If faith is there, then do something . . .

If someone knocked on my door and told me my house was on fire, what would I do? Wouldn’t that depend on whether I believed that person or not? It could be a kid with a silly grin on his face. It could be a neighbor with a look of panic and concern. Belief governs actions. In this scenario, if I believed the person, I would respond accordingly.

This is the way the word ‘believe’ is used in John’s Gospel — nearly a hundred times. It is always a verb and gives the impression of action. In other words, believing is not a flat, ‘Oh yeah, I believe the house is on fire’ and carrying on as if it were not. John wrote his book so that people would believe, but not passively.

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30–31)

I’ve heard people say, “Sure, I believe in God” or “I have no problem believing Jesus Christ existed” yet even admitted that He was just an historical fact, like saying, “I believe in George Washington.” However, John had far more in mind. He used this word “believe” to indicate the response of people to Jesus. If they believed on Him, they became His followers; if they did not believe, they became His opponents. If they met Him, they could not remain neutral.

James wrote the same thing. He put an emphasis on faith producing a changed life. That is, a believing person agrees with Jesus and their life shows it. They do good things . . .

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?  . . . For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. (James 2:18–20, 26)

His point includes the idea that mere belief that God exists is something demons believe. That does not make them godly followers! Both John and James are writing about a faith that changes the way a person lives. It is this kind of believing that signals or reveals eternal life is present.

When Christ entered my life many years ago, He changed me. This was both instant and ongoing. The sense of forgiveness and His presence lifted a burden and gave me peace. However, as I read the Scriptures and continue to follow Him, He continually shows me areas of my life that need change. The Bible says . . .

But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. (2 Peter 3:18)

Growth happens by reading and believing Scripture’s words about Jesus. As I read them, I see more to believe, more about myself, more about Him and more about how to live.

For instance, yesterday’s devotions brought out the fact that Jesus has power over time and showed it by healing a man who had been impotent for many years. Now, as I pray for people who are in their eighties and nineties, do I believe that Jesus can work in their lives? Or is it too late? Not at all. God isn’t concerned about how long I’ve had a sinful attitude. For Him, time is not an issue.

Faith is a most practical thing. Believing Jesus takes a great deal of worry and stress off my heart. He is able to do exceedingly above and beyond all I can ask or imagine. Believing is completely incompatible with worry just as it is incompatible with trying to do things myself without Him.

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Jesus, You are the vine and I am a mere branch. John quotes You as saying that if I abide in You and You in me, then I will be fruitful, but apart from You, I cannot do anything. (John 15:5) In believing this, there is no way I can attempt anything without You. But sometimes I do. That indicates lack of faith in some areas or that I believe but not as fully as I should. More faith is always needed, and thankfully, always possible because Your Word was written that I might believe!

Faith means caring about others

Jeremiah 37:1–38:28; Romans 9:1–12; Proverbs 23:19–35

 “Covenant” refers to an agreement between two parties. God’s covenants, with one exception, are unilateral and eternal, meaning that they are based on His character and not the response or actions of the beneficiary. In the New Covenant, the Bible is clear: not all of Abraham’s descendants are children of God, but only those who are trusting in His promises. This is why Solomon says things like: “Hear, my son, and be wise, and direct your heart in the way.” (Proverbs 23:19)

This also explains why some of “God’s people” in the OT didn’t act like it. They simply did not trust God. For instance, Zedekiah was Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon choice to reign in the land of Judah before the Israelites were exiled. “But neither he nor his servants nor the people of the land listened to the words of the Lord that he spoke through Jeremiah the prophet.”

However, this king seemed religious when he asked Jeremiah, “Please pray for us to the Lord our God.” Jeremiah replied with the same message God had been giving all along, “The Chaldeans shall come back and fight against this city. They shall capture it and burn it with fire . . . Do not deceive yourselves, saying, ‘The Chaldeans will surely go away from us,’ for they will not go away. For even if you should defeat the whole army of Chaldeans who are fighting against you, and there remained of them only wounded men, every man in his tent, they would rise up and burn this city with fire.” (Jeremiah 37:7–10)

Zedekiah had Jeremiah put in a dungeon, but secretly inquired again, and again Jeremiah told him, “You shall be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon.” The prophet then asked what he had done to deserve prison, and Zedekiah ignored his request, allowing his officials to toss the prophet into a cistern. Finally some convinced Zedekiah to allow a rescue and he promised Jeremiah no harm, but he still wanted to hear only good news.

Jeremiah said again that if Zedekiah surrendered to the king of Babylon, his life would be spared and the city not burned, but if not, the city would be destroyed and he would not escape. Zedekiah swore Jeremiah to secrecy and for fear of the people allowed the prophet safety until the day that Jerusalem was taken. (Jeremiah 38:27–28)

Without faith in God, Zedekiah only cared about his own fate. With faith in God, Jeremiah cared about others, including this king who didn’t seem to care if he lived or not, only that he gave him comforting news.

The Apostle Paul was also a man of faith who cared about others. His people had rejected and crucified Christ, and eventually rejected the good news of His resurrection. But he said, “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever.”

