Have Faith and Believe – The ‘Way’ To Life
Over the last year God has called me to write about some of the big themes in our Christian walk: the Kingdom of God, healing, prayer, repentance, evil, God is love, God hates evil, the wrath of God, plus others. In this next series of posts I am tackling another big topic: faith. In some ways, faith is the most difficult and mysterious topic I have studied and prayed over. It certainly has taken me the longest time. Part of the reason is that I know so little compared to theologians and pastors. I am constantly reminded in subtle ways that “I am not good enough”. True faith is risky and demands courage. So, I’ll continue to write, believing that this is what God wants me to do, and that in some supernatural way He will give me words to write. He will redeem them if they are not in accordance with His will and purpose.
This post is the first of two preambles to the series on Faith. Consider them the introduction.
What is this thing we call faith? Is there a ‘false’ faith? Is faith the same thing as ‘believe’? One is a noun and the other a verb. Is that the only difference? And if there is a difference, can it affect my salvation or my life in some other significant way? How do I ‘get’ faith? Does it just ‘happen’? Can I fall asleep at night without faith and wake up faithful? (Not on my own. But God, through His Holy Spirit, can do amazing things. It happened to me). I will attempt to answer these and other questions in this series.
The idea for a series on faith grew out of a previous post ‘At the Cross God Spoke a Word: “But” – Part 2’. In that post I suggested that some Christians are still living the “then — that life” instead of the “now — this life”. In other words, many of us are not living the abundant life, which is the Kingdom life bought by the cross, for a number of possible reasons. One possible reason was that we lack faith or have the wrong kind of faith (see another post, ‘Enter My Rest – Belief and Faith’). Oh boy, what a bad way to start. I hope you will keep reading to see what I mean. I believe that what I have written will be as redemptive for you as it has been for me.
Before I get started writing about faith, I wanted to say something about healing. I am coming to see in my own, small piece of the world that almost everyone needs healing. The need for physical healing is all around us and many of us know people who are grieving the death of a loved one. But, there are wounds that are deeply buried, invisible to almost everyone. These are spiritual and emotional wounds that stand in the way of many people experiencing true faith.
There are two fundamental kinds of faith: true faith, which is trusting and leaning on Jesus for all of our needs; and false faith, or idolatrous faith, that leans on the things of the world for all of our needs. The latter is common among Christians and, in my experience and the experience of others that I know well who minister to the hurting, is commonly rooted in spiritual and emotional woundedness, trauma, and pain. I have been surprised, for example in Christian conferences where people are invited to share testimonies of how Christ has worked in their lives, to hear how many women and some men were sexually abused as children. They carry these secret wounds around in their hearts. And guess what? They are not going to readily share them with anyone — the shame is too great. You will never know. What percentage of our congregations have experience sexual, physical, or emotional abuse when they were children? I don’t know, but I’ll bet it is between 10 and 30 percent.
I believe it is common for men and women who were abused as children to ask Jesus, “where were you? Why did you allow this to happen?” And until they get an answer to this question, they will never trust Jesus with their lives. Which means they can never have true faith.
And, of course, it is not just about abuse. Any childhood trauma, if it is not healed, can preclude true faith because while Jesus is powerful, “He is not trustworthy” (they think).
Doctrine, theology, and even reading the word of God will not heal this brokenness. Only Jesus, showing up in their heart and speaking a unique word to them, can heal this pain, because it is Jesus they don’t trust. You can tell them that “Jesus loves you”, but that message, which they can hold in their minds as truth, will not penetrate their wounded hearts. Because it is you speaking to them, not Jesus. Only with this healing under the influence of Jesus and His Spirit, can they begin to experience true faith.
Most Christians know a lot about Jesus. Churches in America do a good job of preaching doctrine, offering Bible studies, and writing books on every aspect of who Jesus was and what He said. Our access to an intellectual understanding of Jesus, with everything ever written about the Bible and Jesus on the internet, has probably never been greater. In spite of these wonderful Biblical resources, I believe that the Church in America is experiencing a ‘crisis of faith’ — not a lack of faith, just the wrong kind. And until the Church takes spiritual, emotional; and yes, physical healing seriously, true faith will be harder and harder to find. Most people don’t need to know more about Jesus. They need to know Jesus — the lover of their hearts, their healer, and their Father. They need to know the Father’s love. For real. And they need to hear Jesus speak the words, through His Spirit, directly into their hearts — not their minds — “You are my beloved. I never left you. I was with you through all of the trauma”. Do you want to call that a rhema word? I don’t really know what ‘rhema’ means. I just know it is not doctrine.
And while Jesus can just show up and do it, most of the time these wounded ones need help. It is Jesus they need coupled with someone to facilitate their healing. There is a place for medicine, psychotherapy, and drugs. But nothing can replace the power of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And only the Church can do that! Until the church wakes up to the ubiquitous need for healing, true faith will suffer.
Ok, that is my first editorial. The next one is on doctrine and the Spirit. We need both . .
Jesus is amazing. Hallelujah!
John