The California Collection/TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr/his101/isue10f.arj/ISUE10F.TXT

Text File | 1990-12-23 | 9KB | 171 lines

                        Observations on Faith

.    We need today to be reminded that the Kingdom of God does not
consist of rituals, works or any outward observances of any kind or
manner.  The Kingdom of God consists of righteousness, peace and joy
in the Holy Spirit.  This kingdom, moreover, is a gift of God, not a
human accomplishment.  Its foundation is the vicarious atonement of
Jesus Christ on Calvary.  It was carried forward by the great
outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

.    The disciples before Pentecost were only disciples.  They tried
to follow Jesus and His teachings as best they could, but they did not
know true faith.  It was only at Pentecost that they were truly made
Apostles.  At that time, each of them experienced the power of the
resurrection of Jesus Christ.  At that time, each of them was
emboldened by the Holy Spirit to bear witness of Christ in public.

   Whereas previously they were disciples of the One whom they saw as
the Messiah of Israel, now they were ambassadors and heralds of the risen
Christ.  Instead of seeking faith that is a dead work of the law, they
now had the faith that empowers and redeems.  Previously they had the
faith of servants, now they had the faith of sons of the Living God.
Previously they were plagued by timidity and fearfulness, now they
were ready to die for the sake of their Master and Savior.

.    Faith includes intellectual assent, but its essence is a personal
relationship with the Living Savior, Jesus Christ.  It consists,
basically, in a living union with Jesus through the Holy Spirit.  True
faith means being before doing - being in the favor of God before
doing the will of God.  It means being grasped by the Spirit of God.
It is an opening of our inward eyes to the reality of God's
incomparable love poured out for sinners in the sacrificial life and
death of Jesus Christ.

.    Yet, faith is not an almighty action of the Holy Spirit on the
soul, it is also in our action in the power of the Spirit as we are
sent forth into the world as witnesses and ambassadors of Christ.
Faith entails both radical passivity and radical activity.  Luther
once observed: "Faith ... is a living, busy, active, mighty thing ...
so it is impossible for it not to do good works incessantly."

.    The deficiency found in many churches today is an empty formalism
or barren biblicism, either of which degenerates into an oppressive
legalism.  Other churches that seem more vital are plagued by
perfectionistic enthusiasm or frenetic activism that borders on
humanism.  What is needed is a recovery - a revival - of the depth and
breadth of Apostolic faith.

.    A revival must start in the heart of one individual - me.  Each
believer, with God, can work the miracle of revival - 'Breaking up the
fallow ground' only in their own heart and life - then God can use
that person to spread His revival to the world!

.    It is imperative that we bear in mind that Jesus Christ is not
just a moral ideal or prophetic genius - He is a LIVING SAVIOR.  He is
not simply the human representative of God, but God Himself in human
flesh.  It is not enough to know the historical facts about the life
of Christ, how He lived and died, each person must know that Jesus
died for them personally!

.    True faith does not consist of imposing our views on others, but
in sharing the light given to us.  In our evangelistic task we must
not approach others with any pretension to greater virtue or
intellectual acumen.  Instead, we present ourselves as fellow sinners
whose eyes have been opened both to the gravity of the human
predicament and to the reality of God's unconditional grace and love.

   The word that we proclaim stands in judgment over our lives as well
a the lives of our hearers.  We are beggars telling others where they
can get food.  As "fishers of men" we are instrumental in advancing
the Kingdom of God, but it is not through our cleverness that people
are won to Jesus Christ; our task is simply to let down the net of the
Gospel.  As the vehicle of the Spirit, the Gospel itself brings in
souls for the kingdom.  (Luke 5:2-10)

.    This is not to imply that Christians should never use apologetic
arguments in defense of the faith, but our purpose in doing so is not
to induce a decision of faith. (Only the Spirit does that through the
preaching of the Word.)  Rather, our aim is to intensify the hunger
for faith in the human soul and to help those who already believe to
better understand their own faith.  We can show the intellectual
relevance of our faith by argumentation, but faith's concrete
relevance to the human condition can be grasped only by those whose
minds have been touched by the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

.    Our witness is not to some "zapping" peak experiences of the
sacred, but to the incursion of the sacred into the secular which we
see in Jesus Christ.
.    Our appeal is not to external evidences for the faith but to
evidences that faith itself provides:

 o   The empty tomb.
 o   The transformed lives of the disciples.
 o   The interior witness of the Holy Spirit.

