Faith in the real life

I just got back from a vacation. It didn’t solve any of my problems. But then again, that’s not why I went on vacation. Yes, it was nice to not think about certain things, but the reality is that things don’t disappear just because I distance myself from them. There is no magical solution to eliminating problems. Problems are tackled, not avoided. Overcome, not swept away. Those who think that their problems will be solved by getting away or going around them instead of running straight toward and through them are fooling themselves. For example, if a Christian husband and wife throw a vacation at their problems they will simply buy themselves time. They should instead seek repentance and forgiveness; they should pray for each other and together. A vacation or a quick fix cannot change a marriage - it cannot change a heart. A short cut, a detour, or a scenic route to avoid the potholes, bumps and re-construction that all of us must face on the road of life is fantasy.

Faith, for some, is living in a fantasy land where God does all, fixes all and heals all. But faith in the real life is where God works with us as we walk in obedience to Him (Philippians 2:12-13); where God shows His kindness towards us if we continue in His kindness (Romans 11:22); where God works all things together for our good, but where “all things” includes tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and a sword. (Romans 8:35). Faith in the real life is where God heals sometimes, but not all the time. It is where God allows calamity to come and to take everything away from a man named Job. It is where problems arise out of no where, persist and sometimes, like Paul’s thorn in the flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7), are with us everyday of our lives. Faith in the real life is not for the faint-hearted or the cowardly. Yet, a Christian is also not a super-human, but an exile. (1 Peter 1:1) And when we think of our exile we like to think of the Exodus and God’s incredible, supernatural and unstoppable deliverance of the Israelites, but not the 400 years prior of cruel slavery. Or we like to think of the woman with the flow of blood who simply touched Jesus’ garment and was healed, but not the 12 years she suffered before she was healed. (Mark 5:25-26) We like to think that the mourning before the dancing will last a moment. Or that we’ll wear our sackcloth for an hour before we’re clothed with gladness. (Psalm 30:11) We like to think that sorrow will pass quickly and then comfort will come and stay forever. (Jeremiah 31:13) But more often than not the reason the Bible calls us to persevere and to endure and to run the race and to fight the fight is precisely because these things, these trials, do not last a moment, but may last a long time, if not a lifetime.

For the Christian, perseverance is perspiration; it is endurance and discipline; it is running and crawling; it is fighting and waiting. Trials are not simply obstacles to our present-day, cheap and instant happiness. But they are fires by which we are purified and refined and brought into deeper relationship with God, our greatest joy. This joy supersedes are experiences and our expectations. This joy is not quenched by pain or suffering or even death because this joy is rooted in a measure of the love of God that can only be known through the fire. Husbands and wives fail to reach the glorious heights of marriage because they refuse to endure the deep valleys of trials. To know God, to love Him, to know others, to love them, is truly and only accomplished through hardship. Therefore, God will not remove our problems or save us from them because it's only through these circumstances that God purges sin from our hearts and refines us into His image.

This purifying, Peter says, is done through fire - trials, tribulations, temptations, problems. (1 Peter 1:7) This more than anything else results in the praise and worship and glory of God. Unfortunately, when we ask God to quench the fire that is purifying our faith, because we think He only wants to make life easy, we are asking God to stop bringing glory to His name. And where God's glory is not being sought, God's will is not being obeyed. If we choose to walk according to our will and not God's, then we are not walking by faith but in disobedience and blind arrogance. On the other hand, faith is trust and trust is no more evidenced than in times of great uncertainty, discouragement, frustration and pain. To trust in a sovereign God at a time when His sovereign work and purpose is hidden from us, is great faith. And faith results in glory and joy.

Paul’s famous statement, “we walk by faith and not by sight” is found in the context of suffering. And the context further teaches us that this walking by faith is not for believing that the present circumstance is going to change, but that though we are burdened and are groaning in our bodies that are wasting away, we will soon be with our God and Savior Jesus Christ. This is faith: to look forward to Christ. It is to look beyond today to the day when we will be with Him. This is faith: to hold on in trials and tribulations, in sickness and in death, to the promise of God that He works all things together for the good of those who love Him. This type of faith is clearly not for cowards who want to avoid all that Paul is talking about. This faith is not for those who want to please themselves and seek their own glory. This faith, Paul says, is for those who want to please Jesus Christ. How does this faith please Him? By not being discouraged by what we see, but by being encouraged by what we do not see, namely, His love and power working for His glory and our joy in ways that we cannot see or imagine.

Suffering must bear it's fruit. It must be brought to completion. We cannot cut it short. Too many of us run to books on how to be a better parent; on how to be a better spouse; on how to be a better Christian; on how to be a better pastor and preacher; on how to...While these have their place, walking by faith and not by sight is about trusting and seeking God day after day in the “realness” of what I face. Faith is evidenced in the normal daily grind before it is evidenced in the extra-normal and exceptional. God responds supernaturally to those who by faith trust in Him day in and day out, through the fire and through the valley. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:8 that Jesus will sustain you to the end. Yet, Jesus will not only establish you once and for all in the end, but He will keep you believing in Him until the end! This is a great promise. The promise is not that He will always do something miraculous or out of the norm, but that by His grace He will always richly supply you with everything you need to endure until the end, which may include the supernatural. There is nothing un-amazing about His grace! All signs and wonders are because of His grace, but His grace is much greater than this, enabling us to persevere as He prepares us through the burdening and groaning of life for fellowship with Him.

It takes great faith to trust a sovereign God in the midst of great trials. We cannot escape our trials. We are to quick to ask God to deliver us from them. We should instead be praying that He strengthen us to walk by faith and not by sight in this life, fully knowing that all that we have not seen will one day be revealed. Then our heart will fully praise and worship God, the Faithful and Sovereign One, when we have come to see that His good and perfect will was done upon the earth and in our lives for His eternal glory and our eternal joy.