The Faith that Pleases God

Hebrews 11:6 “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

Bible quotes from NIV

God (Father, Son and Spirit) reveals to us that it is impossible to please Him without faith. Faith, somehow, is the key to all of this: Trust, faith, belief.  Yet 1 Corinthians 13 reveals that without love, this all sounds a bit like noise and leaves us as being nothing.  To love, to truly love in spite of what you see or hear, seems to require faith.  On the surface, it seems that faith does not require love, yet love does seem to require faith.  Love is the highest form of equity or currency in the Kingdom of God.  When we are struggling to love someone, to truly love, care and show deep concern and compassion, then we must ask for faith.  Having the faith required to love is faith to move mountains.
 

"It seems that faith does not require love, yet love does seem to require faith"

The faith that is required to please God is not necessarily the faith that is needed to walk on water, to heal the sick or the blind or to safely walk in dark places, but to love unconditionally, to love “the Elephant Man” so to speak; to love our enemies.  That requires faith beyond walking on water or even raising the dead itself! Yes, it does please God we have that kind of faith to do the things mentioned above, but if we are not careful, we will stop at those things and not go any further in our relationship with God and our fellow human beings.

"Love is the highest form of equity or currency in the Kingdom of God."

2 Kings 4 tells a story of Elisha, how he dealt with a wealthy woman and about human connections.  With all of his dealings with the woman, “the Shunammite” as he distantly calls her, he always sent his servant Gehazi to speak with her and get what he needs, even if she is standing right there in front of him!  Then one day, the woman’s son died, which was a son that was promised to her by Elisha via Gehazi.  When the woman rode quickly to bring the bad news to Elisha, she passed up Gehazi whom Elisha sent to greet her. She went straight to Elisha and told him the news herself.  So Elisha sent Gehazi, who took Elishas' staff to lay on the childs face, to raise the child.  It did not work.  The son laid stone cold dead. So not only did Elisha have to suffer the inconvenience of going to the son himself, but after several attempts, he personally had to lay on his body, face to face, before God allowed the miracle of life to take hold!   Elisha had to be taught that he needed to be more personal, face to face, not just impersonally send a servant to do all his bidding.  God wanted Elisha to have a personal relationship with the woman, her husband and son.  But in the end, Elisha still told Gehazi to “Call the Shunammite” and let her know the son is alive.  Oh well.

God will heal the sick and raise the dead eventually. God really doesn’t need us for that.  In fact, when He does raise the dead, we are dead ourselves, so where do we help? But love is eternal, it is forever.  Love is something that starts when we are children.  Love grows within us, as we interact with humanity from the time we began to see outside of our bodies and minds.  It starts at home, church and community and then the world.  As we began to expand our horizons across the globe, we run into love challenges.  Those challenges usually begin at home.  Don’t make the mistake of thinking that arguing and sometimes fighting with our siblings or our mates is always from a lack of love. Sometimes it is fear that we may not love them or more to the point, that they might not love us.  It is in fearing that we may lose them that cause us to fight.  We are fighting for our relationship, to save it!  But we may be fighting the wrong enemy.  The real enemy here is fear.  Marriages break up, not just for the lack of love per se, though that is failing us, but because of fear!  Fear is the real enemy here, and when we fear someone, we fear we are losing our love for them.

1 John 4:18 “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”
Fear is an invisible enemy that tortures our souls, minds and hearts. It threatens us with punishment.  It stops us from acting in faith.  We may use faith to overcome fear, but when we also misuse love to excuse our fear, are we not making excuses as to why we hold back and not do something we know we need to do? Example: "I love them enough to not do something because I am afraid it might offend them or cause them to lose faith".  We use excuses for fear to take precedence over love and faith.  We have more faith in our fear and use the excuse of love as the reason we live in fear and not act in faith!  What a paradox!

In Luke, 9:51, Jesus used love to overcome fear when he faced the challenge of walking to Jerusalem, knowing he was going to die.   He ran into challenges, well wishers, people who make promises and lots of suggestions that would have taken him from his goal.   He set his face (he was determined, resolute) towards Jerusalem because his love was so great, he was willing to face these challenges and distractions that came his way.  Fear was not on the agenda for that day.

