Some of us who think we believe, need to actually start believing!
Some of us need to believe in a completely different way than we have been believing! Because what some of us call believing just isn’t working. Please read this whole post! I know I’ve told the story before about a man told about a friend he was visiting. They were driving somewhere and this friend wasn’t wearing his seat belt. So the man mentioned this to his friend. He said, “Uh, you know the statistics don’t you, you really should drive with a seat belt.” His friend just shrugged him off. About a year later they got together again and he noticed that his friend put his seat belt on when he got in the car. So he said something like this. He said: “Wow, now you’re wearing your seat belt, how come?” His friend said: “well, I visited a man I know who was in a car accident he didn’t have his seat belt on. He went right through the windshield and had about a hundred and twelve stitches in his face and now I always wear my seat belt.” So the man who was telling the story says to his friend: “Are you saying you didn’t really believe in seat belts before?” And the man said something very interesting and very human. He said: “Well I did believe it but I didn’t believe it. I believed it but I wasn’t effected by it. I didn’t get any new information when I saw my friend all stitched up in the hospital but all the information became sort of new to me. What about you and your faith in God?Does it really make a big difference in daily life or do you pretty much act as if it doesn’t when there are struggles and temptations?
I remembered this story after a couple of conversations I recently had that left me sad and a little discouraged. In both cases I was talking to a Christian who was struggling with certain issues that were difficult or sad or caused anxiety. In both cases I felt I listened sympathetically and expressed sincere empathy. But in order to share the only truth that has ever, ever, ever helped me and in order to be faithful to the gospel I believe myself called to preach, I, having listened, started to talk about Christ and the promises we have in Him. The responses were slightly different but similar in that neither person seemed to be helped by the promises of God’s love, help, presence, or for that matter any aspect of our Christian faith. I wish I could say this surprised me. It frustrated me but it did not surprise me because it happens fairly often. Sometimes the attempt to call people to actually believe in real life with they confess so readily in church results in the person being upset. It sometimes seems as if we are supposed to have a social contract to support each other in our troubles only by listening sympathetically but never by exhorting faith in Christ, or God or the gospel and it’s promises. Sometimes the person who is being encouraged to believe isn’t offended but they aren’t really responsive either. They just look at you as if to say, “You can’t seriously think that I should find any comfort in my difficulties or strength to fight temptation just by taking to heart the cardinal truths of the faith I profess”. I guess I sound a little frustrated. Well, maybe so but it’s okay. It really is because as Paul says in 2 Timothy 1:12 I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.
Are we in danger of succumbing to a culture, even in the church, in which we profess a faith that doesn’t work in our lives? Wouldn’t that be the kind of dead faith that James warns us against? At Christ Community I long for us to be a church of believers who truly believe. Can we honestly claim to believe that Christ is Lord if we actually let emotions, temptations, self-pity, the desire for comfort or affirmation or any number of other idols or issues actually rule as Lord in the day to day of life? What actually rules your life? That thing is your Lord. If it isn’t Christ then repent and believe in Him! If you have to do that a thousand times a day do it. I’m not talking about just trying harder. I’m talking about first believing more, or believing what you claim to believe more deeply. Choosing in the temptations and emotion to believe the promises. That’s how we listen to the music. And unless you do you won’t dance! If you aren’t dancing well (living the life) you just aren’t hearing the music. The music is beautiful and sufficient and moving but only for those who listen and receive and really believe. Check your emotions and temptations and let them show you where you are not believing and then turn back to faith and worship. Sometimes it is in choosing to worship that faith sinks in and becomes real.
Larry is the senior pastor at 
You once mentioned in a sermon (or maybe it was a discussion, I don’t know) of hearing a saying in a recovery group that “sympathy kills”. Its hard to both “bear one another’s burdens” and at the same time not allow the idolatry of sympathetic support take the place of really trusting God and finding our value and identity in Him. I know I have a hard time finding the right place to land on this one. I know my tendency is (when I’m bummed out, tired, discouraged) overvalue the empathy of others and ignore what would really help…understanding and embracing my relationship with Christ.
It’s funny how poorly, and short-lived the gains are, when trying to feed on the sympathy of others. Like the illustrious Dr. Phil says “well, how’s it workin’ for ya?”.
Just like so many Biblical truths, nursing wounds or worries watered by the sympathy of friends doesn’t work very well.
Larry, this is a big struggle in a lot of our lives…allowing the truths that we say we believe on Sunday morning actually effect our lives (especially our emotional life) by the middle of the week. To teach, and learn, how to do this rightly sure is core to being a disciple of Christ.
This core of being a disciple is a super natural activity–maybe that is why the sympathy of others ranks so high, it is natural, something easier to grasp. We pray that the eyes of our hearts would open to hugeness of God’s love and we would be willing to lay down our many natural comforts in favor of God’s supernatural ones.
