- So we've all met
someone along the way or maybe heard about somebody, but probably most of us have
met somebody along the way, who has what you might consider
to be unshakable faith. In fact, you might not
even be a religious person and you may not have
much faith of your own but you've met
somebody along the way, they just have an
unshakable faith that no matter what happened, no matter what they
were introduced to, no matter what came
along, they just had this, never ending flow
of confidence that God was in control and God was involved and they
just, nothing shook them. It was amazing. And when you meet people like
that, you wonder of course, I wonder of course
we always wonder I wonder how I would respond
if that were to happen to me. So of course I've known
for quite some time that I was gonna talk
about this today, but yesterday,
morning Sandra and I called a woman and her
daughter who just two days ago or three days ago
now just went through a terrible terrible situation or a sort of set
of circumstances that has changed
their life forever. In fact, it's the wife and
the mother and the daughter and a son. And I'm not gonna
tell you their story. It's too early to
tell their story and honestly it's
their story to tell. But when we called, we
expected extraordinary grief and extraordinary sadness. So we're preparing ourselves
and the opposite was so true. I finally interrupted
this amazing woman I said, "I just have to say
the tone of your voice "and the words
that you're saying "do not at all match
the circumstances "that you have
just gone through." And she said, what some of
you have heard people say, "Yeah well, we're just
trusting God through this "and we know that
God is in control." And I thought to myself, knowing we're gonna
talk about this today, well, there it is again. And Sandra got up and I got
off the phone, we're in tears. And again, we were calling
folks to encourage them. And we were just honestly,
inspired is the only word I can think of. And you've had this
experience with people that regardless of what
life throws at them, they're just confident. And they're convinced
there's more to this life than this life. And they experience suffering
and pain and disappointment within the context of knowing
that there's a God who knows, there's a God who cares, there's a God who
sometimes intervenes and sometimes chooses
not to intervene, but their faith is just,
it's just unshakable. It's not their amazing beliefs. In fact, you might
be able to argue with them about their beliefs,
but what you can't deny is that they have
amazing, amazing faith. It's active, it's
gritty, it's real world. It's in the
circumstances of life. It informs their responses and it informs their
decisions every single day of their life. So the question
that we're gonna ask and hopefully to answer
in this series is this, where does that come from
and how do we get it? Where does that come from
and how do we get it? That's what this
series is all about. And if you're
somebody who you feel like you used to have that kind
of faith and it slipped away or you feel like maybe you're
beginning to lose that faith or maybe once upon a time you had rock solid faith
or confidence in God and now you'd say, Andy,
I just have read too much. I've heard too much. I've seen too much. And it's just gone. In fact, the only reason
I'm watching this, I'm visiting with
family or friends and they're making
me sit through this, that used to be your story, for the next few weeks
we're gonna talk about where that kinda confidence
in God comes from and how in fact we can get it. And perhaps for you
this series will explain perhaps what happened to you. So if you're looking for faith, if you're looking
to regain faith, if you're looking
to strengthen faith, this series is for
you, so here we go. When you follow Jesus
through the gospels, when you follow the Jesus
through the gospels, you'll discover that
there were only two things that amazed Jesus. Wouldn't it be fun to be
the one of the two people, in the Matthew,
Mark, Luke, or John, or the life of Jesus who
actually amazed Jesus or cause him to marvel. The Greek term is
sort of, he marveled. The first one we
find in Matthew, it's a pretty familiar story. Jesus has gone along
with the apostles and a Centurion walks up to
Jesus and ask him for a favor. Now Jesus' apostles
were not thrilled that Jesus was even talking
to a Roman Centurion but the Centurion came
to Jesus and said, "I have a servant
at home who's sick. "Would you heal my servant?" Well, the way that this
group thought about God they assumed that God was
not in favor of the Romans and certainly wasn't
in favor of Centurions and if Jesus really
was a man of God, he's not gonna go to the
home of the Centurion, contaminate himself,
become ceremonially unclean to heal his servant. So they, I guess they
expected Jesus to say no but in fact, Jesus said, sure, and Jesus offers to
follow the Centurion home. And the Centurion turns
to Jesus and says, "You don't need to do that. "You don't need to
