The Life Of Faith Is...

Yesterday we read Psalm 127; Ruth 3: 1-5, 4: 13-17; Mark 12: 38-44; and Hebrews 11 and 12: 1- 13.

The life of faith isn't an easy life, but it is a blessed life. It's also a life that requires giving it all we have. That's what the widow Jesus takes notice of does. Those with position, money & land, and power (rich people in that day always had position, money & land, and power), didn't give God their all, and guess what?, Jesus, God Incarnate, notices. But the poor widow gives all she has and expects God to provide what she needs.

That's what the people of faith have always done to the best of their ability.

There is much in some modern theologies that says, "God wants us to be rich and financially and materially prosperous (the "Prosperity Gospel"), God's going to keep us physically safe at all times and God's just not going to let the hard times come and stay. If we're in God's will, relax and no harm will come." You get the picture.

We look to some of the favored promises in Scripture and forget that God's often talking about Him protecting our spirits, our souls, our faith. Oh, He may extend the promises to include our bodies sometimes, but that's HIS choosing.

If we look to the giants of our faith that the writer of Hebrews lifts up as examples, we are reminded what the life of faith really looks like. We'll do better to look here than to follow some modern day heresies.

The life of faith is one where we have abiding hope that God will keep His promises, even if we don't live to see them fulfilled. We believe God exists, is the Creator of all and creates even in our nothingness and creates in what we cannot see.

A life of faith will look like Abel's when we bring God the best we have and are willing to sacrifice our best for Him. God asks us to do that on a daily basis. "Place the best you have, the best of you, the best, in My hands and see what I do." God's can use our hum-drum and ordinary, but that means we're hoarding our best for ourselves and He won't be happy and we won't be in right relationship with Him then. Remember Abel and Cain. Abel sacrificed his best and Cain gave his ordinary. Which of them is still, to this day, lifted up as righteous? Which isn't?

A life of faith will look like Noah's. God can look at any of us, at any given time, and tell us to do something that will make us look crazy and set the neighbors to talking. He can tell any of us to "Go build a boat, a big boat, in your backyard." A life of faith will go get busy building that boat to God's specifications. Now, I don't know what your "boat" may look like. But it will be something totally out of left field and folks watching will think you're nuts. But if you're sure God said, "Build a boat," you better build a boat!

A life of faith will look like Abraham's. God can look at any of us, at any given time and say, "Go. Trust me on this one and just pick up and go. I'm not telling you where or why. Just do it." A life of faith will "go." When I was pastor at Concord and Seaboard UMCs before coming to Warren Plains, we all thought I'd retire while serving those churches. But there came a time when I was sure God said, "Go." Mitch and I didn't pack boxes and leave our home, but, we moved from a church setting we never thought we'd leave to "go", and at the time, didn't have a clue "where." I'm a local licensed pastor, which means, in the Methodist denomination, I have to have a church or I'm not "clergy" and I can't go to Duke for Course of Study. My DS, at the time, presented me with two choices and God was telling me "no" to each one. As time, that year, drew closer to Annual Conference when our appointments would be fixed, I needed God to get on the ball and reveal His plan. I needed a third option and when Mack and I met that day in June, less than a month away from Annual Conference and he told me about a "third option," I knew God was leading me where I was to go. A life of faith trusts and a life of faith "goes."

A life of faith can look like Sarah's. Not necessarily to have a baby at an older age, but to be open if God says, "Expand your family." He may be calling you to adopt a child, foster one, open your heart to a child. Don't laugh. Have faith and "have a baby".

A life of faith understands that this world isn't all there is and we're journeying through this place. God's got some place better than this prepared for us. But we've got to move through here first.

So do our children. And, like Abraham, our life of faith can involve God asking us to trust Him with our child. That child of promise and hope. That's a hard one to be sure. And we place our child in God's hands and sometimes God gives our child back for a season and sometimes God doesn't. But a life of faith trusts God has kept and will keep His promise, even when we don't see it or understand it.

A life of faith can be like Jacob's and give blessings and worship, even while dying.

A life of faith can be like Joseph's and make plans to move with God's promises even if you know you won't be alive to physically move with them, but you count on others to move for you. Can you imagine the hope it gave the people when Joseph said, "When God moves us out of Egypt, take my bones with you."?

A life of faith looks like Moses' parents when they defied Pharaoh and protected their baby and didn't let him be killed like other baby boys. Gee, maybe that's where Moses got it from? Because a life of faith also looks like Moses, who later defied Pharaoh (who was his adopted granddaddy!) and not only left Egypt but took the Israelites, and Joseph's bones, with him!

A life of faith focuses on what God is doing and where God is going and goes with God and doesn't let the fear of what's coming up from behind, or what's staring us in the face, deter us from God's plan.

A life of faith gets thrown in the lions den and sometimes the lions' mouths are shut. And sometimes they aren't.

The people from Scripture are in our cloud of witnesses to our faith. They cheer us on. We, in turn, will one day be in that cloud with them, cheering on others. We are, all, to look to Jesus and keep our eyes on the cross. A life of faith will move towards the cross and we all have a cross that we are to pick up and bring with us. And we are to follow Jesus with our cross to the cross.