I was thinking about this post and remembered one on self pity from December. I don’t know if it is considered uncool to link to one of your earlier posts but I liked it so here it is: http://themusicandthedance.com/2008/12/16/self-pity/
This is a great post. As a “rookie” Christian I have found that when I can actually humble myself enough to look to Him instead of myself and my circumstances, He has always responded. I find that if I can make myself get out of the way and quit running around like chicken little (I stole that one from Larry) things work out. As you say Larry, he has made promises to us if we would only truly believe and claim them.
I like Oswald Chambers’ writing on self pity:”Does it really matter that our circumstances are difficult? Why shouldn’t they be! If we give way to self-pity and indulge in the luxury of misery, we remove God’s riches from our lives and hinder others from entering into His provision. No sin is worse than the sin of self-pity, because it removes God from the throne of our lives, replacing him with our own self-interests. It causes us to open our mouths only to complain, and we simply become spiritual sponges–always absorbing, never giving, and never being satisfied. And there is nothing lovely or generous about our lives.”
Larry,
I have appreciated both the blog and the comments this week. We have been in training that is geared towards teaching kids how to be emotionally intelligent and how we should be active listeners and coaching them to respond to their problems in healthy ways. This training is all focused on human behaviors (natural) and lines up in a lot of ways to Biblical mandates for Christians to support one another. 2 Corinthians 1:3-7 comes to mind as Paul writes about the comfort we receive is also comfort that we share. It seems like two rails of the same train track- one that we receive comfort from the God of all comfort who has given us the message of comfort in the Gospel of Jesus Christ; the other is that we are to comfort others with that same comfort. I guess what you are speaking of is the 3rd component, one who receives the comfort (of the gospel of Christ) needs to believe it, think about it, act upon it and be changed by it. It seems like both supernatural (The power of the gospel and the Holy Spirit) and the natural (our willingness to hear and believe) are called upon.
Just my thoughts. Thanks for the post. And now for a shameless plug, check out http://www.matt-ers.blogspot.com for my last post.
Blessings,
Matt
I think one of the important things we believers tend to easily forget about is the divine discipline of the Father for his children. Hebrews 12 speaks loud and clear of this being for our good so we can share in his holiness. Verse 7 says, “Endure hardship as discipline”. The problem arises when we think of discipline as only in terms of our sin. There certainly is corrective discipline as in the life of David for his sin with Bethsheba but God also uses discipline in the form of prevention to keep us from falling, such as Paul’s thorn. Kent Hughes says “preventative discipline, properly understood, is seen as a substantial grace.” Other times God uses discipline to educate us as he did with Job. God brought more stress and challenge to Job’s life so that he might rise up to even higher levels of spirituality. James Moffatt says “To endure rightly, one must endure intelligently.” “Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Make level paths for your feet, so the the lame may not be disabled but rather healed.” (Heb.12:12) It is our Father’s deep longing for us to have abundant life and if he doesn’t discipline us according to his immeasurable wisdom we will remain perpetually shallow in our faith and unstable in all our ways. In the long run it is a good thing and he promises never to give us anything beyond what we can bear. (1Cor.10:13)
Good point Mo. We so tend to think that love simply and only comes to us in terms of what we recognize or feel is good and enjoyable but God clearly tells us that he disciplines those he loves.
God is my savior and I place my life in his hands through belief and repentance. I desire to be disciplined in all areas of my life, yet I do find that I struggle with certain areas. I do wander about people who have lives that are so scarred and tattered and pasts full of people and things where trust was placed only to be the ones who turned their backs on them and hurt them the most. That has to negatively affect the ability to see and believe in the one “true God”. It is breaking the old patterns and removing past perceptions about truly having faith in someone; removing the perception that people let us down in some way and we can’t completely trust them. God on the other hand is unchanging and we have to believe that. How difficult would that be for an individual who has consistently been betrayed over and over again by people they trusted? It all goes back to God revealing himself to us and our desire to know him more and opening our hearts to him. As we live our lives, striving to draw nearer and nearer to Christ, we are able to believe and trust more.
Chuck, for a “rookie” Christian you are sure reading good stuff–Oswald Chambers is right on.
Dear Anonymous, I certainly share your concern for those who have been deeply damaged & betrayed by the very ones who they trusted and depended on to care for them and love them.There is a really good book by Dan B. Allender called “To Be Told” in which he describes our lives as unique stories divinely authored by God himself right down to the very tragedies that shatter our shalom. He says, “We are in the presence of a good story when the flaw that shatters shalom is also the doorway to redemption…whether it is our own flaws or the sin of others, God uses the raw material of sin to create the edifice of his redeemed glory…We will only love our story to the degree that we see the glory that seeps through our most significant shattering. To see that glory, we must enter into & read our tragedies with confidence that they will end better than we could ever imagine…In the midst of affliction, we become either our truest or our most false self.” Allender quotes Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring when Frodo says, “I wonder what sort of tale we have fallen into?” Allender also says, “Remember, God is still writing.”