come home with me. "I know how this works. "I too like you, Jesus, I
too am a man under authority, "with soldiers under me and
the soldiers who are under me "do what I ask them to do, "not because of me, but
because of who I represent. "I represent the Roman empire. "So they obey me because
of who I represent "and Jesus, I've
been watching you. "And I know there's more
to you than people think. "And I know that you could
not do the things you do "if you were not
under something bigger "or something or someone
bigger than yourself. "So Jesus, I know
how this works. "'Cause we have
something in common. "So if you want to heal my
servant, just do what I do. "Just issue a command and
I believe it will be done." And when Jesus heard this,
when Jesus heard this, the text says, that
"He was amazed." Famazdo is the Greek word there. He was amazed. He was astonished. He was impressed, but impressed
or astonished by what? Because people asked Jesus
for favors all the time that he had just healed a leper but he wasn't amazed when the
leper asked him to heal him. Well, fortunately for
us, Jesus tells us why he was so amazed. Again, this is only one of
two times in all the gospels, he was amazed by anything. And Jesus says out loud for
the whole crowd to hear, "Truly I tell you," and
this was kind of a dig at most of his followers. "Truly I tell you, I've
not found anyone in Israel "with such great faith." That the thing that amazed
Jesus most was great faith. Big, bold, active,
informed faith. We've all heard
of amazing grace. This was amazing faith. But the question is,
what made it so amazing and what made it so different
than other encounters Jesus had had with other people. And the thing that
made it so amazing is that the Centurion
put two and two together. He understood who Jesus,
he had some understanding of who Jesus was and then because he recognized
this is so important. Because he recognized
the uniqueness of Jesus, when he recognized the
uniqueness of Jesus, he went all in. Essentially he
was saying, Jesus, if you choose to do this for me, you don't need to come
to my home to do it. And Jesus said, wow, that's
what I'm talking about. That's what I'm looking for. Now fun fact and this may be in contrast
to everything you know and experience with religious
people or growing up, if you grew up in
church, fun fact, Jesus was never, Jesus was never or Jesus never marveled at
or Jesus was never amazed at anyone's knowledge
or obedience. Jesus never responded
to somebody like, wow you are so smart. Or that was such
a great insight. Let me write that down. And he was never and
this is the real shocker. He was never amazed
at anyone's obedience. What he was most amazed at, the thing that
got his attention, was someone with extraordinary,
extraordinary faith. Faith that wasn't
simply in their head, faith that was lived out
in the reality of life. Now the other things
Jesus was most amazed with was the opposite of that. The second incident takes
place in his hometown. He goes home to visit family
and friends in the area that he'd grown up in. And when he gets there,
he does some teaching and he actually performed
a couple of miracles. And initially the people in
his hometown were astonished and amazed and they
got a hometown hero. But then a little bit
of hometown jealousy
began to creep in and they were like, wait
a minute, wait a minute wait a minute. Isn't this? I mean, isn't this
the carpenter. I mean didn't he
grow up around here. I remember when he was a
little boy running around, isn't this Mary's son? I mean, Mary's right over
here and the brother of James Joseph, Judas and Simon,
Jesus had his brothers and aren't his sisters
here with this. Jesus had sisters. Did you know that? So they're like, wait a minute. He's not all that special. I mean, he's from right here and now he thinks
he's better than us. And now he thinks he's
some kind of big shot and Jesus' response to
the hometown crowd was, the text says, and he
was here it is again, he was amazed, but this time he's amazed
at their lack of faith. So there it is, the two
things that most amazed Jesus, great faith and a lack of faith. And here's what we learned
when we follow Jesus through the gospels. That his agenda, that Jesus' agenda for his
first century followers and for his 21st
century followers, was that we would become, they would become
people of great faith. Active, in spite of, gonna
believe any way faith. But this is where it gets
a little bit confusing. And even for people
who grew up in church and those of us who would
consider ourselves Christians, is that gets a little
confusing for us as well and for people
outside our faith, I think it gets really confusing because of the way we
talk about faith sometime and this is important. Faith, unlike hope or optimism
and we should all be hopeful and we all should be optimistic. Faith, unlike hope or optimism, faith always has an object. Faith always has an object. For example, when you board a
jet to go somewhere to travel, you're optimistic that you're
