Category: Christian Spirituality

What hope the Word of God brings! The fact is: everything is possible. We may wonder how to believe in the manner Jesus commands, but the fact everything is possible means no situation is hopeless. Not one. Not even up to the bitter end. Even in our worst moments when things look hopeless, there is no telling what Jesus might do.

But have you ever asked yourself why faith is necessary? I mean, if God is as good as we believe he is, why does he require faith in order to make the seemingly impossible possible? Why does God require that we believe it in order for him to do it? Especially when one considers the difference between him doing it can be the difference between suffering and not suffering, between us seeing a young man demonized and being delivered from a demon? Between us suffering under the weight of whatever impossible situation we find ourselves in, and being liberated from it? If God is so good, why faith?

I mean, is faith nothing more than God making us jump through hoops in order to experience the fullness of his blessings?

I do not believe so. God requires faith because faith itself is far more sacred and far more central to the overall scheme of things than we might realize. It is not just “the thing we must do to get God to do the thing we want him to do.” It is something that reflects what it means to be fully human.

In a previous post I mentioned God’s commitment to conform us to His own image is really a commitment to restore us to the fullness of our true humanity. In other words, God, though he is good and desires to deliver us from suffering, is more concerned with delivering us from everything in our lives that has distorted and compromised what He has called and created us to be. In other words, he is doing more than just delivering us from the effects of evil; he is delivering us from evil itself. And unbelief is the greatest form of evil. It is everything in us that prevents us from seeing God as he truly is in relation to who we truly are. And that true picture of God and us can be summed up in these words: Everything is possible for one who believes. This is the true nature of how things are between God and us, indeed the true nature of reality itself.

Which means faith is more than the means by which we get God to move. Rather, faith is the thing God is restoring in every area of our lives. To be like Jesus is to be full of faith, because being full of faith means being aligned with what is really true about our situation from heaven’s perspective. The truth is: all things are possible with God. The truth is: we are unfathomably loved. The truth is: God’s hand is not too short. The truth is: God will never leave us. The truth is: we are sons and daughters of the Most High God. The truth is: we are more than overcomers. The truth is: God is for us. The truth is: we are the righteousness of God. All of these things represent the faith Jesus is in the process of perfecting in us.

And I will part with one last thought: knowing this liberates us from being responsible for whatever outcome we hope to achieve in whatever situation we are in. When we realize faith is not a means to an end but really an end in itself, we are free to allow God to perfect faith in whatever situation we are in and leave the outcome up to him. Every situation we face is really an opportunity to believe; the rest is up to him.

Many in the church are suspicious of the idea God wants us to live prosperous lives. They think such an idea is a selfish reframing of the Gospel, as though Jesus went to the Cross for other reasons, and we human beings in our self-centeredness have somehow found a way to make it all about us. In a way, such caution is merited; we are, after all, good at interpreting things from the standpoint of our own self-centeredness, not to mention good at making things all about us.

Still, I find it difficult to make the Cross not about us when we consider Jesus went to the Cross to give us abundant life for no other reason than his love for us. Think about it: Jesus died that we not only would not receive what we rightly deserve by also receive what we do not deserve, namely abundant life. That sounds a whole lot like a God wanting to prosper us.

If you have difficulty accepting God wants you to prosper, ask yourself whether you will prosper once you are in heaven. Heaven, after all, is what Jesus paid for at the Cross. Will you experience the abundance of good things in heaven, or will you be living a life of eternal lack and sacrifice? I hope you realize it is the former. But if this is so, what then is keeping Jesus from giving you what he paid for now? Why would a God who went to so much trouble to give you everything withhold from you now?

I think the answer for many of us is we still think we are earning our salvation. Life on earth is where we be good to earn heaven, and heaven is where we cash in on all our good behavior. Which makes sense, apart from the Cross. If we are alienated from the Cross, we have a deep-seated belief we do not deserve anything. But when we encounter the Cross, we come to realize there is really nothing God would withhold from us.

