Day 60 - August 14 - My Atrophied Faith - Part 1

Sixty days. It doesn't seem possible. It also isn't possible that this journey has been so long, so arduous, so painful and so eye-opening for no reason. And so this morning I'm taking a few minutes to explore the reason. Please excuse the interruption - I'll have more updates on the boy after I get to the hospital this morning.

The last 60 days of my life have been one continuous lesson in faith. Faith, most of us would say, is a very important part of who we are, what we believe, and what binds all of us strangers together, and we'd be right. But if we stop there, we are missing what seems to me to be the most important part of faith - actually using it.

What do I mean? Well, most of you would agree that I have been tossed into the crucible of faith these last weeks and months. It is readily apparent to me that I am not the same man I was the morning of June 16. If you would have asked me then, I would have said "of course I'm a man of faith", but the reality was that I was not. Instead, I was just a Christian in America. I claimed faith in Jesus, and hoped I would have faith to trust Him in times of need, but the extent of my "need" was when I overspent and had to not go out to dinner for a few nights until the next paycheck came in. I have a nice house, a couple of cars, some motorcycles, a tenement on wheels, a steady job, a good retirement plan, and enough groceries to last a couple of weeks - in short, I have everything I need and more, and the truth is that I was so comfortable I didn't really need God at all. So exercising my faith really meant "praying hard after I screwed up the finances until the next paycheck saves the day".

In addition, my church experience over 46 years has really downplayed most of what, for lack of a better term, I am calling "practical" applications of faith in the Bible. The arm of the church in which I grew up would sort of gloss over why, for example, there are numerous instances throughout the New Testament where Jesus' followers are healing the sick, casting out demons, and other demonstrable applications of faith. It was right there in the scripture, and yet we didn't do these things in my church or my experience. If the question was asked, we'd get lots of long-winded explanations about dispensationalism and which Church Age we lived in, until I as a youngster would glaze over and quit paying attention.

I've gone 46 years now, accepting those sorts of answers, and (quite honestly) I'm not satisfied with them anymore. If Jesus is truly "the same yesterday, today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8, John 8:58); if God is "not man that He should lie" (Numbers 23:9); if Jesus Himself told the parable of the persistent widow and asked whether He would find such faith when He returned (Luke 18:1-8); and if He Himself also said "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours"(Mark 11:24) - if all these things are true, then why is it that we do not see people doing such things as Christ's early followers did?

I can only see two answers to that question - either A), God has changed and is no longer the way He once said He was; or B), they don't happen because we (collectively and individually) don't believe they can. I take a look around at the state of the church these days - pastors who have their own business jets; deacons and elders wrapped up in all sorts of shenanigans; many people for whom the primary concern appears to be to further their own security and comfort; and most importantly, the pathetic state of my own relationship with Christ; and I wonder what the likely answer to that question really is.

I don't believe God changes. To believe that would be to throw away the foundation of my entire worldview, and everything I've ever built upon it. No, God's nature is the same right this minute as it was when He spoke to Moses out of the burning bush. And if that's true, then answer B is the true answer to my question. And if that is true, then my follow-on question is whether I am satisfied to leave it at that, or if I'm going to set out to find God's truth about such things as faith, healing, and the other gifts of the Spirit spelled out in 1 Corinthians 12 -

"For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills."

Now if I believe all this - and I mean REALLY BELIEVE it, and not just give some sort of lip service to it - then that paints a different sort of world than the one I've lived in all my life. It makes things possible that I have never given serious thought to. It shakes up some serious power foundations in established religion, and quite honestly, it scares me immensely. It scares me because it means I don't get to sit comfortably on the pew anymore. It scares me because I have to look in the mirror and see if it's MY faith that needs strengthening. It scares me because it means that the God of Scripture is really alive, and interested in my life, and doesn't fit into my comfortable, Sunday-go-to-meeting world. Talk about terrifying - the God that breathed the universe into existence, acting and living and moving in my life, interested in my choices, concerned about my needs. And He's alive and well and willing to use me any way He wants for His glory, if only I'll wake up and smell His coffee. That's not cool, or neat, or anything - except baldly fall-down-on-my-face-in-fear scary.

Now, assuming you have followed my line of reasoning, verified the scriptures, and think I'm making some sort of sense - assuming all that, why do you think all this is? I would suggest that it is because our culturized faith is, like my son's muscles, atrophied. We never use it. We never need to use it. And so it sits; unused, unchallenged, ungrowing. When you go to the gym and lift weights, your muscles scream in agony as they get broken down so they can grow (which is another blog all by itself). It's only when your muscles are being pushed that they grow - if they alone are sufficient for a given task, they don't grow at all. And our society has made us all so self-sufficient that we don't need God's grace to be sufficient for us, and consequently our faith never gets the chance to grow. We grow fat and lazy as we bask in our own self-sufficiency, all the while giving our lip's service to "doing God's work". To steal a line from Jim Carrey, "I hold myself in contempt".

Is it possible that our weak faith is the reason we see so little faith in action? Could it be that we see so little spiritual warfare and so little spiritual opposition here in America because we're so asleep in our faith that the enemy doesn't need to bother? Could it be that there is so little faith action in America because we're so self-reliant that there's no need to learn how? Can we learn how? Dare I ask - could it be that the material blessings this land enjoys are actually curses that keep us from a full knowledge of our God?

Is it possible that believers in many other countries - where the material blessings Americans enjoy aren't perhaps as prevalent - see many more manifestations of exercised faith (and spiritual warfare, for that matter) because they are more muscular, faith-wise, than we, and therefore more effective spiritually?

I don't have the answers to these questions - but I'm asking them. Look for part 2 sometime in the near future as I journey with my son on this exodus of pain.



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