gonna get there on time and you're optimistic that
you're gonna get there safely and you hope that you're
gonna arrive safely and your optimism and your
hope is certainly not unfounded but neither your hope
nor your optimism is the foundation or the
object of your faith, right? You're not placing your faith and your hope in your optimism. You're placing your faith in,
or you're anchoring your faith to the mechanical
integrity, right? The mechanical
integrity of the jet and the judgment of the pilot. Those two things are the
object of your faith. As a result of having something to anchor your faith
to, you're optimistic. But your faith and your
optimism and your faith, isn't in your hope, you have
an object for your faith and here's, what's important. The object of faith,
the object of faith is not a particular outcome. In other words, faith, the way that Jesus
talked about faith, faith that we find
in the New Testament isn't, well I think
everything's gonna be fine. I just have faith
everything's gonna work out. I have faith that
everything's gonna be fine. Actually that's just hope and
optimism, and that's fine. Jesus was not amazed at, and Jesus was not moved by the optimism and the
hope of the Centurion. What amazed him was that
this Centurion recognized, that Jesus as an object
of his confidence and an object of his
faith could do things that otherwise could not
and would not be done. So the point, this
is so important. The point of Jesus' ministry, the point of Jesus'
earthly ministry was that he established
himself as the object of faith. And this is why when
you read the gospels, and if you grew up in church, you heard this over and over that people were invited
to place their faith in, or their confidence in
Jesus to trust in him. In fact, on the
night of his arrest, before he was arrested, Jesus
had this long, complicated really challenging
conversation with his apostles. And they were so upset and they were a
little bit confused. Jesus was introducing
some new things. It was just disturbing. And so toward the end,
he says to his apostles, he says, Hey, don't
let your heart. Don't let your hearts be
troubled, in other words, I don't want you to
worry about all this. You believe in God, don't you? And when he said do you
believe in God, he did not mean do you believe that God exists? That's different. In fact, John who wrote this, who copied this, brings us this, it's so interesting. John created a phrase in Greek that doesn't show up in
any other Greek literature before this time which
is really phenomenal. And the reason is in
the Greek language, there's no word for trust. There's just the word
belief or belief or beliefs. And so John is
getting at something beyond simply believe that, he's not saying you
believe that God exists. So he takes the Greek
word verb for belief, and he marries it to the
preposition in like I-N in Greek it's epeslonu or en. And this is the first
time these two words ever appear together. And it communicates something
beyond believe that. It communicates what we
say in English as trust in. And so John says, look,
you guys, Jesus says, look you guys, you
trust in God don't you? Not believe that God exists. You trust in God, don't you? And they're like,
yeah, we trust in God. And then Jesus says this. This was so blasphemous. He says, believe also, just
like you believe in God, I want you to
believe also in me. Just as you trust in God,
I want you to trust me. In other words, he says, guys, I want to be the
object of your faith. I want you to trust me like you
trust God and in saying this he has established
himself once again as the object of their faith
and ours, which is a big deal. But there's something
else going on here as well and again, this is so important. We talk about it
from time to time but I don't think we can
talk about this too much. Something else was going on. Jesus positioned himself
as the object of faith. Jesus positioned himself
as the object of faith, because in other words, Jesus wanted to be the
focus of their faith because while he
was on the earth, Jesus came to explain, or to show us what
God is really like. He came to reveal the
true nature of God. Now, if we were to do a survey
today of everybody watching or listening, or those
of us in the building and we were to give a quiz
about what is God like, we would probably get
all kinds of answers. In fact, one of the reasons that you've been
disappointed with God or perhaps quit believing in God is because of your
assumptions about God, right? When Jesus showed up, even though he showed up
in a religious community, they had many, many
many assumptions
about what God is like and many of their
assumptions in fact, perhaps most of their
assumptions about
what God is like, we're absolutely wrong. And one of the reasons
Jesus came was to reveal and to explain what
God is actually like, to correct some of those
incorrect assumptions. In fact, he was so
clear about this, that it was offensive to
the people who thought, no we know what God is like, we have a box and God's in there and our job is to explain
