pool of popularity or meander in the maze of mediocrity.
I won’t give up, shut up, let up or slow up until I have stayed up, stored up, prayed up, paid up and spoken up for the cause of Christ. I am a disciple of Jesus. I must go till He comes, give till I drop, preach till all know and work till He stops me. And when He comes for His own, He will have no problem recognizing me. My banner is clear: I am a part of the "Fellowship of the Unashamed."