We believers are being conformed to the image of Jesus. This means far more than having our behavior conformed to the image of Jesus’ behavior. It means having all that we are conformed to all that he is. He is changing the inside of us. He is making us like him in every way. He is drawing us as close to the Father as he is. He is making us as full of mercy as he is. He is changing our thoughts and motivations, not just our actions.

This may seem obvious, but it is surprising to me how many times sermons are preached that assume God wants us to do things differently, not be different. Or the prevailing idea that in light of what Jesus has done for us, we should do this or that. As if Jesus’ main goal in our lives is to have us hold up our end of the bargain. Which would be fine, if this were the case. But the truth is, such thinking is still stuck within a Law-based mindset in which we are still trying to earn what Jesus already paid for. Which, by the way, is one of the many things Jesus is in the process of transforming in us. He is delivering us from any thought or motivation that suggests His work was not enough and therefore we are deficient in some way and must make up the difference through good behavior.

Others are under the impression we are being conformed to the image of Jesus only as far as his material blessings are concerned. We believe Jesus went to the Cross to deliver us from sickness and disease and poverty, only. I personally believe he went to the Cross for these things, along with every other effect of sin. But if we stop there, we will be puzzled when God begins to go after deeper things in us. We won’t understand why He doesn’t just deliver us from the circumstance as if that were His main objective. It is not that Jesus does not delight in delivering us from difficult circumstances. But the gold He is after runs far deeper and is far more precious than any favorable circumstance.

But what is the endgame here? What image are we being conformed to? It is the image of Jesus, of course. But who is He exactly? Is he nothing more than Someone who is well-behaved and very nice in every situation? Again, is the goal nothing more than perfect behavior? No, the goal is perfect humanity. Jesus is delivering us from everything in this life that has distorted and compromised what it means to be fully human. He is restoring in us all we were created to be and are destined to be.

And he is doing so by honoring our humanity in the process. Some of our prayers to be delivered from circumstances are really prayers to be delivered from our humanity. We are asking not to feel the pain of loss, for example, when our true path through loss is to allow ourselves to feel the pain of it. He delivers us through grief, not out of it. God does as he pleases, of course. But our paths of deliverance often follow the lines that preserve and perfect our humanity. For to be like Him is to be fully human.

If you are following me, you will hear a lot about rest. It is presently what God is doing with me in this season. He is quieting my soul as a mother a child who, having felt the hardship of life in some way, finds himself in tears.

In the Christian life, there are times we are called to act, to step out of the place of idleness or timidity and conquer whatever needs to be conquered. But sometimes the hardships of life jar us in a way that puts our soul in a state of distress, and in those moments what is needed is rest. In those moments, it may feel like God is bringing us to a place of inactivity, even idleness. But what He is doing is bringing our souls back to center. He is allowing the trauma, for lack of better words, to come up, instead of allowing it to drive us.

Six years ago my wife of twenty-five years died suddenly. That was a shock to the system, but in the wake of my loss, I felt like God saying to me, “You have been grieving for a long time.” And by that, he meant what I am describing: life had jarred my soul early on in life, long before my recent loss, and I had been in a state of distress ever sense. I had been going through life on high alert without even knowing it, and God was now bringing me into a place of deep rest.

I am a high achiever by nature. But sometimes the only thing we can do is be still. For it is in the stillness that God does his best work. Many of us think we are not doing enough; the truth is we are doing too much. Again, it depends on the season, but many of us are operating from a place of high alert in the wake of some moment where life jarred us.

Rest is not idleness. It is giving the soul and God a chance to quiet our souls long enough to align us with the rhythm of the Spirit. This is what we were created for, and this is why having a proper theology about the Christian life is so necessary. There are so many opportunities in modern culture to keep your soul in a state of distress. Or if it is already in distress, to indulge its tendency to remain that way. But God is calling us deeper.

Be still today and know that he is God. He will be exalted among the nations, and that means he will be exalted in your life as well as you come to a place of stillness in Him.