True Faith

Eph 2:8-10


For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

What is true faith?

True faith is not a religion—People often ask “What is your faith?” when they mean “What is your religion?” But faith and religion are not the same. You can have faith without a religion, and you can have religion without faith.

Paul was a religious man. He believed in his own religion and practiced it methodically. He was willing to kill for it. Yet all this did him no good. It was not faith for him—it was bondage. Practicing religion is not the same as having faith.

True faith is not intellectual. What we believe should be grounded in a careful and thoughtful examination. But we should never think that intellectual pursuit in itself will do a thing for our faith.

Think about a person who has an irrational fear of flying. He may know the principles of airplane flight. She may know that it is safest way to travel. He may believe that our pilots are well trained and that airports are well run. But when she get on an airplane, something irrational takes over. He won’t get on that plane, no matter how much he knows.

We may know the teachings of the Bible and still not trust them. When we try to live by them, our fleshly shortcomings take over and we do wrong, even while affirming the right.

Faith is not positive thinking. For many people, faith seems to be a denial of reality. There is a school of thought that believes if we act successful, we become successful. This is pretense, not faith. \

Several years ago, I attended a hospice conference Q and A session. One of the volunteers told proudly about a patient who refused to accept that he was dying, but told everyone he was going to get better.

The speaker answered with this illustration. Suppose you are standing in the road, and a truck is bearing down on you. You can choose not to believe in trucks. You can assure everyone that the truck will not hit. But when it hits, you will still be dead. Eventually, we all have to come to terms with our own mortality.

I do not mean to suggest there is no merit in positive thinking. There is much profit in looking on the bright side. Hope is an essential ingredient of everything we accomplish. But hope alone is not faith. If our hope leads to acknowledge only one outcome of any situation, that that is not hope. That is presumption.

So what is true faith? Let me suggest a definition.

Faith is a crazy response to the Living God and His promises.

Faith has three ingredients. Let me list them.

It is crazy—or so it appears ot others who see it. It flies in the face of conventional wisdom and rationality based in a horizontal knowledge of the world.

It is a response. A response means a way of moving, not a way of thinking. We may think what we like in our hearts, but it does us no good unless we are willing to respond to what we belief.

It is based on a Living God. Our faith is grounded in God’s faithfulness.

It is based in the promises of God. We believe what God has said and done. This is what distinguishes a believer’s faith from that of others.

Let’s examine each of those four concepts.

Faith is crazy.

\Faith, if properly practices, will make other people think you are crazy. There is an element of wildness to it, the unpredictable behavior o a man or woman who is truly looking to God for guidance and protection. \If other people don’t think you’re a little crazy, chances are you don’t have enough faith.

That’s the way it is with anyone who trusts in God. It seems crazy to everyone else. They cannot see the invisible power that upholds us in everything. We can take ristks, and be a little crazy, because we know that no matter how badly we fall, our redeemer lives.

Ephesians 2 1-5 states “You were dead in your trespasses and sins—God has raised us together with Christ.” What could be crazier than that? Dead people don’t live. It is not rational by human standards to expect to live when you are dead. There is no basis for acceptance of this idea by natural means. Yet that is excactly what the Bible tells us.

I once saw a magician walk across a swimming pool. The pool was full of people splashing and swimming, when he suddenly stepped out on the water and walked calmly across.

It was a trick, of course. Before the trick began, he put a sheet of thick plexiglass just under the water. They people in the pool were in on the trick. He was taking no chances at all. If other people saw him step out into that pool, they would think him crazy, but if they knew what he knew, they would not think it crazy at all.

The most foolish thing we can do it to believe our eyes and ears. Satan is a skilled magician. He knows how to distract us and deceive the bulk of humanity. If we trust in our normal senses, we will be deceived.c Bu

t if we are willing to fly in the face of our own conceptions of he rational we may perceive the truth, even while everyone else calls us crazy.

