Can your faith fight?

Faith is not resignation – faith asserts. A resigned person adrift in the ocean gives in and hopes that the tide will carry him to shore. An assertive person will strike out for the shore and swim all night if necessary until he feels solid ground under his feet again. Faith chases good things and grasps hold of them. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called. 1 Timothy 6.11,12.

Paul’s advice to Timothy is that he must chase down righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness and gentleness – all qualities belonging to Jesus Christ. He calls this struggle the ‘good fight of faith’. This fight is not a bad thing (though some trouble and pain will be encountered because that is the nature of a fight) - this is a good fight about belief. You need to win against unbelief if you are to chase down and possess righteousness, godliness etc. If unbelief (non-faith) wins, the fight to gain these valuable qualities is lost.

Faith must cut down every pretension that sets itself up against Christ. That is not a description of resignation – it describes action. Faith without works is dead. You can tell it is alive if it moves; and genuine faith fights.

Faith’s GPS is set on locating righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness and gentleness. It homes in on these qualities. You cannot afford to allow your faith to lose its ‘fight’ and become merely a default, resigned position. You have to pick up your faith and assert it. Faith must be wielded.

For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ. 2 Corinthians 10.3,4.

For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? 1 John 5.4,5.

Our faith overcomes the world and its mindset, influence, temptation and deception, because our faith is lodged in Jesus Christ who overcame the world and now dominates it.

Your faith must fight. Faith without fight might already be dead!

Argumentative Faith

Faith argues AGAINST one main thing: that there is anything in all creation that could possibly separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Every argument and pretension that sets itself up against the truth is summed up in this LIE: that we can be pried way from the love and attention of God. The Word asserts that no-one can pluck us out of his hand (John 20) and that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8). That Word destroys strongholds, which are the arguments and every lofty opinion that raises itself against the knowledge of God (2 Cor 10.4-6).

Faith argues FOR the reliability of God’s promises (which are all affirmed as YES for us in Jesus Christ). For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ. 2 Corinthians 1.19-21. Faith argues for the truth as it is in Jesus. It takes a vice-like grip on those truths and will not unlock itself from them (like a determined pitbull). Feelings will try to dislodge it. Circumstances will try to distract it. Thoughts buzzing around in your head will try to loosen it. But faith argues for and locks onto the promises of God revealed in Jesus and given in the Bible. Faith sinks its teeth into an objective Truth outside of your feelings, beyond your circumstances and personal ideas.

Pale genteel faith won’t do. Pray for muscular, red-blooded faith. Faith that argues.

Where is your faith?

Luke 8.22-24 (esp. v25)

• Is it in your feelings? (do you believe as long as you feel optimistic)
• Is it in your circumstances? (do you believe or not believe depending on whether the situation looks hopeful)
• Is it in your thinking? (do you believe as long as you can self-talk yourself into it – mind over matter)

The disciples in the boat had run down to their last drop of faith.

• No faith existed in their feelings – they were already overwhelmed by anxious feelings.
• No faith existed in the circumstances (as they saw them) - because the boat was already filled with water and about to founder.
• No faith existed in their thinking – they had already exhausted all their ideas for staying afloat.

So where does faith lie? It resides in what God says he will do. Faith is belief and when God speaks to us his self-belief convinces us to believe. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. If you were hanging off the edge of a 2^nd storey window ledge and I was to mumble that there was a chance that I could catch you if you jumped into my arms, my lack of self-belief would erode your confidence in me. But if I felt fully able to catch you and I called up to you confidently to let go, then it might seem very reasonable to avoid the flames at the window and have faith in my ability to break your fall.

Where is your faith? Your faith is a gift. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. (Eph 2). That gift is shared with you through the Word. The Holy Spirit helps you to hear and receive the Word in such a way that the Lord’s self-belief creates faith in him within you.

This is the reason why we need to be frequently and seriously loading God’s word into our lives, so that daily we can be convinced by God’s self-belief to believe his promises to us. Don’t expect to find faith in your feelings, in hopeful circumstances or in your reasoning. Find it in God’s self-belief.

Stick figure god

Our natural ideas about God are miserably deficient. As a toddler’s first drawing of its mother – a ball with sticks for arms and legs – cannot be compared to the true complexity and beauty of her whole person; so to, many of our ideas about God are inadequate. And when we attempt to put our trust in a ‘stick figure god’, we find we cannot trust him with the whole weight of our lives. This is not because God really cannot bear us up, but because our god is too small! Many people reject a god who is not God. He is their own childish imagination of what God is like or one made up from the inventions and false stories that abound in the world. But it is not GOD!

If you are considering abandoning belief in God – first be certain that you have properly understood him.

If you still have your childish understanding of God – your stick figure outline – it is not surprising that many of your problems and needs are too complex for a make-believe God to handle. Isaiah had some very big world-shaping messages to pass on to Israel, many of which were about God’s judgement on entire nations, including Israel. If Isaiah’s understanding of God was restricted to the Temple rituals he would hardly have been equipped to speak of kingdoms rising and falling and teach about the Kingdom of God into which men and woman of all nations and many generations would be called. A big message requires faith in a big God.

Isaiah 6:1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”

If God remains on the outer edges of your understanding and you think about him only occasionally, it is no wonder that both the attractions and the denials of the world are much stronger than your faith. Your god is too small! Your eyes need to be opened to recognise the Lord towering above every circumstance to rule and overrule in sovereign wisdom and power.

Bible with Pictures?

There are no pictures in the Bible, but you will find in it descriptions of your inner self so accurate and complete that you might as well be looking at a photograph of yourself included in the text.

James 1.22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

Lesson from a Public Toilet

When I was a small boy my dad would always warn me before I went into a public toilet. He would say earnestly, "Make sure you don't touch anything in here. Don't touch the walls. Don't touch the handles. Be careful where you stand."

I recently realised that this is the same advice my heavenly Father gives me about living in the world.

"Touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. (2 Cor 6.17-7.1)

Contact with the world is unavoidable - in fact, it is our calling to engage with the needy people of this world. Paul told us to avoid being contaminated by our contact with the world not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. (1 Cor 5.10).

However, as my dad told me, be VERY careful what you touch and where you stand.
Be merciful to those who doubt; snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh. (Jude 22,23)