There were many dramatic answers to prayer in the recent war with Iraq. The short duration of the conflict, the relatively few lives lost, the recovery of many of our POW’s, and many more things of which we are not even aware. I watched the interview with two helicopter pilots who were shot down in Iraq. Artillery was hitting all of the helicopters. Large caliber bullets were ripping through the aircraft and grazing their feet and head. Miraculously, none of them were wounded. Only one helicopter went down in that fight, and even the pilots who went down were not hit by bullets or killed in the crash. The downed pilots also returned home safely in only twenty-two days. The other pilots and crew were able to return to base in spite of being hit many times by the tremendous bombardment of artillery. These things were not coincidences or luck. It was the result of the people of God praying in faith for protection for our troops. God answered prayer as we prayed in faith.
Every Christian needs faith. In fact, our relationship with God begins with faith, for the Bible says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith” (Ephesians 2:8). Faith is how we come to God and enter into a relationship with him. The Danish theologian Kierkegaard called this act of faith the “leap of faith.” But this is not a jump into the dark, it is a leap into the arms of God. Faith is not only a gift, it is something that must be developed. We are supposed to grow in faith. The Bible says, “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 are some people who just have a special gift of faith. They can believe God for big things, unbelievable things, and those things come to pass. They pray and amazing things happen. This is a special gift from God, and we can pray to receive that kind of faith. But even though it may not be your special area of gifting, you can still grow in faith. How do we develop the gift of faith? I would like to talk about three things that will affect your growth in this area. The first is: Your growth in faith is directly related to your concept of God. Lee Strobel, in his book The Case for Faith, says that when he is talking with someone who does not believe in God, he often says, “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in. It may be that I do not believe in that God either.” When we are talking about having faith in God, we have to be sure that we are talking about the right God — the God revealed in the Bible, not one you have been told about or dreamed up in your own mind. If you have a concept of a frightening God who loves to find your faults and load you up with guilt, you will have trouble having faith in him. If your concept of God is one who is arbitrary and vengeful, you will not want to have faith in him; you will run from him. If your idea of God is one who is weak, distant or disinterested, how could you trust that kind of God?
When I arrived at the last church I served, I discovered from some of the staff that the teacher of the Senior High Sunday School Class was actually an atheist. I looked over the senior high classroom and there was a picture of Jesus that had fallen to the floor and was broken. I waited to see how long it would stay there before someone picked it up, or repaired and rehung it. After a couple of months I did it myself. The story behind the young man teaching the class is that he attended one of the most conservative and legalistic “Christian” colleges in the country. There were so many rules that each student was given a large notebook full of them. There were also a corresponding number of punishments. This young man and his wife were both graduates of this institution and had so rebelled against the harsh, ugly god this institution had promoted that they both rejected Christianity entirely. His purpose in teaching the senior high group was to keep them from believing the things he was taught. Needless to say, I did not leave him that position.
Dallas Willard says, “The acid test for any theology is this: Is the God presented one that can be loved, heart, soul, mind, and strength? If the thoughtful, honest answer is: ‘Not really,’ then we need to look elsewhere or deeper. It does not really matter how sophisticated intellectually or doctrinally our approach is. If it fails to set a lovable God — a radiant, happy, friendly, accessible, and totally competent being — before ordinary people, we have gone wrong. We should not keep going in the same direction, but turn around and take another road.”
This was the problem of the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. They put before the people a God who was mainly interested in rules. When Christ came and grace broke through, with undeserving people experiencing God, they were offended. When Jesus performed miracles on the Sabbath they were outraged. They missed the miracle. They missed the human compassion. They missed the work of God because they were absorbed in their rules. The average person of the day saw this God as unapproachable. It seemed impossible to keep all the rules, so they gave up even trying to please him. These ordinary people wanted to come to God, but they were prevented by a false concept of God which the religious elite kept before them.
But Jesus came along and gave them another picture of God. In Jesus’ stories, God was the Father who longed for the return of his prodigal son. He searched for the lost like a shepherd searched for lost sheep. He forgave the worst of sinners. He fed the multitudes. He wanted to heal people and restore them. He was willing to come in person to tell them that he loved them. Ultimately, he was willing to take their guilt upon himself and die in their place. When Jesus corrected their picture of God, faith was restored. People could believe in a God like this. And even though Jesus preached a morality that was even more difficult and demanding than the Old Testament law, people flocked to hear Jesus and be near him. They wanted a relationship with this God of mercy.
But there was another misconception with which the people of Jesus’ day had to deal. They believed that the age of miracles had passed. They knew that God had parted the Red Sea for the Hebrews in order to bring them out of Egypt. They knew about the miracles that prophets like Elijah and Elisha performed. They knew about the miracle of Daniel in the lion’s den and the supernatural deliverance of the Hebrews in the fiery furnace. But they believed that that was then, and now was now. They believed that God no longer performed those kind of miracles. But Jesus shattered their ideas of a remote and impotent God. The miracles he performed were greater than anything they had heard from the past. There were healings, deliverance, and even people who were raised from the dead. The important thing to see is that once Jesus began to perform these miracles, his disciples saw them as the norm.
