The longer I walk as a believing believer, the more I realize how infused the talk in our life together can be with unbelief. Not the kind of unbelief that blatantly denies the work of Christ or the truth of the gospel, but a more subtle unbelief that pervades our thinking in ways we don't even notice. Its the unbelief that shows up in how we talk about the presence of sin in our lives: "I know God is able to transform so and so, but you know how ingrained that is in her life, given the childhood she had you know...." It whispers to us in the words we use to talk about church: "All those things in the Scripture about church things sound so wonderful but given the fact that we have people in ours, this is probably all we can hope hope for...." If you think about it, you realize that what you are really saying is that the work of Christ is not adequate for the sin of so and so or that Christ is not able to form a church without spot or wrinkle as His bride. To use the scriptural phrase, we nullify the work of Christ. As my friend Patti would say, if you really want to know what you believe, pay attention to what you say after the 'but!"
It is not easy to recognize the presence of this kind of unbelief in our lives, relying on what we can see and touch is after all the daily experience of our earthly lives. To live inside of our 'new creature in Christ' lives where the 'unseen' and 'hoped for' is definitive is a transformation that all of creation is waiting on tiptoe to see happen----the revealing of the children of God!
In the gospel of Mark we are told the story of the man whose son had an unclean spirit. He had come to the disciples but they were unable to cast the spirit out and he comes to Jesus with the words, "If you can do anything, have compassion on us and heal him!" How I identify with this man! After all, he had been through every earthly possibility he knew of and nothing had delivered his dear son from the torment that he lived in every day. But I am also taken aback at the response of Jesus to the man, “If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.” It seems almost harsh and uncaring in the face of this man's reality. He had tried everything and nothing had worked, not even the disciples of this holy man had been able to help him! Jesus words reflect the greatness of what His coming meant for us all. He knew that the man stood before the incarnate Christ, if he could have but 'seen' who He was there would have been no 'If you can' in his mind or on his lips!
To live believing as a verb is to come to a vista that stretches out in front of us so wide and so high and so deep that we cannot find the words to fathom it! "All things are possible for one who believes!" Can it really be so? This is a promise so vast that I find myself trying to 'qualify it' or explain it away. I feel the 'but' coming to my lips and the words of this dear man seeking to grasp and believe the greatness of what stood before him come to my lips as well, “I believe; help my unbelief!”
Love this! Thanks! I read it once last night with a lot of background noise, thinking I'll have to come back to really read it. But a couple of hours later it came to me, it opened my eyes to something I had been saying, "Abby needs healing, I know God can do it, but it will probably be when she's much older, the pain is such a gut level & she needs to be able to process it etc..." much like your example. Maybe it will come later, maybe not - I'm going to stop saying that though & pray for healing with full belief. Thanks Jan!
ReplyDeleteLove this, Jan! It occurred to me the other day that we aren't so different from the Israelite spies who went into the Promised Land and brought back a report. The unanimous report was that what God had said about the land was true, but (yes, I am "that" friend) the "majority" conclusion was that there was no way they could enter the land and live in it because of the "human" element - the people of the land were "bigger" than the Israelites. The writer of Hebrews says that they could not unite the word of God that they had heard with the faith to believe it. And their unbelief led them to disobedience and kept them from entering God's promised rest. I think we do the same thing every time we say, "Yes, I know it says that in God's word, but...." What follows is usually some pragmatic, logical reason that the thing we just acknowledged as being true in the word of God is in fact, impossible, and that usually because of the "human" element. And I wonder how often we languish in the wilderness, never experiencing all the promises of God that are ours because we don't have the faith to believe the words we acknowledge to be true.
ReplyDeleteThank God there was a minority report among those spies that believed God would lead them into that exceedingly good land, just as he had promised. And those two went in. So, thanks for the encouragement to go with the "minority report." :) God is able to do ALL He says (even in me!!).