From Faith to Faith

Pet Peeves about asking: Number one in a series

1 John 5:

14  And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us:
15  And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.

The concept of asking according to God's will seems silly, if something is of God's will, why do we need to ask?  If we, by our free will, choose to walk in His will, would our needs not come about with or without His asking?  I mean, if its God's will it will come to pass, thats kind of the nature of the will of an omnipotent being.  In my mind, the need to ask seems to imply some deficit on God's end, that He must be informed by us about our needs and wants.  This is obviously not true as the requisite proof text illustrates, "...for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him."  Matthew 6:8.  He's omniscient,  of course He knows, so why must we then ask Him for things?

Quick answer, because the Bible tells us to do it that way. 

    James 4:2  Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war,     yet ye have not, because ye ask not.

Easy as that, if we don't ask God for stuff won't get it and we'll end up killing each other to try and get it.  Anything deeper than that I really can't say for sure.

Don't worry though, I'm not going to leave with out a little speculating.  My gut tells me it has something to do with our Father/child relationship with God. 

    Mt 7:11  "If you (earthly parents) then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,         how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!"

Our earthly parents (in theory) give us everything we need to live and to do their will, but kids still ask for all sorts of other things.  If the thing asked for fits into the parents will, they will happily give it to the child.   God, like our early parents, except perfect, will also happily give us good things for which we ask.  This does nothing for the question of whether our needing to ask for things somehow lessens the potency of God's will, but it makes me feel better somehow.

Another speculation lies in my lasting fixation on faith and works.  If we are to receive good things from God by faith, where is the step by which we exercise the faith which God has given us.  Maybe He tells us to ask Him for things as another way of walking out our faith.   We see a need, God gives us faith that the fulfillment of said need is of His will, we ask Him, He gives it, and our faith is built up by seeing Him work.  Maybe?

Whatever the case, God says ask Him for what you need or, more appropriately, ask Him for the things which fit into His will and you'll get them.  Don't ask and you don't get nuthin'.

   

Step Back

Aaron makes a good point in his comment on the last post.  Its hard to separate God from His law and I think I'm splitting hairs a litte too closely here.  Or maybe my wording is just bad.  I know this, whatever the motives or our hearts, the law is good and must be followed.  Either you follow the law because God has filled your heart with faith and you then do what the Father does, or you follow the law because you believe that doing good things will make you good.

Faith and the Law

Galatians 3:

21  Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law.
22  But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
23  But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed.
24  Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
25  But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.

I had never thought of the law as keeping us, "under guard".  Though, you can really think of it in two ways depending on how you interpret guard.  It can either mean to protect or to imprison (the Greek word can mean either, it depends on the context).  Protection gives the impression of compassion and mercy, that God gave us the law to keep us from destroying ourselves until faith comes and empowers us to live rightly.  Imprisonment has a harsher connotation, implying that we are all utterly given over to sin and the law was given as a guard to force us to obey because this is God's world and there are rules and you will obey, one way or another.

I'm not sure which is necessarily true, but, they both imply essentially the same thing.  We all live in God's house and we'll follow His rules but, apart from faith, we are incapable of following those rules.  The law looks like its, sort of, a "good enough" to live in His house.  It keeps us from going crazy, it keeps us from destroying ourselves and others, it keeps Him from having to punish us, but it by no means makes us perfect.  It does not make us His sons.

Salvation has never been by works of the law as we see with Abraham.  God chose him, gave him faith, and Abraham was then righteous.  And because he was made righteous,Abraham had no need of the law, He simply obeyed God because that's what righteous people do.  So, who do you obey?  Do you obey God because He's God and He's given you faith or do you obey the law because it has you under guard?       

Real Faith

The last post ended on the idea of real faith versus counterfeit faith which is really just a different way of talking about having faith or not having faith.  Either you have faith or you don't.  Counterfeit faith, though, is referring to a specific instance of thinking you're in faith when really you are not, or beginning in faith but stepping out of it later on.  Lets try an example:

Matthew 14:
28  And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.
29  And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus.
30  But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.
31  And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?