As I have been reading the book of Acts, once again I am impressed that miracles were normative for the early church. And I don’t think it was because it was a special dispensation, it was because they had been given a picture of a powerful, miracle-working God. Perhaps we don’t see many miracles today simply because we don’t have a big enough picture of God. If you get a picture of a God like that, it will change how you pray and the kind of things for which you are able to believe God.
The second thing that we need to realize is: Your growth in faith is directly related to your concept of the world. If your idea of the world is basically material, that is to say, you think of it as just molecules guided by mechanical processes, then you will be hampered by your concept of the world. If you believe that the world and everything in it are simply accidents of time and chance, then your ability to have faith in God will be severely limited. If you believe that everything that exists today just evolved without the creative work of God, then your concept of a mechanical world will hinder you from understanding that we live in more than a material world, we live in a spiritual, supernatural world where God is still very active and has a purpose for everything he has created. If you believe that God has separated himself from the world, you will not understand how interested and involved he wants to be in your life today. The Bible says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 19:1).
If you believe that this world is dominated by evil and that good is on the losing side, then your understanding of God and your ability to believe in him are going to be greatly distorted. You are not going to be able to believe that good overcomes evil. God will appear helpless to you in the midst of overwhelming evil. I love the hymn we sing which says:
This is my Father’s world,
O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the Ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world,
The battle is not done;
Jesus who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and heaven be one.
God reveals himself to us in his world. He can be found everywhere, and his power is in full display for all who will open their eyes to see. But how often even Christians are blind to what God is doing. We don’t understand the power of God and all that is available to us in him.
Many years ago, at the Tournament of Roses parade, the Standard Oil Company entered a beautiful float. They had decorated the float meticulously and thought of every detail, but in the middle of the parade the oil company’s float came to a grinding halt and the rest of the parade with it. Confusion reigned, but it soon became apparent what had happened. The engine driving the float had run out of gas. The designers of Standard Oil’s float had done everything well, except they failed to avail themselves of their own company’s vast resources of oil. There are many Christians who have run out of gas in the middle of the parade — only because they failed to realize the resources available to them. They have been running on their own fuel, instead of using the vast supply available to them from the Holy Spirit. Those resources are tapped not by effort, but by faith.
The third thing that we need to realize is: Your growth in faith is directly related to your concept of yourself. To grow in faith you have to understand who God is, whose world it is and who you are. Let me be careful to say that this knowledge does not just come through study, although that may be a part of it. Primarily this understanding comes as you draw near to the heart of God. God reveals these truths to you as you come to know him personally. The closer you come to God the more faith you have, because you learn to love and trust him. You understand that God loves the world and has filled it with good. You learn to love yourself because you learn about his amazing love for you and how much he values you. He says to you, “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession” (Deuteronomy 7:6). When you belong to Christ you become a King’s kid. You are a prince or princess — people who are destined to rule with Christ in his eternal kingdom. You are not a wretched sinner who is unworthy of anything, you are a child of God whom he loves more than you will ever fully understand.
If you understand who you are in God’s eyes, then you will understand that you can ask great things of a God who loves you enormously and he will answer you. Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:9-13). You can ask because you are a child of God and he delights to do good to you.
But exercising the gift of faith always involves a risk. You have to risk trusting God. You have to take the leap of faith. You sometimes have to step out into the unknown.
Many of you have seen the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It is the George Lucas film starring Harrison Ford as Indian Jones. Jones and his father are in search of the Holy Grail — the cup supposedly used by Christ at the Last Supper, and then used to catch his blood on the cross. After a long series of near-death adventures in their search, they come to the passage that leads to the cave where the Holy Grail was kept. But the passage opens to reveal a great abyss — a 100 foot deep crevice which is 100 feet wide. On the other side there appears to be only a stony cliff wall. As he looks down, Indy says, “It’s a leap of faith. Oh, God.” His father calls to him and says, “You must believe, boy. You must believe.” Then he does it; he lifts one foot high in the air and brings it down, even though he sees nothing. He steps into space and his foot rests on something, even though he appears to be in midair. He has taken the step of faith, and as he did, the path became solid under his feet. This is a metaphor of how Christians exercise the gift of faith. They take steps without seeing where their feet are going to land, and as they step out in faith, God provides the path. As the Bible says, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1).
Rodney J. Buchanan
May 18, 2003
Mulberry St. UMC
Mt. Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
THE GIFT OF FAITH
Questions for May 18, 2003
1. What are some of the false concepts of God that you have had to struggle with?
2. What (or who) was it that helped you overcome these misconceptions?
3. How did these misconceptions hinder your faith, and how did a correct concept of God help your faith?
4. The theory of evolution has been very controversial. How does the acceptance of this theory influence a person’s thinking about the world? About the power & personality of God?
5. How would it affect your faith if you believed that miracles were only for another time, but not for today?
6. How would your faith be affected if you believed that God could not love you because of the things you have done?
7. How would your faith be affected if you believed that you were precious in God’s sight in spite of what you have done?
8. How would you live differently if you believed that anything was possible?
9. If you could ask God for one thing, what would it be? Would you ask and believe for that now?
10. Read the entire chapter of Hebrews 11. How does this chapter change your idea of what faith is?