However, Paul also understood God’s covenant; it did not depend on nationality. The Word of God had not failed because “not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’” He meant that it is not just the Jewish people who are the children of God, but all those who believe in His promises are counted as His children. (Romans 9:1–8)

Like Jeremiah, those who have faith care about people. God has taken care of my eternal destiny and is taking care of all my current issues and problems. That sets me free to love others, to care about their eternal destiny, to do what I can about their needs, to pray for them, and to tell them about the love of Christ. Like Jeremiah, caring about others may also mean sharing God’s warnings and His desire for faith and repentance so that they might live with Him forever.

God is consistent. I am not.

2 Chronicles 26:1–28:27, 1 John 2:1–6, Psalm 103:15–22

If I were reading only the Old Testament, at times I’d become depressed. Some of the kings that led God’s people started well, but ended badly. Uzziah was one of them. He was only sixteen when he began to reign, and he lasted fifty-two years on the throne. Today’s OT reading says he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, like his father Amaziah had done, setting himself to seek God under the instruction of Zechariah, and “as long as he sought the Lord, God made him prosper.” (2 Chronicles 26:3–5)

However, this didn’t last. “When he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction. For he was unfaithful to the Lord his God and entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense.”

God said only the priest were allowed to do that, so they withstood King Uzziah and warned him, “It is not for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord, but for the priests, the sons of Aaron, who are consecrated to burn incense. Go out of the sanctuary, for you have done wrong, and it will bring you no honor from the Lord God.”

Uzziah was angry. Immediately, leprosy broke out on his forehead right there in the house of the Lord by the altar of incense. (2 Chronicles 26:16–19) He never recovered, but died a leper.

After Uzziah, his Son Jotham ruled well, but could not bring the people away from their corrupt practices. Then Ahaz, Jotham’s son took the throne and did not do right in the eyes of the Lord. Again, this is depressing.

God judged him also, this time by giving him into the hand of the king of Syria. Syria “defeated him and took captive a great number of his people and brought them to Damascus. He was also given into the hand of the king of Israel, who struck him with great force. For Pekah the son of Remaliah killed 120,000 from Judah in one day, all of them men of valor, because they had forsaken the Lord, the God of their fathers.” (2 Chronicles 28:5–6)

The failures of these kings remind me of my failures and inconsistency in loving and obeying God. However, the OT reading is not the end of God’s story. John gives warnings about consistent sin, which is a sign of unbelief, but also about the forgiveness that is mine by faith. Jesus is my advocate . . .

“My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” (1 John 2:1–6)

The first part of this passage makes clear that Christians are not sinless, but we have an Advocate in Jesus Christ. The reminder in these readings is that persistent sin usually identifies those who have no faith. This passage also seems to sum up the lives of those kings. Either they obeyed God in faith, or they obeyed in faith and then fell into disobedience, or they never had faith and never did obey.

Because of my Advocate, when I sin, I am forgiven, even cleansed. Also, because of Jesus obedience is possible. His life in me changes my attitudes and motivations.

These days, I’m thinking about the brevity of life and the importance of obedience. So also was the psalmist who wrote, “As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments. The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.” (Psalm 103:15–19)

What assurance that God’s love persists. His redemption is greater than all my sins and errors. He put me in His kingdom by grace because of Jesus Christ. If eternal life depended on my performance, I could never be secure.

Follower or deserter?

The problem of writing the truths that Jesus reveals to me from His Word is that it works the same as a recipe or a grocery list. It I have it on paper, then I tend not to think about it or remember it the same way as if it were rehearsed in my head.
 

Those who instruct in the keeping of journals say that the value of a journal is lost if the author does not reread what he or she has written. The important truths revealed and understood from the Bible are the same. They require meditation, but even more, obedience. Just writing them down is a double tragedy for an attention deficit scatter-brain because I’m so easily distracted.

Today’s devotional reading from My Utmost for His Highest is about this serious problem. Oswald Chambers uses a verse that comes just after Jesus reveals a deep truth to the crowds that are following Him. Some of them could not accept what He said . . .

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. (John 6:66)

Chambers says that when God gives a vision by His Spirit through His word of what He wants, and I am excited about it but do not follow through in obedience, I will wind up with a point of view that Jesus never had.

He says that this will start with an inner debate. Then certain things will begin to develop, such as a sense of property and a sense of personal right. I want to do what I want to do. Such an attitude is foreign to Jesus. He says that life does not consist in the abundance of what I possess. I understand this means more than the stuff in my shelves, but also any ideas I possess about how to run my life.

Chambers adds that I might also lie back and bask in the memory of the wonderful experience of that revelation rather than hopping to it, doing what it says. He warns me that if God reveals anything to me and I do not come up to it, and do not feel inclined to come up to it, that is the beginning of backsliding. It means my conscience has not answered to the truth. He says that I cannot ever be the same after the unveiling of a truth because that moment marks me. I will either go on as a more true disciple of Jesus Christ, or go back as a deserter.