god to everybody else and Jesus kept
contradicting the god that they tried keep in the box. And Jesus was clear. If you wanna know what
God is like, watch me. If you wanna know what
God is like, listen to me. If you wanna know what
God is like, follow me. So of course this was
extremely offensive, but at the end of his ministry he demonstrated the fact that
this is in fact why he came. So he could say to the apostles, you trust in God? Yeah we trust in God. Well, that's a
little bit difficult. Anybody seen God? Nope. Trust in me. So throughout his ministry and this is why you
should read the gospels. In fact, if you've lost
faith or confidence in God, read the gospel with
this question in mind, what do I learn about
God, from Jesus? Because Jesus came so we could know what our
heavenly father's like and I'll tell you why he
did that in just a minute. So they're walking
along one day. This is in John chapter nine, again another kind
of famous story. The apostles see this
blind man, this young man. And of course they think
they know what God is like. And the God that they know of is a God that punishes people
with illness and sickness. So this young man is blind. So clearly he must have
sinned, that's why he's blind. Or maybe he didn't sin. Maybe God is
punishing his parents, by allowing their son to be
blind so that they would suffer and he wouldn't be able
to support the family. So they say to Jesus, Hey,
we know how God works. God punishes people
with illness. So tell me, Jesus, tell
us Jesus who sinned. I mean, it's just two
options who sinned? This blind man, or this
blind man's parents. And Jesus says, that's
not how it works. That's not what God is like. Your whole life you've
grown up thinking that God punishes
people with illness. God did not punish
this man with illness. He is not blind because
somebody sinned. They're thinking
but our whole life that's how we thought it worked. Jesus is like,
that's why I came. So Jesus is teaching one day. He says, love your neighbor. They'd all heard that before, a man stands up and says, Oh yeah, I know, love
your neighbor I get that but I have a question
about loving my neighbor. Which of the Judeans,
that live around me do I need to consider a
neighbor and actually love? You don't expect me to
love all the Judeans. And I assume, God
doesn't love everybody. God mostly loves the Judeans, the sons and
daughters of Abraham. So which of the sons
and daughters of Abraham am I responsible for loving
and treating as a neighbor? Because that was
what God is like. God can't love everybody equal. God has favorites, right? That's the assumption. And Jesus responds to this
question with one of the most famous stories he ever told, the story of the Good Samaritan. And in the story, he does
a very brilliant thing. He takes someone that no one
in his audience would like, a Samaritan and makes
the Samaritan the hero of the story. This is really a
story about racism because neither group
liked the other group. And suddenly someone, they
just would not have anything to do with is the
hero in the story, it was so disruptive
and so disturbing. But his point was simply this,
God doesn't have favorites. God doesn't have favorites. That a neighbor and then
Jesus, this is so amazing. In this moment, and his audience didn't
know this was unfolding. In this moment Jesus
redefines neighbor for every single person
in every single generation from that point forward. He says, "A neighbor is
anyone who has a need "that you can meet. "That's a neighbor." Neighbors aren't the
people who look like you or even like you. They're not the people
who live like you or even wanna live like you. A neighbor is someone that
has a need that you can meet. Jesus says, "Love
your neighbor." Those are your neighbors. And he redefines how
God views people. The people who are like us and the people who
are nothing like us. And they're like, wow. "You have heard it
said," Jesus said, "You have heard it said, "love your neighbor
and hate your enemy." To which his audience would say, not only have we heard that
I mean, that's the way it is because God loves his friends
and God loves his people and God hates his enemies. I mean, duh. I mean, if it's good
enough for King David who clearly hated his enemies, if it was good
enough for King David it's good enough for us, besides Jesus what's
the alternative? Jesus says, "Here's
the alternative. "Here's what God is like. "I tell you, like
your father in heaven, "you are to love your enemies." To which they said, "But wait, "God, doesn't love his enemies." To what Jesus would
say, "Actually he does." And later, much later, the
apostle Paul would write, "While we were still sinners. "While we were enemies of God, "God sent his son to die." First they had it all wrong. Love your enemies and pray
for those who persecute you, that you may be, here it is. That you may be children
of your father in heaven. In other words, if you wanna
be like your father in heaven, you have to love your enemies. Why? Because your father in
