Faith - not so unreachable

It is ever so frustrating to have someone say to you, “I wish I had your faith”, when you know perfectly well there is nothing stopping them!

People of firm Christian faith are not a different species from anyone else, nor do they live on a different planet. They are not saintly Olympians who can strain every muscle to achieve world records in some hugely daunting spiritual discipline.

Persons of weak faith and those of strong faith all share a common humanity and are all alike created in God’s image. God thinks of unbelievers in exactly the same terms as He thinks of Christians: 

“Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked,” declares the Lord GOD, “and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?” (Ezekiel 18:23 ESV)

Two war veterans were responding to their experience of the Vietnam conflict. One declared, 

“I do not believe in God, because God couldn’t allow something so appallingly bad.” 

The other declared, 

“I believe in God, because there has to be something better than this.”  

Here, I would suggest, is the difference. Both men had endured the same things. On one level the viewpoint of the second man was just a hair’s breadth away from that of the first. On another level it was a world away. He had some faith. The other had none.

The following very thoughtful description of faith is from a Lebanese Christian who chose to stay in her own country, at great personal risk, instead of leaving to seek peace and security abroad. It comes down to five straightforward affirmations she makes about God.

Faith is:

• Expecting God to accomplish miracles through my five loaves and two fishes. He can use me.
• Rejecting the feeling of panic when things seem out of control. He is in control.
• Confidence in God's faithfulness to me in an uncertain world. He holds the future.
• Depending on the fact that God loves me, not on my ability to figure out how or why. He can be trusted.
• Thanking God for his gift of emotional health, not assuming it all stems from my ability to cope with stress. He provides.

'… I do believe; help me to overcome my unbelief' (Mark 9:24).

From “Day by Day With the Persecuted Church” (ed. Jan Pit)

Are you willing to believe 

• that God can use you? 
• That He is in control? 
• That He holds the future? 
• That He can be trusted? 
• That He provides? 

 All of these follow from the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and the fact that He continues to show a prayerful interest in sinners who throw themselves on His mercy. Surely it is worth giving it a go.

And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” (Luke 17:6)

In hope, against all human hope,
self-desperate, I believe;
Thy quickening word shall raise me up,
Thou shalt Thy Spirit give.

Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees,
and looks to that alone;
laughs at impossibilities,
and cries: It shall be done!

Charles Wesley, 1707-88

Miracles

The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary defines "miracle" as "an act or event that does not follow the laws of nature and is believed to be caused by God". Today, experts seem determined to exclude the miraculous when trying to explain the universe. I believe it is a huge mistake to banish miracles. If you do so, explaining the universe becomes like putting together a jigsaw with some important pieces missing.

The Lord Jesus Christ made use of miracles so that intelligent observers could form a clear picture of who He really was. The Gospel of Mark describes how He did this. A thoughtful Our Daily Bread Ministries writer shows how Mark puts it over for us. The section from chapter 4 verse 35 to chapter 5 verse 43 records four miracles. After the first, the disciples are "very much afraid" and ask one another, "Who then is this ...?" (Mark 4:41 NASB). This is exactly what Jesus means them to do, so they can learn the truth about Him.

The first in this series of miracles is the stilling of the storm (4:35-41). It demonstrates Jesus’ absolute power over nature. Incidentally, it also shows He is completely human too, with a human being's weakness. He was so tired that even the violent tossing of the waves did not wake Him at first, so that the disciples were scared at first that their boat would capsize before He could help!

The second miracle shows Jesus' total command of the spiritual world (5:1-20). It is the healing of a man who was so profoundly deranged as to be beyond all human help. However sceptical you may be about demons leaving the man and entering an enormous herd of pigs, the simultaneous jumping of the pigs into the sea would only have added to the onlookers' sense of how awesome the miracle was.

Not only did wonders never before seen occur during Jesus' ministry, wonder often followed wonder in quick succession. Jesus' reputation for healing the sick was growing apace. A woman with a haemorrhage testified to having tapped into healing power from Jesus (5:33). The Saviour was already on His way to lay healing hands on a desperately sick small girl. After the previous healing incident, word came that the girl had died. Undaunted, Jesus went on to reveal that He had power even over death: He raised the girl back to life.

"Who then is this?" Each miracle shows Jesus as the Omnipotent Sovereign God. To a first century Jew who knew his Bible, these works echoed Old Testament stories which would have been familiar to him. The days of Moses who parted the seas, and Elijah who breathed life back into the dead, were back. It was as though God's ancient power had returned to earth and gone into overdrive. "In Jewish minds," says our thoughtful writer, "the power to control the sea and the waves was exclusive to God (Job 38:8-11; Psalm 65:5-7; Isaiah 51:10; Nahum 1:3-5)."

You can refuse, if you like, to believe in miracles or to see through the eyes of His onlookers what Jesus did. Some did indeed refuse to believe. But surely you, like these nay-sayers, will be missing the whole point!

Who is He, in yonder stall,
At whose feet the shepherds fall? ...

Who is He that from the grave
Comes to heal and help and save? ...

Who is He that from His throne
Rules through all the worlds alone?

'Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!
'Tis the Lord, the King of Glory!
At His feet we humbly fall;
Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.

Benjamin Russell Hanby, 1833-67