Some time ago I read a bumper sticker which said, “Keep the Faith” printed in bold black letters. But underneath was another line in smaller print that said, “If you have any left.” We live in a very cynical and skeptical world, and many people are unsure of exactly what they are supposed to believe. In the midst of life’s uncertainties and trials, you want to know what you believe. For what you believe determines the kind of person you will be. What you believe determines how you feel emotionally. It determines your attitude toward life and how you live your life. Faith is not just psyching yourself out with spiritual nonsense; faith searches for the truth and attaches itself to it. Faith is necessary because truth is not always obvious. You have to be in quest. You have to want the truth and seek the truth.
The first thing that is important to know about faith in God is: Faith must be specific. I once had a couple talk to me about having their baby baptized. They were being pressured by the family to do it, but they were not sure they believed all the things the church taught. They said they just wanted to teach their child that God was everywhere and in everything. God was in the birds and the trees. I explained that what they were talking about was Pantheism, and that it was not compatible with the Christian faith. They were offended and decided not to have the child baptized, preferring a general idea of God rather than a specific one.
The Christian faith does not leave us with the option of making up our own minds about its basic doctrines. The truth is presented for our acceptance, not for our vote. It is important to believe in something, but it is vital that what you believe is something that’s true and real. What good does it do to believe in something if it is a lie? There are many people talking about “spirituality” these days, but what they are talking about is far removed from Christianity and often antithetical to it. Many celebrities are sporting all kinds of designer religions today, as though their fame legitimizes their foolishness. Christian faith is not a collection of beliefs that you glean from various world religions. It is crucial that what you believe in is actually the Christian faith, because your life depends on it. God rewards our faith when we put our whole trust in him. Philip Yancey makes this important observation: “[After the resurrection] Christ presented himself only to people who already believed in him. So far as we know, not a single unbeliever saw Jesus after his death.” When you decide to put your faith in God, God will reward your faith and reveal himself to you. This is important, because what you believe determines the quality of your life here, as well as your eternal destiny. The more you choose faith the more you will understand. Anselm (1033-1109) had it right when he prayed, “Lord, I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand.”
The Apostle’s Creed developed quickly in the life of the church. We begin to see it in various forms as soon as the early part of the second century. It’s development was important because there were those who were spreading false teaching which was contrary to what Jesus taught us about God. Before that, it was Christ who prompted the first creed to be spoken about himself. The rumors were flying about just who Jesus was. Some were saying he was a prophet, and others understood him to be merely a great teacher. But wanting his disciples to know and express the truth, he turned to them and said, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter, in that great statement of faith that is the distillation of all truth, said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). That is actually the first Christian Creed.
Whenever the Gospel comes it comes with truth, and we cannot make the Christian faith ours until we become willing to submit to those truths. The Bible says, “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” (John 3:18).
The second thing we must understand is: Faith calls for surrender. If you cannot accept the basic truths of God’s Word, what Christians since the time of Christ have understood and believed, then you need to take a serious look at where you are spiritually. You have every right to believe whatever you want, but you do not have the right to reject biblical, historic Christian teaching and still call your beliefs Christian. A surrender to God’s truth is called for.
Shortly after seminary, in my first years of ministry, I joined a study group with other pastors in the area. One day we were discussing Christology when one of the pastors from a major denomination said, “I don’t believe in Jesus Christ like some do. I believe that he was an exceptional person, but just a person like you and I.” One of the other men in the group was an Episcopalian priest who had been a friend of this man for years. He turned to his friend and said, “Then by definition you are not a Christian.” The man was stunned at his friend’s statement, but the priest was correct. This pastor wanted to reject the Christ of the Bible, and substitute him with a Christ of his own liking, while continuing to call himself a Christian. He had every right to believe what he wanted to believe, but he should have had the integrity to stop calling himself a Christian.
Robert Bellah in his book Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, a sociological study of modern America, and probably the most important book written in the 80’s, quotes one of the people in his case study as saying, “I don’t think there are answers in life. I think there are only really good dialogues.” When Bella asked what a good dialogue might be like, the person said it would be one where “there’s just no one right.” How typical! That person is like so many in our culture today. The problem we are faced with is that there is Someone who is right, and until we learn to submit our minds and hearts to him, until we learn to follow him and seek for his truth, we will miss the whole point of life. It is that crucial. Dr. Richard Lenski, a great Bible teacher and writer, once said, “The Gospel is not. . . an argument, a piece of reasoning that is gauged to convince [people]; it is only an announcement. And the astounding thing about this announcement is the fact that it meets our hearts square on, in a direct clash, that it aims to reverse them completely, to set them going in the very opposite direction.”
When I meet Christ in this “direct clash” he must win. I come with head bowed. My will is surrendered to him, and my mind submits to a knowledge and wisdom that is far above my own. I dare not try to force my will, my thinking and my demands on him. I come as one waiting for great commands, great direction and great purposes for my life. I come waiting for his truth to be impressed upon my mind, for my heart to be enlightened and my will to be engaged and changed.