heaven loves your enemies. I mean, this was
such a paradigm shift for these first century people who had grown up in a
religious environment. But this is why Jesus came. He didn't simply come
to pay for our sin. He came to explain
what God is like and this is why, this is
why, he drew to himself and talked about
himself in such a way, that people would see
him and accept him as the object of their faith. So you're telling us
that God likes everybody? Yes, Jesus would say. And here's the proof. "Have you noticed?" He said to his audience,
"Have you noticed, "that he causes his
sun to rise on the evil "and the good?" Have you noticed that
when the sun comes up, it comes up for everybody and when the sun goes down, it goes down for everybody. Have you noticed that he
sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous? Have you noticed that
the rain doesn't stop with the Gentile crops, that
it rains on the Judean crops, the Gentile crops,
the Samaritan crops and the Galilean crops
that when it rains, it rains and when
it stops, it stops. Have you not noticed that God extends his
grace to everyone? This was so different. They had God wrong and Jesus showed
up to make it clear and to reveal the nature
of his father in heaven. And this is why he
demanded or asked to be the object of their faith because to trust in him
as he presented himself was an invitation to trust
in God as God actually is. So here's the moral of the story and it's a little bit disturbing Not original with me. And what I do I try to
never, ever be original. If you wanna know
what God is like, if you would like to know
what God is truly like and if you've been
disappointed with God, if you'd like to discover that perhaps your
disappointment with God had nothing to do with
what God is really like. If you really wanna
know what God is like don't begin in Genesis. You begin with Jesus. Because Jesus, isn't simply
a chapter in the story. Jesus is the story. And I'll tell you who
understood this better than anybody who ever
lived, was the apostle Paul because Paul as
most of you know, steps onto the pages of history as someone who thinks that
Christians are just a cult. He would refer to it
as a Nazarene sect because Jesus was from Nazareth and he decided this
needs to go away and it needs to go away quickly, they did not believe
Jesus was a Messiah, Son of God, did not believe
he rose from the dead. And so he goes about
the business of
imprisoning Christians and executing Christians
and torturing Christians. And he's a Pharisee so he's
a really good non-Christian. In fact, he claimed to be the
best Pharisee that ever lived, pretty much what, he did not have self-esteem
issues, obviously. So the apostle Paul then
becomes a Jesus follower and he's an activist. He was an activist when he
was against Christianity. He's an activist now
as a Jesus follower. So he was at the epicenter
of the transition. He understood
better than anyone. He understood better than anyone the relationship between
religion, the Jewish religion, pagan religion and this
new thing that had happened when Jesus came and declared
himself the son of God. He understood it
better than anybody. And here's how he summarizes it. This is so important. This is from his letter and we call it the
book of Colossians. It's just the letter. And he's talking
about all religions. He's talking about pagan
religions, even Judaism. He's saying all the
customs, all the traditions, all the do's and
don'ts all the things that you felt weighted down with as it relates to your religion, whatever your religion
is, he says this, these things, all of
these things before Jesus, all of these things
are a shadow. This is so powerful. "These are all a shadow of
the things that were to come." Now let's think about
a shadow for a minute. You can learn a lot about
a thing from a shadow but you can't learn everything
from its shadow, right? You can learn a lot. You can tell some things
by the shadow that's cast but you can't tell everything. And when the shadow
caster, shows up, when the thing that cast
the shadow shows up, the shadow is a far
less consequence. Not because the
shadow was incorrect, because the shadow
was incomplete. Listen to what Paul says. He says, "The reality,
however, is found in Christ." These are all these
things that came before. He would say that this
is why Jesus' apostles, as much as they were
trying to understand God, they had it wrong, because they'd grown
up on the shadow. They'd grown up
on the reflection. And Paul says I
was the same way. I grew up on the shadow
and I did my best to understand what God is like. But when Jesus showed up,
Jesus was the shadow caster and it wasn't until
Jesus showed up that the reality became
something that we could truly understand. This is why, this is why Jesus
had so much explaining to do. And this is why his
first century audience, and perhaps his 21st
century audience has so much unlearning to do. They were raised on the shadow. Some of us were raised
on the shadow as well but here's what Jesus said. He said, "Just as you
