If there is one action that is the most important thing you ever do, it is accepting Jesus Christ as your savior. The truth is, that is where life begins. And once you begin that life, there are certain tools that you need to stay in that life. These are tools that you need, especially when life gets tough.
One of those tools is the Holy Spirit. In John 14, Jesus tells the disciples that he will go away, but he will send back a helper who would not only teach us everything we needed to live the life God has called us to live, but he would also help us remember everything that Jesus taught. The translation is that the Holy Spirit is what we need if we are going to be active disciples of Jesus Christ, which we should be!
Another tool that I want to talk about today is faith. Now, we’ve all heard those power verses: with faith you can move mountains (Matt 17:20), without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb 11:6), we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Cor 5:7), and we know that a life lived a full of faith is what God wants for us.
But the truth is, most people, even those who call themselves Christians, don’t live a life full of faith like they should. Perhaps it is some form of Christianity, but by its very nature, Christianity is either all or nothing. It’s like CS Lewis said, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.” You can’t really be a moderate Christian, one who loves Jesus in Sunday, but lives an alternate life throughout the week. Either you are a disciple of Jesus, or not!
Faith takes more than a casual approach. It takes commitment. It takes covenant. And there is a reason to that. It is because when faith is weakened, or even nonexistent, it leaves a door open for certain things. And once those things get in, they bring devastation and destruction. While this is by no means a full list, let’s take a moment and look at three f’s to which a faithless life opens the door.
Three F’s
1. A faith less life is dominated by fear.
I hate watching scary movies. In fact, I never watch them because even six months later, I’m still scared by them. I watched the Sixth Sense over ten years ago and had nightmares for 6 months. Yes, I know it is silly, but it is true. Just the other day my wife was watching a TV show and it had about three seconds of a scary part where some weird ghostly figure appeared in a video clip that these forensic scientists were looking over. It walked up behind a guy and whispered something in his ear. Oh dear…
Moments later when I went down the hall to the restroom, I got to the bathroom, turned around, and said forget it, and hurried back down the hall. Sorry, but that stuff just scares me! I looked pretty stupid though; a grown man hurrying down the hall because he’s afraid of a ghost that he saw on a TV show. For 3 seconds.
Fear will make you do silly things. Fear will stop you in your tracks when you should be moving forward. Fear will shut your mouth when you’re supposed to be telling mountains to move. Fear will cause you to stop doing what God told you to do. And fear, especially fear about something unknown, will cause you to doubt your ability to make it through a situation.
Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Let me break the suspense: there are going to be times in your life when you are not going to know how to handle a situation, how to get through it, or what to do. This is one of the main reasons faith exists. When you don’t know what to do or how to handle a situation, and fear of the unknown begins to creep in, God is wanting you to standup, full of faith, and hold on to him and his promises with everything you’ve got. Marilyn Hickey calls it Bulldog Faith; biting on and never letting go.
Fear will always tell you, “Be afraid of what you don’t know.” But faith will always tell you, “Even if you don’t know how, you, with God at your side, are going to get through it.” Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” Don’t let fear keep your feet on the ground. Take a step and trust God to see you through.
2. A faithless life is dominated by failure.
Fear is always accompanied by failure. And whenever you allow fear to speak to you, and you allow fear to minimize faith in your life, the inevitable result is failure. Failure is so common in some people’s lives that they not only fear it, they expected. It becomes common.
I am reminded of Peter before Jesus died and was resurrected, and then after. We are talking about two pretty different men. The Peter before Christ died was driven by emotion, severely affected by fear, and when asked about his association with Jesus, he denied Jesus. Failure. But over the course of those three days, something drastically changed in Peter. And then the weeks after, when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, that change was solidified in his heart. He was filled with the Holy Spirit and faith, faith that he would need to fulfill the plan God had for him, became alive in a way that it never had before. Now, instead of a cowardly, fearful man denying he knew Jesus, he was standing before thousands of people declaring not only Jesus, his death, and resurrection, but the fact that it was them who put Jesus to death! His sermon wrap wasn’t some cute saying to make you feel better, it was, “Repent!” As a result, thousands came to know Jesus!
What a change faith, activated by the Holy Spirit, brought about his life. Failure was exchanged for faith and it produced an amazing, victorious result!
3. A faithless life is dominated by false perceptions.
There was a soda commercial that came on years ago that said, “perception is everything.” I don’t think perception is everything, but it is a lot. How you perceive things has a massive impact on you and your actions. Just like the story before about scary movies, I can walk down the hall 1000 times and never once think anything, but, the moment I hear that silly voice speak into me, it changes my perception. That hall that simply is a passageway becomes some kind of scary tube of death!
How we perceive our struggles and the various things we go through on a daily basis completely affects our actions and how we live our lives. An obstacle that you look at that is perceived through a faithless lifestyle, is going to be so monumentally destructive and overwhelming that you won’t be able to do anything. But when you look at it through the eyes of faith, the way God intended to look at things, your perspective is changed. Faith rises up within us. We begin to recall the promises of God, especially the promises that have to do with the specific situation we’re in. Faith gives us courage for the fight, and the assurance that at the end of the day, we will be standing victorious. You simply cannot live life without faith.
Fear, failure, and false perceptions are all defeated by faith. You may be in a situation right now where you are experiencing one of these. You need faith. Remember faith doesn’t mean you know every single step along the way. It just means that you are trusting 100% in God’s ability to take you where he wants to take you. It is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.
Don’t believe the lie that you have to know every single step of the way to be successful or to live a life that is full of faith. Actually, a lot of times, it is better that you don’t know every step. That means you’ll rely more on Jesus.
So defeat fear. Exchange failure for victory. Don’t allow the enemy to give you false perceptions about you, your purpose, or the world you live in. Have faith. It moves mountains. It pleases God. And, when everything else is crumbling, it gives you the ability to stand.
In Luke 17:5, the Apostles prayed, “Lord, increase our faith!” Would you pray that today as well?
Be blessed
J