This is why I feel the gospel that is preached in some places, which is often laced with fear, is not a gospel at all.  It is a fear based religion and that is not what Jesus taught or meant for us live in.

How can we have faith in fear, when fear is the opposite of love, which in turn requires faith? When you have faith in fear, then you have no faith in love.  God is Love.  His Love requires faith on our part to not only believe in and trust, but to live out in our lives. Love requires faith that has to be worked out and built every day.  It requires lots of prayer.  When the disciples had trouble casting out a certain demon, Jesus said this particular kind of demon required lots of prayer in preparation. See Mark 9:14-29.  To cast out demons requires faith. True faith requires love.  At the time, the disciples thought the ability to cast out demons goes along with the ability to walk on water, heal the sick, or move mountains.  If love had taken hold on these disciples, then they would have had the faith to cast out this particular demon. Not just  because they were laced with “power”, but their love would have been able to conquer all things.This would have been not only the faith of God, but the Love of God as well.

1 Peter 4:8 “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”
If love covers a multitude of sins, then where is the accusation? Where is the accuser of the brethren? There is no accuser, there are no more sins, no more demons.  Gone is the evil, gone is the fear.  Faith and Love has prevailed.  And it takes great faith beyond walking on water, healing the sick and raising the dead.

That is the faith that pleases God.

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1 Peter 4:8 “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”

If love covers a multitude of sins, then where is the accusation? Where is the accuser of the brethren? There is no accuser, there are no more demons.  Gone is the evil, gone is the fear.  Faith and Love has prevailed.

A Christian is Free -- And That Scares People

A Christian is free.  They are free from prejudice, are free to talk to Jews, to talk to Muslims, to Tax Collectors and Samaritans.
---And that is the problem. Christians are free and that scares people.--- I am free to be what God created me to be.  But do I act on it?
I don’t listen to the spirit enough as it is, and when I do listen, do I obey?
--- Do I scare you? Sorry to hear that, because Jesus will scare you even more. Too many Christians live in fear.
Jesus had the audacity to walk on water when we know as a fact that it cannot be done! Jesus knows we can't walk on water either.  In fact, he never asked the disciples to walk on water.  Sure, Peter challenged Jesus and he stepped out, but his faith was not on the lack of ability to walk on water, but trusting Jesus to be able to walk on water in spite of our abilities or faith.  He does not ask nor force us to walk on water. He just asks us to let him walk on water. And, like Peter, he allows us to join him in HIS walk on water. Will you let me walk on water too? Or will you stop me and say “It cannot and should not be done because it’s socially, politically, scientifically and religiously incorrect”?

Peter was free to ask the question about walking on water.  Jesus simply said "come".  But when Peter began walking (which was successful), he began to take his eyes off of Jesus and putting it into his own ability (or lack thereof), to walk on water.   About half way through his walk, he started questioning his rationality by thinking that this is impossible..."What am I doing?"  Jesus never asked Peter to walk on water, but he allowed him to participate with Jesus in His walk.  So why did Jesus say "Ye of little faith"?  Was it because Peter lacked the faith to walk on water?  Or was it that Peter didn't have enough faith to stay in the boat in the first place?  Or was it that he didn't have the faith to let Jesus do the walking and trusting Him to be who and what he is outside of Peters ability to reason or understand?   So we don't have the faith to do certain things, but then our faith should be in Jesus' ability and faith to do it and participate with Jesus.


So if we see someone (like Peter) began to "walk on water", is it our responsibility to tell them that it cannot or should not be done because of our paradigm?  Notice that none of the disciples on the boat stepped out, but then again, they didn't stop Peter either!  I'm not sure if that was good or bad, but no mention of their doubting talk.

Jesus has a habit of doing things in his humanity (flesh) that we cannot do.  Not that we don't have the desire, but our fear of failure and the thought of being told that we "lack faith" can stop us in our tracks and freeze. Or we do what the Israelite did when some marched against the "giants" when told not to.  We don't have the faith to let Jesus do it for us.

---He raised the dead when the body was in the grave for four days, while we say, “Well, he’s dead now, I guess that was God’s will” and never try.
---He turned water into wine, when we turn wine into water.

