Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Measuring Faith



While we’ve each been given a measure of faith (Romans 12:3), sometimes we’re found measuring things by our doubt and unbelief rather than by the faith we've received. What do I mean? Let’s follow Peter out on the Sea of Galilee as we attempt to evaluate and compute what happened there.

The disciples had been rowing across the Sea of Galilee throughout the night and making little forward motion. Then suddenly they saw Jesus walking towards them on the water, totally unencumbered by the waves and the wind. They were all afraid, yet despite his fear, Peter called out and said:

“‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the waters.’ He said, ‘Come.’ Peter stepped down from the boat, and walked on the water and went toward Jesus. But when he saw the strong wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink, he yelled, saying, ‘Lord, save me.’ Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand, took hold of him, and said to him, 'You of little faith, why did you doubt?'” (Matthew 14-28-31 NHB).

A Small Measure of Faith

If you had been rowing for hours and hours, getting nowhere, and then saw Jesus walking effortlessly on the water, wouldn't you want to leave your labor behind and hope to join him? Before you answer, we know that Biblically speaking, only one twelfth of believers would follow that inclination and ask Jesus to call them out on the water. So that makes the following fact all the more impactful. If Peter had only "little faith," enabling him to get out of the boat and walk upon the Sea of Galilee, the faith of the other disciples was likely not sufficient to even be measured.

Perhaps it's time, therefore, that we reconsider and remeasure Jesus' "rebuke" of Peter and begin to see it as, at least in part, an affirmation of Peter's belief. Remember, the one who called Peter one of "little faith," is the same one who declared that faith as small as a mustard seed is sufficient to cast a mountain into the sea. We should join Jesus and commend Peter for his small measure of faith for it enabled him to exit a boat during a storm, and walk upon a path of rough waters. And, he was successful up until the point that he began to doubt.

A Measure of Doubt

What a teaching moment this was — holding Jesus' hand while standing on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus used the opportunity, not to degrade Peter but to affirm and instruct him. In essence, Jesus said, "You had a sufficient amount of faith to join me on the water. Things were going so well, why did you doubt?” Doubt! What exactly is doubt and why is it so destructive?

One way to understand doubt and its relationship to unbelief is to see it in light of hope's relationship to faith. Faith, after all, is the, "confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see (Heb 11:1 NIV). Doubt is the confidence in the things we see that contradict hope and faith. So, as hope is the fuel for faith, doubt then is the fuel for unbelief. Hope has the ability to believe the impossible, while doubt has the ability to put our focus on the circumstances around us. Peter's focus was broken and his attention was given to the wind and the waves about him, causing him to doubt not only Jesus, but the measure of his faith, successfully walking upon the water. Hope is realized in our focus upon Jesus as the Word of God. Doubt is realized and measured by our focus upon those things contrary to Jesus and the Word.
“We must keep our eyes on Jesus, who leads us and makes our faith complete” (Hebrews 12:2 CEV)

As it is said, “We become what we behold.” Paul says that we’re transformed into Jesus’ likeness as we gaze into his glory (2 Corinthians 3:18). Peter took his eyes off of Jesus and what is possible through our faith in him and put his eyes upon those things devoid of Jesus' glory. When he began to sink, believing that he needed to be saved, that's when the measure of his doubt outweighed the measure of his faith.

Measuring Contrary Winds


The strong winds enticed Peter to lose his focus, but it is easy to see why he had begun to remeasure the situation, despite his success thus far. The evening before, the disciples had been serving as waiters, helping Jesus feed over 5,000 hungry people. Afterwards, Jesus sent them off in a boat, rowing across the lake. By the time Jesus caught up to them, walking on the water, it was sometime between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. in the morning. They had been rowing against the wind for many hours. 

In the moment that Peter shifted his focus off of Jesus and upon the strong winds, it was because he knew what it was like to strive against those winds and fail. He and his fellow disciples had been doing that for a measurable period of time in the dark of night. So, when he began to measure his current situation by the doubt that those previous experiences had created, that's when he began to sink. 