Peter began in faith, He asked Jesus if he should do something, Jesus responded that he should and Peter trusted Jesus and obeyed word, a perfect example of faith but almost as soon as he began he stepped back out of faith and began to sink.   Still, as soon as He fell Jesus was there to pick him up, because  faith is a gift and, I believe, if we fall while we walk in it Jesus is there to save us. 

This is a very dramatic example and may not be so useful to what we're talking about here.  Its easy to tell when you step out of faith while walking on water because either you're walking on water or you're not, one mis-step and you're all wet.  It would have been trickier matter if I, for instance, had ignored God's leading to go to a meeting with a temp agency.  I would have stepped out of faith just as much as Peter but would have been distinctly less wet. 

The "what ifs" of this situation are endless, would God have provided this opportunity a different way or would I have missed the boat?  Would Jesus have reached out to take hold of me and send me back to faith?  Would I have taken that help?  Its impossible to say what would have happened but I have to believe that so long as we honestly seek God He'll provide us with the grace to walk in the faith He gives us (for a just man falls seven times and rises again.  Prov. 24:16).

The other situation of counterfeit faith is much scarier, it is to be, essentially, willfully deceived.  Its one thing to take a mis-step, to be taken hold of by Jesus and to get back on the right path.  Its another thing entirely to knowingly take a mis-step, re-buff the aid of Jesus and carry on in the way which you think is right.  All we can do is pray that our eyes be opened to anything of this nature in our own lives, that God would make us humble enough to repent of it and return to faith.  It can be so difficult to see, though, as our own will often times "feels" more like faith than does actual faith.  We, once again, must be able to look past our own wills, our own feelings, our own ideas and find the true will of God. 

      

Shooting Holes in my Ideas

Matthew 17:
15  "Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers severely; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water.
16  "So I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him."
17  Then Jesus answered and said, "O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me."
18  And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour.
19  Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, "Why could we not cast it out?"
20  So Jesus said to them, "Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.

Jesus told the disciples to cast out demons, they obeyed, they failed.  Faith is, therefore, more than simply obedience to God's word.  How is it then that we can do what God says and not have faith?  My initial response wants to be that they did not "believe hard enough", that though they had some faith they didn't have enough to get the job done.  I believe this fails on two levels. 

First, faith is God's gift to us, once given we've got what we need to accomplish the task He's asked us to do.  If it was His will that this demon come out, the then He gave the disciples the faith necessary to cast it out.  Its God's responsibility to give us faith and He never comes up short. 

Secondly, I believe Jesus exhortation to the disciples contradicts this type of thinking.  "if you have faith as a mustard seed..." indicates that we need not think about faith in terms of amounts but as a simple having or not having.   Either you believe or you don't.  Your belief is evidence by your obedience, your unbelief by your shrinking back from obedience.

Thinking about faith in terms of amounts is either emotions or pride.  Emotions distort our perception so that the same faith can appear greater or smaller depending on the associating sensations of confidence or fear.  Faith is faith regardless of the feelings which come along with it.  Pride, obviously, likes the idea of big and small faith.  We love to be able to say, "Look at my great big overcoming faith".  "I have so much more faith than that person".  "My faith is bigger than yours", and so on.  Faith is faith, do what God tells you to do and don't worry about whether or not your faith is big or small.

But, back to the main question.  Obviously the disciples did not have faith or the demon would have come out.  Either they stepped out of God's will and, thus, out of faith as well, or there is more to faith than mere obedience.  I don't think that it is the first option or the disciples would not have been rebuked for their inability to cast out the demon.  Therefore, there must be more to faith than our obedience alone.  I think a lot of it may be due to motives.  Trying to walk in God's will for our own reasons will not work.  This scripture does not say that this is the case but there are a number of other instances in the Bible in which people try to wield "spiritual power" for their own purposes (Simon the sorcerer) and fail. 

I guess I have no real evidence that the disciples were trying to walk out faith for their own purposes but I'm not sure what else would hinder them.  I think I'll delve into that another time as it gets into the idea of real faith versus fake faith which is a big ugly subject all its own and I've rambled on for long enough.  Let's finish with an expanded idea of what faith is:

Faith is trusting God because He is trustworthy and obeying the things He tells you to do because He tells you to do them, not because of anything you'll get from your obedience in terms of rewards, both material (money, job...) or immaterial (fame, status...). 