have trusted in God, "I want you to trust in me "because you will
never get a clearer "or better understanding of
what God is like than me." He was the perfect. Jesus was the perfect
representation. The perfect representation
of the father. It's as if he said, if you
wanna know what God is like, don't look past me and don't stop short of me because everything before
me was pointing to me. And I've come to point
you to the father, place your confidence
and your trust in me, so you'll know what God is like so that I can point
you to the father and to the generations that
would come after Jesus, so that as we place our faith
and our confidence in God, here's, what's so amazing. And this is why, again, if
you're struggling with faith, lost faith, losing your faith, trying to strengthen your faith, you gotta follow Jesus
through the gospels. Jesus was saying, "I have
come to reveal the father "so that when I'm gone, when
I'm no longer on the earth "and you pray to God,
you can approach God "as God really is not as
you imagine God to be. "And I've come to
point you to the father "and I've come to
reveal the father." This is the best part. "Not simply so you'll
know more about God, "but so you can establish
a relationship with God." This is why, this is why. We should not be surprised
that throughout the gospels, Jesus constantly talked about, belief in, trust in,
belief in, trust in. Why so much about
belief? Here's why. What is the currency
of a relationship? In other words if Jesus came
to establish a relationship with his first
century followers, so they would better
understand God, so they can have a relationship
with God as God truly is, of course, he
talked about faith. Of course, he talked
about trust in because what is the currency? What is the currency
of a relationship? The currency of
relationship is trust. It's not obedience. The currency of a
relationship, isn't obedience. The currency of a
relationship, isn't fear. The currency of a
relationship isn't I will, if you will and
if you don't, I won't, the currency of any kind
of relationship is trust. And so throughout his ministry,
Jesus is inviting people to place their confidence
or their trust in him as he reflects who God is. So that's why when you
read the book of Genesis, the beginning of
the book of Genesis. Think about this. What was broken in
the garden of Eden between God and mankind? What was broken in the
garden of Eden, was trust. So again, Jesus says,
I want you to view me, to his first century followers. I wanna be the
object of your faith. I wanna be the
object of your trust. And I want you to trust
me when I tell you what God is really like. And then when I go away, when
you think about God in heaven, God, your heavenly father, you'll know who God
is, what he is like and you can have a
relationship with him because you'll know
you can trust him. So backing up and putting
this all together, here's why this is the
setup for where we're going, for the next few weeks. God so loved the world. God, your heavenly father
so loved the world, he wanted you to know
what he's really like, but God is spirit. So he sent his son
into the world. John said, "The
word became flesh." This is so powerful. John who spent three
and a half years or three years with Jesus. He's an old man. He's writing his gospel
or dictating his gospel. And he's trying to figure
out how do I start this? He's like, "The only
way I can describe it, "is God or the word or the
truth or the information "that God who is spirit
actually became a person "and he dwelt with us "and he revealed the father
to us so that we could have "a relationship with
God as God truly is." Again, not as we imagine
or how we were brought up to believe that God is,
that God revealed himself. God revealed himself
through Jesus because after all it is
difficult to have a relationship with a shadow. You'll never know where
you stand with a shadow. And since trust and
faith is the currency of an authentic relationship. Of course, Jesus, Jesus
invited people to trust him or to place their faith
in him and in doing so, they were trusting in and
establishing a relationship with God, their heavenly father. And then here's what we
discover throughout the gospels. And here's what
you have discovered many of you in your life. And here's what
you've discovered in talking to
people who have this amazing unshakable faith in God. That God just like you,
that God is most honored. Just like you're most honored, God is most honored by our
living, active, death defying, in-spite-of trust in him. This is how God is most honored. And this is the way that
you're most honored. Isn't it true that
if you have a friend or maybe a son or daughter
or husband or wife and the circumstances make it look like
you're not trustworthy, but they decide to
trust you anyway, because they trust their, you are the object
of their confidence and their trust in
spite of circumstances, in spite of what
somebody else said, in spite of the fact
that you were late, in spite of the fact