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 is a peace and a confidence that comes when we realize that God is more real than we are, and we surrender to his truth. What is important is not so much that I believe in him in a general sense, but whether I belong to him body and soul. It is not God who is on trial at all, but you and I. He can continue to exist with or without us, but we cannot exist one moment without him. He does not need me to believe in him, but I need him and I need to understand that he is there, and that he has a direction for my life.
It amuses me when people talk about believing in the existence of God as though they were doing God some grand favor — as if God wept tears of gratitude when they saw fit to believe in his existence. I walked into the night not long ago and looked up into the heavens and found myself praying: “God forgive us for thinking we are in charge of this world, as if we are the only ones who exist, and there is no Other. Forgive us for thinking we are moving and changing the world, and that you have nothing to say and can do nothing about it. Forgive us for deluding ourselves for refusing to believe that there is no higher form of life than ourselves. Forgive our foolishness and pride.” You need faith for your sake, not God’s.
There are so many who do not believe because they do not understand. They feel that if it does not make sense to them then it cannot be. That is the height of egocentricity. Much like the small boy who was seen digging a hole along the beach with a trench running from the sea to his hole in the sand. Someone asked him what he was doing, and he replied, “I am draining the ocean.” Trying to understand everything before we believe anything is foolishness. It is like thinking that we can make a little trench from heaven to us and we can drain heaven’s ocean dry of all the knowledge of God. We have enough pride to think it could all fit into our little minds. We cannot possibly understand it all, and that is why, as the Bible says, “We live by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). Faith comes before understanding, not after understanding. Faith is accepting what God has revealed about himself in the Scriptures, because we know we cannot understand everything about who he is and all that he does on our own.
The third thing it is important to understand is: Faith must be adequate. A big God calls for a big faith. You cannot have a little faith or a partial faith; it must be a complete faith. You cannot choose to believe some things and not others. It is all or nothing. The Bible says, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. . . . By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (Hebrews 11:1,3).
Saying we do not believe in God is like walking up to Mt. Everest and shouting at the mountain that we no longer believe it exists. We can shout what we please, for as long as we like, but the mountain will live on long after we have died and our doubts are gone. God will continue to exist whether or not we ever believe in him. Our denials will not affect God as much as they will affect us. Our lack of faith and belief will not alter God’s existence one iota, but it will most certainly alter our existence, both in this world and in the world to come.
I want to be careful to say that this does not mean you will never have any questions or wonder about anything. Frederick Buechner once wrote, “Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.” God is not going to answer all our questions. We will always have questions. There will always be some things we don’t understand, but the Apostle’s Creed says that he is “God the Father Almighty.” When we understand the bigness of God, many of our questions are automatically answered.
The Apostle Paul went to Greece to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. When he arrived he saw a pagan altar, and underneath were the words: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Seeing the altar, Paul said to them: “For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being’” (Acts 17:23-28).
You see, there is not only a God, but he is almighty. He is powerful enough to create all things that now exist. He is a miracle working God because he is God almighty.
The fourth thing that we need to understand about faith is that: Faith must be personal. It must be your faith, and it must be faith in a personal God. There is another important word in the creed. “I believe in God the Father, almighty.” God is a person. He has personality. The word “Father” puts a face on God. He is not only a God who is absolutely holy in nature and powerful beyond description, but he is also a God who is love by choice, and approachable by you. He is not just the “Man Upstairs.” He is more than just a Mind behind the universe and laws of nature. He is so much more than some kind of Ultimate Being or Supernatural Force. “I believe in God, the Father.” He is a God who desires relationship. I can know him. I must know him.
What a privilege is mine. I not only believe in a God Almighty, but I can believe in a God who is my Father. I can actually know him. He can be intimate and real to me. To believe that the Mind and Power behind our universe is just a impersonal force, whose only interest is to keep the machinery of nature in operation, is as absurd as not believing there is any God at all. He is so much more than just impersonal Intelligence. He is irresistible Joy. He is eternal, inexhaustible Love. He is rapturous Beauty. And he comes to us and opens himself to fellowship with us — his creation.
His personality is expressed in his creation. His desire for variety is seen in the difference in each snowflake, every fingerprint, and the enormous varieties in plants, and trees, and people. Everything about him is beautiful, and is expressed in his creativeness. We see it every time a flower blooms. We feel it in a baby’s touch. We hear it in music. We smell it in the Spring air. Everything he does is beautiful! Mighty as he is, and insignificant as I am, he has shown his love for me and expressed his desire to know me. And he invites me to know him. I lay at his feet subdued by his strength, awed by his majesty, and won by his love.
If you believe in God, what kind of God do you believe in? A “Man upstairs?” An impersonal Force behind nature? An Ultimate Being? Or a God who is not only real, but personal? And if you do, you cannot stop there. Belief requires action. If you believe he is personal, have you allowed him to be personal with you? Have you opened your heart and gotten to know him and let him know you? If you believe he is a God of love, have you allowed him to love you, and do you love him? If you believe he is a personal God, do you have a personal relationship with him? After all, “God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27).
Rodney J. Buchanan
April 22, 2012
Amity United Methodist Church
rodbuchanan2000@yahoo.com