Obedience is required, but why you obey is important too.

The Other Side of the Coin

Well, maybe not another side, just a different part of the same side, I don't know.

Anyway, a lot of what I've said has been that faith is not caused by having "feelings of faith", nor is it found by bending your mind to think on "thoughts of faith".  Faith is only from God, it is given to us and we walk in it.  It is God's gift to us to give us sure and steadfast hope and to allow us to walk in His will and, therefore, to walk with Him in this life.  But, our thoughts and our feelings are important and we must pay attention to them. 

To walk in faith is our choice and, even though the ability to make that choice is enabled by God's grace, it is still an act of our own, human will.  That will is affected by many things, including our thoughts and our emotions.  If our minds are perpetually cluttered with thoughts of self we are much less likely to make a choice of selflessness which faith may demand.  If our emotions are constantly racked with fear we are much less likely to take the step of faith which appears risky.  Through sanctification our minds can be brought under control, our emotions can be kept from blowing us this way and that.  By God's grace you can begin to master yourself.  Then, when the time for faith comes, you have a better chance of being ready. 

But in walking this through don't get too focused on the thoughts and feelings or you'll just end up thinking good thoughts and good feelings are faith and you're back to where we started.  This road is narrow and there are ditches on both sides, lets try not to fall into either.

Faith and Inaction

Saving faith is a tricky subject.  Faith as I've been describing it so far it seems to imply, then, that our salvation is, in some way, based on our obedience.   A slippery slope can be found therein unless careful steps are taken. 

My understanding has come to be that faith is found on a case by case basis.  I had faith for my job because God told me to go get it, I was obedient to a specific directive.  I believe that saving faith has an element of obedience to it but it must be obedience to a specific directive.   People get tripped up in thinking that obedience unto salvation is tied to our strict adherence to every command in the Bible.  God is clear throughout the Bible that we ought to obey His word but, as Christians, our obedience to the Bible as a whole in no way works towards our salvation unless it makes us more able to hear God's voice telling us His specific direction to salvation.

I believe that that specific direction is, "Do nothing".  Don't do sacrifice, don't make idols, don't try to be "good enough".  Don't do any of the millions of things which other people do to try to please God.  Don't try to make yourself clean.  Nothing but the blood of Jesus can make you clean, righteous and saved.  To walk in faith, in this instance, means to stop all religious striving, all legalistic trying and simply place all of our trust in God's mercy and Christ's redeeming blood.

Being good, obeying laws, practicing the things laid out in the Bible are good things to do and are commanded by God but they will not make you good.  It is our natural tendency to try and clean ourselves up, to deal with our guilt through penance but that only works against faith.  We must abandon all hope in our own abilities and trust that God has made us clean, therefore, we are clean.  Faith has works, but in this case the work is to cease from striving and rest in God's grace.

By Faith ______ Did...

By faith Abel offered
By faith Abraham obeyed
By faith he dwelt
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered
By faith he forsook Egypt
By faith he kept the Passover

And so on and so forth.  All of these actions were done by faith, that is to say, in obedience to God's word.  The only thing that made any of these actions faith, or "of faith" is that they were born of God's will.  Having faith is, very often, an action more than a state of mind. 

One could ask the question, would Noah have had faith if He had believed with all his heart that God would flood the earth but had not set out to build the ark.  I, obviously, am leaning towards saying, "no, that would not have been faith".  Faith is not belief, or the state of mind of having confidence concerning some matter.  Faith gives us the ability to have that confidence, that belief, but the belief alone is not faith.  No, we know that Noah had faith because he built the ark. 

I guess it would be possible for Him to have believed that God was going to flood the world but not obey because he was disobedient or lazy or rebellious, but that would not have been faith.   At least it would not be faith as I am starting to learn it.  It would have been mere belief and would not have been effective towards finding God's salvation.  To walk in faith Noah needed to both belive what God said and obey it.  That was faith, that was faith unto salvation.