that it didn't happen the way they thought
it was gonna happen, it looked like a
promise was broken and they just decided,
you know what? I trust him. I just trust her. That's not consistent
with who I know, that's not consistent
with the person I married. That's not consistent
with my son. That's not consistent
with my mom. I know what you're saying. I know what it looks
like, but no, I trust him. Is there anything more
honoring than that? Well in the same way,
God, your heavenly father is most honored, is most honored by our living active
death defying in
spite of trust in him. This is what having a
relationship with God actually looks like,
because this is what most amazed Jesus is, what
he invited people into. And this is how
Christian maturity is, we're gonna talk about
in the next few weeks. This is how Christian
maturity is actually measured. That God our heavenly father wants us to mature to the point that we like some of the
people that you know, or heard of and have met that we would mature to
the point in our faith, that anytime there's a question, anytime there's a challenge, we would ask this
question, okay, that's not what I signed up for, that's certainly a surprise, that didn't go the way
I thought it would be. I never thought I would find
myself in this situation but what would I do if I was
confident God is with me. What would I do? What would someone who is
me do in this circumstance facing this uncertainty, facing this horrible news that
has changed my life forever. What would I do if I
was absolutely confident that God is or was with me. And when you meet
somebody like this, they're amazing aren't they? They're inspiring. They forgive, they
love, they show up, they step up, they step out. They don't deny reality but their faith
isn't right here, their faith isn't
just here, it's here and it's in their hands
and it's in their feet and it's in their words and
it's in their countenance and it's the way that
they respond to life. And this is what Jesus invited his first
century followers into and this is what he
has invited you into. And it's what he's
invited me too as well. And when we see, when we
see that kind of faith, when we see that kind of faith, even if you're not
a person of faith, even if you used to be a person
of faith and walked away, even if you're not even
sure there's a personal God, when you see that kind of faith, isn't it true there's
something in you, that wants that kind of faith. And you wonder how they got it,
that confidence, that peace, that ability to
continue to put one foot in front of the other even though life is nothing
like it was a minute ago, an hour ago, days ago,
a week ago, a year ago. Well how they got it and
how they've maintained it is really what this
series is all about. But it's not until we
recognize that Jesus came to establish himself as
the object of our faith so he could hand off
his heavenly father as the object of our faith. And it's not until we
understand that Jesus is the perfect reflection of
who God is and who God loves, and what God does and
how God views the world. It's not until we
understand that, that we're able to take the
steps, to create and to embrace, enduring active in spite
of, death defying faith. So for the next few weeks
we're gonna talk about how we do that. Now, I'm convinced, and I'll
tell you why in a second. I'm convinced they're
actually five things, five dynamics, not
things that you do, this isn't a to do list, that there are five things that grow or blow
up a person's faith, blow up in a good
way, make it big. Now there may be seven, there may be 10,
there may be 12, but I'm convinced
there are at least five and I'll tell you why. About 30 something years
ago, maybe 35 years ago, Sandra and I were in
a season of our life where we were spending
most of our time with high school and
middle school students, doing ministry for high school
and middle school students. And we wanted to
create an environment that actually created
enduring faith in these high school and
middle school students. In other words, we didn't want
them to just have camp faith if you know what I mean. If you grew up in church,
you knew what camp faith is. You go to camp, there's
some great speakers. There's some great music
at the last night of camp. You rededicate your life and
you put your stick in the fire and you nail something
up on a cross or then you go get on the phone
and confess to your parents all the terrible things
you've been doing and they cry and you cry. And then you get on the bus
the next day and you go home and things are good for
about three days, right? But you just didn't
have the tools. You just didn't
have what it took to have enduring
confidence and faith in God where you live your
life dependent on God. So we just didn't
wanna keep doing that. And so we began to ask, we wanted this generation of
students to have an enduring. And we talk about this
all the time here, an enduring faith of their own. So formally and informally,
we began to explore and ask the question, what