.    In carrying out the evangelistic mandate, we must bear in mind
that Holy Scripture is its own best interpreter, that is to say,
Scripture illumined by the Spirit of God, its author.  Holy Scripture
in the hands of Spirit directed believers is sufficient to "demolish
arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the
knowledge of God." (2 Corinthians 10:5 NIV)

.    We should never confuse religion with techniques for cultivating
spirituality or programs of church growth.  It is God who gives the
increase, though it is up to us to plant the seed.  (1 Corinthians
3:6-7)  Our responsibility is to hear the Word and then share the Good
News.  We can serve the Kingdom of God, but we cannot build it.  The
kingdom is a gift from God that can only be received with thanksgiving
and gratefulness.

.    There is a difference between believing that Christ is the Savior
of humankind in general and coming to know Him as one's own Savior.
Faith, understood as an interior awakening to the glory and meaning of
the cross, is a gift of God.  It is a work of the Holy Spirit within
us.  If we do not have this kind of faith, let us seek it.  Let us
pray for it as the Apostles did.  (Luke 17:5)  The key to discipleship
is given by our Lord:

.    "Ask, and it will be given you, seek and you will find, knock and
it will be opened to you." (Matthew 7:7)

.    True faith is inseparable from the experience of divine holiness
and divine love.  Sometimes that experience will take dramatic form,
such as when the apostle Paul was lifted up into the 'third heaven.'
(2 Corinthians 12:2)  Yet those who have such experiences do not dwell
on them.  People of faith are not spiritual exhibitionists, but
heralds and ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Living on a
'religious high' is not serving the glory of God and advancing his
kingdom.  John the Baptist furnished the model of true spirituality
and faith when he declared: "He must increase, but I must decrease."
(John 3:30)

.    Humility such as this is an indispensable mark of authentic
piety.  No one can be confronted by the Holy God without having a
poignant sense of one's own creatureliness and sinfulness.  (Isaiah
6:1-5)  What shows us the depth of our sin and the magnitude of God's
grace is not just an awareness of God as the Holy One, (which all
people have to some degree) but the knowledge of the Holy Love of God
reflected in the life and death of Jesus Christ.  Humility is the key
to the love of other human beings for God and for one another.  Proud
people cannot love, because love means to be emptied of self and
dedicated to the glory of God and the welfare of his creatures.

.    The cardinal evidence of true faith is works of self-giving love
which are visible to the world as shown in Matthew 7:20, John 13:35
and other scriptures.  Such works, however, are not visible to those
who do them, for the focus of the faithful doer is never on their
deeds (to which they are more likely oblivious) but on Christ and His
great, completed work of Atonement.

.    The essence of true religion, the righteousness of faith, is
known only to God.  True faith will be manifested in fruits, but
before we can bear fruit we must be rooted in Christ, engrafted into
Him.  We must be born again from above by the Holy Spirit.  (John
1:12-13, 3:5-8, 1 Peter 1:3)

.    Frank Kafka once wrote:  "The fathers of the Church were not
afraid to go out into the desert because they had a richness in their
hearts.  But we, with richness all around us, are afraid because the
desert is in our hearts."

.    Let each and every one of us, today, make the commitment to be
His servant and to seek the knowledge of His Grace and Mercy.  Let us
become the vessels of His workings in this world.  Let us have the
richness in our hearts.  Let us have FAITH that will set us apart from
the world and that will make the world want to know more about our
Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen

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