One way I thought about this subject when I first started thinking about it was that obedient faith puts you in "the right place at the right time" which is a phrase I don't much like due to its fatalistic feel.  What I mean can be seen in my job testimony, namely, I would never have gotten the job I did had I not obeyed God and gone to the temp agency interview.   God says, "be here and you'll get something".  If you don't go its only your lack of faith which prevented you from getting it.  If you do go, God rewards your faith and gives what He promised.

In neither case was it your great feelings of trust or confidence that got you your reward, it was merely your obediece.  God will reward the confident and the fearful so long as they both obey.  And, as you see God's faithfulness to your obedeice, it becomes more and more difficult to be fearul or to have feelings of unbelief; your mind and your emotions come into line with the reality that God loves you and is going to take care of you. 

Go where He goes, do what He says and you'll see His works in your life.

Hebrews 11:1

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Keep in mind that faith is, “not of yourself” (Eph 2:8) but is the gift of God. Our lives are full of things hoped for, things not yet seen, and without the faith which God gives us our lives would be hopeless, swirling torrents of insecurity. One of the great blessings of having faith, or of walking in faith, is the stability of knowing that our hopes will be fulfilled. God’s gift of faith to us makes our lives hopeful affairs in a dark and dieing world.

Faith, once again, is only faith if it is founded in God’s will; outside of that we have mere belief. As we grow in our Christianity the difference between faith and mere belief is by the changing our hopes.  The immature Christian will hope for carnal things, or spiritual things for carnal reasons, or carnal things with spiritual rationalizations but all hopes not founded in faith will be dashed. Or, if they are fulfilled will be empty or even harmful once fulfilled. This disappointment teaches us to walk in faith. We learn to listen for God’s voice instead of following our own carnal desires. We learn to walk in faith because only there is life, only there is a hope which is not let down, only in God is anything good.

What is Faith?

Eventually I'm going to get to actual Bible studies on faith but, first, I've got some more pondering to do on this subject.  I believe that faith is one of the most important aspects of the Christian life.  Our salvation is "by grace through faith".  "Without faith its impossible to please God".   These two Scriptures alone ought to be enough to prove the point.  Unfortunately I believe that faith is a grossly misunderstood topic to most Christians.  I can say that with some authority as I've grown up in the church, surrounded by sound Biblical teaching, and I never got more than a vague, diffuse understanding of faith.

Most people think of faith as, "just believing", but that's just believing.  This is where the idea of "blind faith" has its roots.  Faith ought never be blind but should be firmly rooted in one's knowledge of the character of God.  It can be thought of more in terms of trust than belief.  I don't have faith despite lacking evidence, I have faith because God has never let me down.  I have faith because I know, beyond any doubt, that God is real, He loves me, and He has good plans for me.  There is nothing blind here. 

Now, it is just that simple, and its exquisitely difficult all at the same time.  Despite the fact that I have seen God move in my life and in the lives of others, despite the fact that the entirety of my experience says that He will do what He says, because my senses cannot detect Him my flesh cries out against faith.  My eyes want to see the path, my feet want to feel the road, my ears want to hear the acceptance of men telling me I'm doing the right thing.  Faith, often, denies us these luxuries and, in that case, one could call it blind.  But I choose to believe that reality consists of more than what my senses can perceive.  What God says is real despite what any natural evidence may suggest.

This poses another problem, do you know what God has said?  Faith is based on our trust in God's character but it is always in (or for) something specific.  Believing something which God has not said is not faith but presumption on God.  We must be absolutely sure that God has said what we think He said or we will find our step of faith a step into thin air.  Wonderfully, we have a merciful God who loves us and will not let us fall utterly into the consequences of our poor decisions and presumptive faith. 

Lastly, faith almost always requires action.  Go pray for someone, go preach to someone, go get a new job.  This goes back to the last post about walking in faith.  The best way to know that you have faith, or that you are "in faith" is to do what God told you to do.  This, I believe, is what James three is talking about.  If God tells you to go and heal the sick and you don't do it you are not walking in faith.  You can believe that God will heal them all day long, but until you obey Him, step out and do what He says, you have only mental assent and not faith.  I think I'll hit more on this in the next post, though, as that was the biggest part of what He showed me through my job search.

To close, faith is based in God's love for us, applied to what He says to us, and see in our obedience to what He tells us to do.