One man said “Here is some water, what is keeping me from being baptized?”; Jesus says “Here is some water, let’s take a walk together”.

Wow he scares me!
“I came that you might have life and have it more abundantly” ~ Jesus

Lets scare the hell out of people with the help of Jesus Christ!

Boyd Merriman

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I am afraid of what others might think!

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I heard that many times in life, and have found myself using it as well. That has stopped many people from enjoying life, moving forward and taking risks. Including me.

But what does this mean when we look at it in the reality of who and what we are in Christ?

I will go over each word individually, but also as part of the whole. For every word spoken in this sentence, adds more problems exponentially.

I: "I" is a big word.  It is all about Me.  Me, myself and I.  MeMeMeeee! The first thing we do is start off with “me” when we should be starting off with the Triune God.  So we say “I” instead of saying “Our Father”.

I am:  Like Adam, we begin to replace God, the Great I AM, with our own version of “I am”.  (Gen. 3:10) We have ideas of what we are outside of who and what we are in Christ. If we start with the true “I AM”, the Trinity, then we would not be so focused on this broken "I am".

Afraid:  Perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). So right off the bat, we are not using the fruit of the Holy Spirit: Love.  The very first words of Adam to God after he took of that forbidden fruit were, “I was [am] afraid”.   Fear sums up all of the troubles and sins of humanity.  And the first victim of that fear was God.  Adam and Eve found a new fear and hid themselves from God.   But Jesus Christ removed that fear.  So why are we still hiding from God and from each other?  We still hold on to that fear because we are still seeing ourselves as “I am” rather than seeing God.

Of What:  Yes, of what?  What are you afraid of?  An unknown?  “I am afraid of what” is a good question.  We too often don’t even know what we are afraid of, so we lash out against God and everything and everyone else. 

Others:  That committee of others.  Whoever they are. Like the “what”, we don’t even know "who".  We have yet to meet them.  So we just call them “others”.  What is so detrimental about this is that the “others” might be your family, friends and neighbors!  Why are we afraid of them?  What have they done to deserve such a critical view of them?  It shows how critical and accusing we have become.  Again, like Adam who blamed God and Eve for his fears and troubles.

Might: Not will, just “might”. We are not even sure that they will think or not think. We just stop our lives in mid stroke just based on a “might”, a "maybe", a “not sure but just in case”.  There is no reality to this fear except our own.

Think:  Not do, just "think". Now when did the thought of others actually hurt you?  The only way the thoughts of others can hurt you is when they act or speak out those thoughts.  But we have not gotten that far yet. We are still just on “think”.  Maybe they did think these things (whatever it is that we think they thunk), and IF they did, they may have changed their thoughts immediately and started thinking right (called repentance). Or maybe their thoughts were very good towards you (Like God’s thoughts towards Adam and Eve were good), but we are afraid of them anyway, even though they may not have thought them at all.

Put them all together and you are revealing a whole mess of broken theology at work in your lives!

When you really think about it (speaking of which), you will find that our fears are based on selfishness and believing that others are taking their valuable time and concern and negatively placing it towards you and that what they think are actually evil thoughts!   In reality, they are actually our evil thoughts towards them!  How dare we to stop living based on our misconceptions of our family, friends and neighbors. And who said they were thinking about you anyway you selfish “i am”?  They have their own concerns!

Who knows?  The "Others" may want to support you in your mission in life! And if they don't, that is their life, not yours.

“I came that you might have life and have it more abundantly.” John 10:10 Yes, Jesus said “might” (KVJ), but not because Jesus is holding back, but because we still allow our selfish, paranoid fears to hold us back from the reality of who and what Jesus is and our wonderful relationship we have with God.  We can now live back in His garden, living off of the Tree of Life, who is Jesus.

“I am afraid of what others might think” is so wrong on so many levels!

If Jesus thought like that, he never would have walked on water, or healed on the Sabbath, or picked grain on the Sabbath! He is the real "I AM" and I AM is not afraid of what others might think!

I will admit that some people do have broken relationships with someone thinking negatively towards them, but chances are, they are thinking negatively towards a lot more than just you and the life you are living in Christ. It is them, not you.

Boyd Merriman

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