creates that kind of faith? What are the common
denominators among men and women and students
who have enduring faith, who can go through just
about seemingly anything and maintain confidence in God? Basically we were
asking the question, what fuels or facilitates the
development of enduring faith? Faith that goes to
distance from childhood all the way through adulthood. We were asking, what are
the essential ingredients so to speak? What are the
essential ingredients that when stirred together result in enduring
confidence in God. And again, we would ask
people to tell their stories and every time we would
hear a faith journey story, these five things showed
up every single time. And again, straight
out of the teaching and the life of Jesus. So we began to refer
to these things as the five faith catalysts. The five things that blow up,
or grow up a person's faith. And the reason this
is so important, regardless of how old you are, regardless of what
season of life you're in, an active faith in God,
an active faith in God, actually looks different
in every season of life. That's why what we discovered
has been so powerful and has made such a
difference in my personal life and in the lives
of so many people. I mean, for example,
teenage faith, what is teenage
faith challenged by? When my parents got divorced, back and forth between homes, I'm dealing with peer pressure,
I'm dealing with temptations I'm dealing with
the stuff teenagers. Well, these five things created
during faith in those years. University students are, face a different kinda
challenge to their faith in terms of intellectual
challenge, living alone or living away from
home for the first time. Married faith what kind of, how are the challenges, think about the
challenges of marriage and how they begin to
challenge our faith and what we can trust God for. Having kids, I mean, that does something to
our faith, doesn't it? It blows it up and then
we begin to wonder, right? Or perhaps the struggle
to have children, faith. And perhaps that's your story. And you know, what a
hit your faith took when you realize that
it's gonna be a struggle, or you may not even
be able to have kids, losing a child faith, losing a marriage faith,
losing a husband or a wife. Every season of life,
every stage of life to have enduring faith,
these five components come into play. That's why we decided to build
our whole organization really around what we would
call eventually these five faith catalysts. So these are important
every season of life and in this season,
what we're gonna do in this series rather,
we're gonna take a deep dive into each of these and
we'll begin that next time. But before we wrap up, I just wanna emphasize why
this is super, super important and why I wanna encourage you to be a part of
this entire series. If you feel like in this season,
you've begun to lose faith or perhaps somewhere in the
past, you just lost faith, this series may explain why. And this series is gonna
give you some handles to begin rebuilding and
re-establishing your confidence or your faith in God. And my experience is this and
this is just my experience, not scientific. I've never met anyone. I've never met anyone
who lost faith, who acts, this is interesting, who actually lost faith because of something that had
anything to do with Jesus. I've met people who lost faith because they had some crazy
view of God that they inherited or somebody told them about or it was kind of
a mix and match of a whole lot of
different things. I've met people who've lost
faith because of tragedy. I've met people
who've lost faith because of something they read or something they
heard in school. But I've never met and I'm
sure they're out there. I've just never met them
and I've listened to, read books and articles and
rants and blogs and podcasts of people who've lost faith. I've never heard the story of a person who lost
faith or gave up faith because of something that
had to do with Jesus. And that's why, what I said
earlier is so important. That Jesus has invited
him, has invited us, to view him and his view
of our heavenly father as the foundation of and the thing that is
central to our faith. And it's understanding
that that anchors us, to the God that really exists and allows us to
anchor our faith to something that
really does endure. So for the next few weeks, if you're looking to
strengthen your faith, maybe you're looking
to restart faith, maybe you have a friend
that needs to regain faith. We're gonna give
you some handles. And perhaps in the
next few weeks, you'll have a
greater understanding of what happened to your
faith to begin with. And hopefully
throughout this series, you will gain a
greater understanding of how to rebuild, perhaps
what you lost in the past. So next week, we're gonna
jump into this first, sometimes we call these faith
catalysts, these catalysts that blow up and
grow up our faith. Next week, we're gonna look
at the first faith catalyst. So I hope you'll be here next
week or tune in next week. And I hope you'll be here
for this entire series.