The Romans thought the Christians were crazy when they went singing to their executions. The Jews thought the Christians crazy when they said God became a man and raised from the dead. The Catholics thought Martin Luther crazy when he said the just will live by faith. Every believer is thought crazy today, when he listens to the voice of God instead of the voices around her. Don’t let the world define you by pressuring you to follow their rationale. Be independent enough to question the prevailincg authority and believe the authority of God.

Faith is a response.

“For it is by grace we are saved through faith,” Paul said. Faith is responding to our belief in the grace of God. Every living creature responds to stimuli—hot, cold, hunger, fear, and so forth. If we can create a perception of a particular condition, we can provoke a response. If we sneak up behind a person and say “Boo” they may jump, even though there is no real danger.

But human beings are more than animals. We have a choice responses. We do not have to run from a scary situation. We do not have to eat when we are hungry, of engage in sexual activity when stimulated. We choose to what we will respond.

Faith is to choosing to respond to God and to ignore oher perceptions. The world may say that greed is good, but we know better. The world may say that he who dies with the most toys wins, but we know that is not the case. He who dies and can face the Living God with a good conscience wins. We always have a choice.

Faith is a response to a Living God.

“It is a gift of God.” Faith is never about what we do. It is always about who we do it for. Our faith comes from knowing a living God.

There’s a story in Acts 19 about a group of men in Corinth practice exorcism. One day, they tried to cast out demons in the name of “Jesus of Nazareth, whom Paul preaches.” They had seen Paul cast out demons, so they assumed they could have the same power. But the demon turned on them and ran them out of the house. As he did he said, “Jesus I know and Paul I am familiar with, but who are you?” The devil is not impressed by second-hand faith. Faith must be really our faith.

The problem with faith is that we do not always know who we are really believing. It is easy to miss what really holds us together. What do we really have faith in--our ancestors, our own self-reliance? The only way we can really know we have faith is respond boldly and definitely to the promises God his made. “Attempt great things from God,” William Carey said. “Expect great things from God.”

Faith is a response to God and His promise.

Our faith is not vague. It is based on the concrete statements we find in the Bible. Believing the promises of the Bible gives content to our faith.

What promises? Here are a few.

That God loves me, no matter what.—“By grace are we saved.”

It takes real faith to believe that God loves us, given the reality of our sin and weakness. Paul says that were aren’t just sinners, we are the devil’s tools. We aren’t just weak, we are dead. In all things we have failed, but in all things, God has shown us mercy.

God loves us because He loves us. He saves us because he chooses to save us. Nothing e can do can make God “de-gift” us. His cross has given us all things, through his love and grace.

That we don’t have to work to be accepted by God.--“Not of works, so that no one can boast.”

There are many people work. Some do it out of necessity. If we don’t work, we don’t eat. Others work out of joy. Necessity is good but joy is better. Sages through the ages, from Solomon to Marx have taught that the greatest joy on earth comes from willing labor. But when we work out of necessity or fear, we are slaves.

God doesn’t want us to obey him as slaves, but as free men and women who do it willingly. He wants partners, not servants. We may fear retribution when we don’t get things right, but that is not what God wants. God wants us to work for Him without fear or regret. He is much more concerned about out attitude in doing His will than our accuracy.

That God has a purpose for our lives. --“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for the purpose of doing good.

What I fear the most is not death. What I fear is never having lived. I do not want to leave this world without leaving something of substance behind. I do not want to die meaninglessly. I want t do good.

“I have been crucified with Christ,” Paul said in Galatians 3;20. “ I live no longer, and the life that I continue to live in the flesh, I live by the Son of God, who loved m, and gave Himself for me.” God promises us just that. When we live by faith in Him through Grace, God promises to make our life fruitful. We are not meaningless. We have a purpose--to become part of God’s plan of redeeming the world. We are not just animals wandering in the wilderness, satisfying our cravings and impulses, but beloved Sons of God, participating in the redemption of all creation.

This is the substance of our faith. This is why we believe in His promises.