The writer of Hebrews likens this to an endurance race, a marathon. Life isn't a sprint. We cheer each other on but we also have a Coach, God our Father, Who disciplines us as we race towards our finish line. It's not an easy race but it was never meant to be. Much will be asked of us. But much more will be given us. Because a life of faith understands that as we race towards our finish line here, we are racing into God's arms as we race through His Gates of Praise.

There will be pain, disappointment, heartache, and things will be asked of us that we cannot imagine. But a life of faith trusts God in all things and understands all of that that is unholy can serve a holy purpose and the purpose is to perfect our faith. To strengthen our weak knees and help those who are struggling.

A life of faith will require trust. It will require giving all we've got to give. It will require us being disciplined by God. It will require us looking toward the cross and following Jesus' example.

A life of faith is not an easy life but it is a blessed life.

Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord.

Today and tomorrow.

Blessings.

Hope, Boldness, And Relationship With God

Yesterday we read Ruth 1: 1-18; Psalm 146; Mark 12: 28-34; and Hebrews 9: 11-28; 10: 19-39.

It has been quite a week since we last came together! Hurricane Sandy has brought death, destruction, and havoc to large portions of the USA, which meant millions of people were affected. More locally, we have received word that several children need our church to step up to the plate in a real and tangible way for Christmas. There's a lot of hopelessness and brokenness all around and within us.

Ruth knew hopelessness. When she, Naomi, and Orpah set off for Judah from Moab, they were three women with nothing but each other. No husbands, sons, or other male relatives they could count on for support. Traveling to a country only Naomi had ever lived in and it had been a while. No jobs, no visible means of support, nothing waiting for them in Judah. A God that only Naomi knew. Before entering Judah, Orpah, at Naomi's insistence, went back home. That left two women to face the unknown together. Ruth did not know God and Naomi thought God was angry with her, hence all the trouble she was experiencing.

But God knew Naomi and God knew Ruth. And God was at work, taking a very broken time for both of them, and working to bring much good not just to them, but to all of Judah, and later, the world. They could not see the big picture and would not have believed it if they could have seen it. Ruth would become the great-grandmother of King David. She couldn't have seen that one on the horizon at all when she eventually did have a son...Obed. But I bet David heard the family stories about Ruth and how she came from Moab, a widow, and married Boaz. I bet he reflects those family stories in some of his Psalms, like today's 146, when he talks about God's love of widows and the foreigners among us. None of them could have foreseen Jesus in their family tree, either.

Naomi and Ruth fearfully, yet boldly, entered Judah and God was with them in their boldness. God could handle what they faced. And God can handle what we face.

The world has always depended on putting "hope" in money, power, land/possessions. The world has always done that. In God's realm, though, we put hope in our relationship with God. God is where the real power is, anyway, and it is from His hand that we get our resources. The more we grow in relationship, the more hope we have, especially in our broken times. And the more we grow in relationship with God, the more we are able to look back and see how He has carried us through those times in the past and we grow in confidence that He will see us through those times we face today and will face in the future. And we can approach Him with boldness. Not only will we grow in boldness in our approaching His Throne, but we will grow in boldness in doing the right thing in troubling times. In God's realm, these three things go together: growing in relationship with God, hope, and boldness. That doesn't exclude other things in God's realm, but yesterday, we looked at these three as they related to the Scriptures listed above.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus was approached by someone full of boldness asking a question about what's the greatest commandment. Not only did Jesus answer his question in a way that fully satisfied the man, Jesus kept His honor (which the man was trying to diminish), and Jesus wasn't put off by the man's boldness. He actually, in an indirect way, commends him for it by telling him that's he's not far from the Kingdom of God. Which, btw, he really wasn't far from it...he was staring it in the face.

Jesus' response to the question of what's the greatest commandment? “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord.  And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”

That's how we grow in relationship with God, how our hope increases, and how we become more bold...both in living in this world God's way and in approaching God's Throne of mercy and grace when we need His help and strength in our times of need. We learn to love Him with everything we have: our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Or as The Message puts it, "with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy." 

When we bring everything we have to the table, we find He's already there. We can, also, look back and see how God has already been at work in our lives, weaving people together in our journeys when we needed them or they needed us. We can see how He has used things in our past and even redeemed things in our pasts. We trust that He is doing the same thing now even though we can no more see it now than we could yesterday. God is at work. And just like Ruth never knew David or Jesus would be coming in her family tree, we don't know who or what God is bringing together, from us and our journey that will bring great good to a corner of the world or the world at large. We just don't. 

But we can trust that God is taking our brokenness and bringing good from it. We may never live to see it. We might be blessed with a tiny glimpse. But we can trust God is at work and our brokenness will never have the last word. That last Word always belongs to God and it is always a good Word. A healing Word. A bold Word of Hope.

As we each grow in relationship with God, may we hear His bold Word of Hope clearer and clearer in our lives and in our times of brokenness.

Amen and Amen!