We owe a debt of gratitude to God for you, brothers, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing. 2 Thessalonians 1:3
We “owe a debt of gratitude to God for you, brothers . . .”
What are people usually thanking God for?
We’ve seen God answer prayers in our congregation over the past few months. We have thanked God for His answers. I don’t remember any time in the past few months that we have thanked God that someone’s faith or love is growing. Yet, this is Paul’s prayer of thanksgiving.
Paul thanks God for the Church’s growing faith.
What faith is (and disadvantages of little faith)
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1
“Little faith possesses but it knows not that it possesses”. Chuck Smith
What faith isn’t
Faith is not as Mark Twain accused: “believing what you know ain’t so”.
Faith is not a denial of reality. It is the embracing of a higher reality.
An illustration of reasonable faith-the Fall (I choose a volunteer and ask him/her to choose 6 others who all sand in a line 3 across from 3, elbows interlinked, and I stand on a chair, turn my back from them, and fall. They, hopefully, catch me.) This is reasonable, because I know I weigh about 200 lbs. divided by 6 people, that’s 12 arms, or about 15 lbs per arm. Any reasonably healthy person can handle carrying 15 lbs per arm. Add to this the tension each one would feel (hopefully), wanting to catch me. So I fall, with a reasonable expectation I’ll be caught.
“Reason is our soul's left hand, faith her right”. John Donne
But Reason alone is not sufficient in our relationship with God. He is beyond and above our reason. It is not as Ayn Rand said, that God is, by definition, beyond our understanding. He is both within and beyond our understanding. We can comprehend much by natural reason. But He is also above natural reason. As Blaise Pascal said
In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't. pensees
We need more than reason, we must take a step beyond what is attained merely by the mind.
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Hebrews 11:6
There problem is, we may begin with small faith-our faith may be little. You may feel this morning that your faith is weak or small. If so, this message is for you. Your faith may be(gin) small, but it doesn’t have to stay that way.
How faith can grow
Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into. Mahatma Gandhi
Jesus said “if you have faith like a mustard seed you can move mountains” . . .
Surely part of this is that all that is required is a little bit of faith, yet Jesus uses the mustard seed to illustrate something else-the Kingdom of God-that, though it begins small, it grows to become a bush large enough to be a home for forest creatures.
Our faith, though it may start small, should grow to the point that we can move mountains.
I’d like to suggest that our faith grows as our understanding and relationship with of God grows. And this morning I’d like to suggest five ways we get to know God better, so that our faith can grow, like a healthy plant:
Prayer
Bible Study
Obedience
Fellowship
Suffering
Get to know God better-Prayer.
Pray, and let God worry. Martin Luther
Prayer is the ground in which our souls receive their nourishment. It is the sun which shines on the leaves of our minds, and transforms the light of God’s glory into the energy of imagination to create and strength to endure. Prayer is the environment in which our faith finds its life.
Get to know God better-Bible Study
Give the benefit of the doubt-if you come to a passage in the Bible that either you don’t understand, or you think it is downright wrong, just keep moving. In time that passage may become clear. This way you don’ t get bogged down. Remember, the Bible has stood the test of thousands of years of intense scrutiny. Your perspective may change by the time you get to the end of the book.)
Test-take a principle of the Bible and take a step of obedience in faith. See what God does (pastor Chuck calls this T&P, tried and proved)
Learn from the good and the bad examples-The Word of God is alive and powerful. It is able to train us in the life of faith as we see the lives of those who have trusted in God in generations past. Adam teaches us communion with God, Noah, God’s judgment, Moses God’s deliverance, Joshua, God’s victory, Samuel God’s word. Every story provides our minds with the fuel of a life of faith propelled toward the destination of God’s will. As we hide His word in our hearts, our hearts grow with patient, enduring strength.
Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe. Saint Augustine
Get to know God better- Obedience-Ask God for direction in a specific situation and when you feel He has guided, take a step of faith.
Get to know God better-Fellowship with other believers.
This week a friend, a minister of the Gospel, was sharing some of the struggles he has experienced in the past year. He said what pulled him through was godly friendships. The President of Wheaton College, Philip Ryken, told him, “What a friend we have in Jesus. And what a Jesus we have in friends”.
As iron sharpens iron,
so one man sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17
build one another up in your most holy faith . . . Jude 20
Get to know God better-Suffering-trust in the midst of suffering
The Thessalonian church was remarkable in that it was growing in the midst of persecution. In this same way, Paul’s own faith was built, as he saw God’s faithfulness through his hardships.
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Philippians 3:10-11
Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark. Rabindranath Tagore
Helen Keller lived in a world of darkness. Yet she learned to feel the light. (struck blind and deaf by the age of two, Helen lived in a world of darkness and silence. She felt no remorse for her violent outbursts, and broke a doll given to her by her teacher, Anne Sullivan. Anne swept the shards of the doll aside and took Helen outside)
We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Some one was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten–a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away. *
I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken. I felt my way to the hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had done, and for the first time I felt repentance and sorrow.
I learned a great many new words that day. I do not remember what they all were; but I do know that mother, father, sister, teacher were among them–words that were to make the world blossom for me, "like Aaron's rod, with flowers." It would have been difficult to find a happier child than I was as I lay in my crib at the close of the eventful day and lived over the joys it had brought me, and for the first time longed for a new day to come. (from her autobiography, Story of My Life)
“There are none so blind as those who refuse to see”.
During her lifetime, she received many honors in recognition of her accomplishments, including the being the first blind person to earn a Bachelor’s degree in 1904, the Theodore Roosevelt Distinguished Service Medal in 1936, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, and election to the Women's Hall of Fame in 1965. She also received honorary doctoral degrees from Temple University and Harvard University and from the universities of Glasgow, Scotland; Berlin, Germany; Delhi, India; and Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Keller died in her sleep on June 1, 1968, just a few weeks before her 88th birthday, after a series of strokes. (Biography.com)
Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light. Helen Keller
Faith gives us insight into a world unseen, and teaches us to communicate through the eternal Word. It raises us out of the slough of despair, and lifts our eyes toward heaven in our greatest distress. It teaches us Truth, and discerns falsehood. It gives us sight where we are blind, and hearing where we are deaf. And, at some point in our relationship with God, faith fades into knowledge.
The supreme indication of faith is love.
We owe a debt of gratitude to God for you, brothers, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing.
As we learn of God we, like the Thessalonians, grow in our understanding of God’s nature, and through that understanding we grow in faith. We learn to know God through
Prayer
Bible Study
Obedience
Fellowship
Suffering
And through each God trains us what it means to love each other. We grow in faith and love.