We will do the same whenever we look backwards at our failures instead of looking straight ahead towards Jesus.

Well-measured


A small amount of faith is nothing which we should be ashamed. We can, according to Jesus, accomplish great things as long as we do not measure our situation by doubt and unbelief. It is Jesus who gives us our measure of faith and the means by which it is applied. How we measure and apply doubt and unbelief to a situation, however, is totally upon us. Peter had seen Jesus walk on the water and applying a sufficient amount of faith (little), he walked out on the water. But once Peter's doubt based upon his own experience became his focus, the measure of his faith became inconsequential in relationship to the measure of attention he gave to doubt.

So if we are to learn from Peter's experience, we must first believe it a good thing to get out of the boat, answering Jesus' call for us to move forward. Then, we must strive to measure everything we do in light of the success Jesus had before us. He said that we would do the works that he did (John 4:12), which means that depending upon the need, we can look to his example as to what is possible. That's how Peter walked on the water. We must see Jesus as the author and completer of our faith (Heb 12:2).

Hope is the lighthouse that calls us forward and is the substance under our feet as we move forward in faith. It always tells us that there will be a place to step as long as our eyes are focused in the right place. That's how we measure where our next step is going, and that's how we combat the doubt that comes to counteract walking out the measure of faith we've been given.

Small faith is not an insufficiency. We've simply not known how to measure the value of the mustard seed faith within us. How we measure a thing determines its worth. The scales must be aligned properly and the gold within the believer must be valued based upon what Jesus says, not measured by the defeats and loses we've endured.

Sunday, May 16, 2021

A Fringe Invitation

Fringe

I’ve been rewatching the series Fringe which is about an off-the-beaten path, science task force working within the FBI. Its assignment is to investigate and focus upon what some consider fringe science - areas outside of the traditional and easily explainable. While watching this sci-fi program, I’m noticing some parallels between it and the Churches mission in our day. We too can no longer dismiss, and/or avoid the works, what some consider the fringe areas of the Gospel, Jesus said that we would perform. While saying this, I fully realize that the supernatural aspects of the Gospel can appear to be, like in the aforementioned TV show, fringe elements.

That’s why I wrote The Gospel Served with the Works. My intention was to create an easily accessible and digestible, scriptural presentation of the Churches mandate to do the works of Jesus. 


“The supernatural is weird enough. Don’t make it any weirder.”


Holding Things in Tension

I recognize and appreciate the reluctance of some to embrace these aspects of the Gospel as many feel that who focus upon them are more invested in these "fringe elements" of the Gospel than they are the core commission itself. I would suggest that the pendulum often swings too far in both directions. Because of this, I suggest that we consider how we can hold these things in tension with each other instead of in extreme opposition.

One end of the spectrum is probably best exemplified by Thomas Jefferson. Being a deist, and more of an admirer than a follower of Jesus, Jefferson infamously cut up his New Testament, removing all the supernatural aspects of Jesus’ ministry, and pasting it back together using only the collection of Jesus' wise sayings and teachings.

On the other end of the spectrum, some have become so attracted to the flame of the supernatural aspects of the Gospel that they have come to believe that being odd and strange are a badge of spirituality. From my perspective, this too is missing the mark. As they taught us at Global Awakening in Mechanicsburg, PA, “The supernatural is weird enough. Don’t make it any weirder.”


Investigation and Immersion

I suggest that we must find ways to move outside of our comfort zone. Just like the Fringe division of the FBI in the aforementioned television program, we would do good to begin to investigate and immerse ourselves in the supernatural works of Jesus as presented in scripture. By doing so, we can begin to discover how we might integrate them into our understanding of the Gospel as they are so deeply embedded within Jesus' ministry and that of the early Church, that they are inseparable. Some are probably asking whether this is something that we can do without becoming weird. Well, weird and fringe are something that are defined and held within the eye of the beholder. Ultimately, our goal would be to be no weirder than Jesus, Paul, John or any of those who understood the marriage between the proclamation of the Gospel and the demonstration of the Gospel. 

No matter where we fall on the spectrum between the written and oral proclamation of the Gospel, and supernatural demonstration, we will likely appear weird to someone. This is an unavoidable fact and it's the chance we took by signing the dotted line. As we carry and perpetuate the Gospel, persecution from one direction or another is simply a fact of life. 


Identity

Whether we are stiff and rigid, or have become weird and wild as it pertains to the Gospel, these attributes probably have more to do with the quirks and leanings we brought with us into our Christian identity and ministry, than attributes that we have culled from the Bible. For many of us, we have gravitated towards and adapted scripture and theology which already match our personalities more than we have allowed the scripture and the Spirit that inspired them to renew and reframe our thinking (Ro 12:2).

The trick is to allow Jesus work in and through us more and more so that our own traits and rough ages can fall into subjection to his identity in us. We invited him in not as a guest, but so that he could take over. That's what the word Lord means. While God created us uniquely and he cherishes who he made us to be, he calls us to more fully recognize who we are in Christ his son. We can never fully arrive at that perfection by we are pilgrims on a journey built that those things which hinder may fall off and those things he wants to build in us will grow. It helps, since we're all on this road together, to offer grace to each other as each of us strive to enter his rest and come into higher levels of maturity and identity in Christ.


You are the ones who are greatly needed in the supernatural presentation of the Gospel for you are the most sensitive to its abuses.


An Invitation and a Challenge

To those who value orthodoxy, seek integrity, and desire to be Christlike within the the proper bounds of the scripture, I would like to extend to you an interesting and serious invitation and a challenge to investigate the supernatural demonstration of the Gospel beyond your comfort zone. Being the ones who are perhaps the most sensitive to its abuses, your maturity and desire to respectfully and faithfully administer the Great Commission is your greatest asset and the full Gospel needs your unique perspective. That's the invitation. The challenge is that along the way, you might find that you have alienated yourself from others as they will likely deem your investigation as getting to close to fringe Christianity, but I'm only suggesting that you begin by going only as far as scripture demonstrate. 

If praying for the sick and other demonstrations of the works of Christ in the Church have appeared to you more like a sideshow than a presentation of the Gospel, then I encourage you to discover how to perform the works Jesus promised we would perform. That's why I wrote The Gospel Served with the Works.

This book presents numerous scriptural examples of how these works are not merely fringe elements, but together are a major component of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and our commission. I challenge you to check it out and more importantly, jump back into the Book of Acts and see how the disciples and others who never met Jesus in the flesh, operated in these works.. 

In addition, find those around you who embrace the works of Christ in his Church… those you feel you can trust to help you stretch yourself and along the way, invest yourself in other solid biblical resources on the subject. Purpose to suspend your criticism of those in the Church who appear to you to be odd or overly flamboyant. It is amazing how our perception of how God works can change as our experience administering the Gospel grows. While it is true that God never changes, it is true that our perception of him changes and grows as we come to better know him and his ways.


Conclusion

The Gospel was never meant to be comfortable and this is perhaps a revelation not expressed adequately from our pulpits. That said, there is a real joy in letting Jesus administer the Gospel through us, bringing freedom, release, and the ability to serve him better to those around us. This call is likely best reflected in another series you may have heard of, The Chosen. In it Jesus is famous for inviting his potential disciples to Come and See, and once in, he challenges them to "Get used to different!" Different is not a dirty word.

As long as we can trust him to hold us and keep us from falling off the edge while we step out and take these kinds of risks, we will succeed. It might surprise you just how normal these "fringe," expressions of the Gospel can become. After all, they were normal for Jesus, the one who we are to follow. They are to become so normal, in fact, that Jesus says they will follow all those who will believe (Mt 16:17-18). Are you a believer? Are you up to accepting his invitation found in the Great Commission? We need you!