Some good questions

In my last blog I talked about asking good questions in order to understand and go deeper, without bias or prejudice. In this blog I want to pose five questions to you. With full disclosure, these questions are taken from a book called “Share Jesus without Fear” so you know the context and subject. Stop now if you have no interest! So here goes…

1. Do you have any kind of spiritual belief?

2. To you, who is Jesus?

3. Do you believe there is a heaven and a hell?

4. If you died right now, where would you go? If heaven, why?

5. If what you believe were not true, would you want to know it?

I invite you to think about each question and answer them for yourself. They are pretty good questions to make you think about life after death, your own spiritual life, and what God might be saying to you. If you go through all five questions and answer “no” or “not interested” at any point then maybe think about why you think that way.

If you answer “yes” to number 5, then I think the best place to look for truth is the good news written about Jesus in the New Testament of the Bible.  Here are six key scriptures that summarize what He did for us when He came to the Earth. Read them aloud and ask yourself what each says to you personally.

1. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

2. for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23),

3. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23).

4. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3-4),

5. But to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God (John 1:12)

6. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and dine with him, and he with Me (Revelation 3:20).

I pray that God will open your mind and stir your heart to seek after Him through these scriptures!

Revving up your spiritual life with R.P.M.

I recently participated in a men’s retreat with some fellas from my church, at which I shared some thoughts on how to beef up your spiritual life using a simple three step approach. This is something I’ve been pondering for quite some time. It’s simple but can have a profound impact on your life if you do it. It has in my life, for sure.

If you want to shoot a target, there are the three simple steps of: Ready, Aim, Fire. You have to get the fundamentals right by getting yourself ready, and taking careful aim, before you then fire, otherwise you have little to no hope of hitting the target. A similar principle can be applied to our spiritual lives. If we want to hit the target there are steps we need to take.

In order to remember the steps, I’m using a three letter acronym: R. P. M.

If you do these three things you will grow spiritually and, in my opinion, live a fuller and more meaningful life. So let’s get started with the first letter, which is…

R = Read

The scriptures say “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” 

In order to do this we need to feed our minds with what is good and helpful for us to grow mentally and spiritually. I’d argue that the best way to do this is to read the Bible every day. There are many helpful reading plans, devotional readings, and a whole bunch of online materials to help you read the Bible. One of my favorite websites is the Bible Project. Check it out!

A secondary source of good fodder for our brains and souls is good books. I love several excellent Christian authors including: C.S. Lewis, A.W. Tozer, J.I. Packer, R.C. Sproul, and Francis Chan, to name but a few. So click on the links and check them out!

And finally, for those who complain that they don’t like reading, there are many good sources of teaching at Right Now Media, which many churches subscribe to. They often have the authors of books giving you the main messages from their books.  There are also audio Bibles and audio books, and of course many good podcasts which are great if you’re wanting to feed your mind whilst you’re driving. 

P = Pray

“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you”

As you’d expect, there are many scriptures that talk about praying, such as the one above in the letter from James, Jesus’ half brother, or in his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul says we should “pray without ceasing.”

God is relational and in order to have a relationship with Him we need to first be reconciled to Him and then we need to grow by communicating with Him.  At a very basic level, prayer is simply talking with God. There are many different kinds of prayers and some good resources to help you learn how to pray effectively. One that I read not too long ago is The Battle Plan for Prayer. It was very good, but possibly the best book I’ve read on the topic, which opened my mind to different ways of praying, is “Nurturing a Passion for Prayer” from Navpress, though it looks like they no longer publish it, so get it from Amazon while you can!

When you pray, you can use Jesus’ model prayer (also known as the Lord’s Prayer) as a template. You can write prayers, particularly if you like to journal, or keep a diary. And possibly the best thing I learned was to pray scripture. There are many Psalms that can be used as prayers, but also many other sections of scripture to help you express how you feel with God.

My last recommendation for praying is to do it first thing every morning. Give God the first fruits of your day and you’ll see the rest of the day is radically better than when you don’t. Trust me on this and try it.

M = Move

“And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of our Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”

You’ve read, you’ve prayed… now MOVE. Do something. Do something beyond yourself. Do something for a higher calling. Do whatever God lays on your heart to do and do it well.  Serve God and serve others. Be obedient to His call on your life and do it with passion.

As Switchfoot put it so eloquently in their song, I dare you to move!

So there you have it RPM - Read, pray, then move. Three actions that are simple to understand, but harder to do consistently. But just like shooting, you need to keep practicing if you want to hit the target.

How about you?

Faith

 I’ve been a Christian for more than thirty years and so, as a “person of faith,” you’d think that of all the weighty words I’ve been discussing in this series of blogs, the word “faith” would be an easy one for me. But you’d be mistaken. As I’ve done with previous words, I think I can come up with a reasonable working definition for the word faith, but, being transparent with you, I’ve wrestled with what it truly means to “have faith” in a practical way, and why God places such weight on us needing to have faith at all.

So let’s start with some definitions. Many years ago someone taught me a simple acronym using the letters in the word “FAITH” to define it.  It’s “Forsaking All, I Trust Him.” In essence this simple definition equates faith with trust. I’ve heard teachers and preachers give the example of having faith in the pilot of an airplane to be able to fly the plane and get you safely where you want to go. Or another I’ve heard is having faith in the chair you’re about to sit on to bear your weight and not collapse in a heap on the floor.  In both of these examples, faith is synonymous with trust.

Turning to the Bible, the classic definition of faith is given in the book of Hebrews, chapter 11, which starts out with the following definition and then goes on to give several examples of people demonstrating their faith in God over hundreds of years:

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”

 So, from a Christian perspective, faith is certainly about trust, but more specifically trusting God for things we can’t directly see or feel with our senses, things we can’t fully wrap our minds around, or things that have not yet happened. (I think this is where the pilot analogy comes in. Most of us don’t know how airplanes work or how to fly them, so our “faith” is based on someone else - the pilot - knowing how to make it work and get us there.) Faith is not just trust, but also connected with hope (my weighty word for next time!), and belief.

Object of faith 

I’ve heard it said that you just need to have faith, and sometimes the people saying that mean that you just need to have faith in something, whatever it is. These are generally well-meaning folk that want everyone to get along, and simply want to encourage others to have a spiritual side to their lives. I guess there’s some merit in this, but it rings hollow for me. I think the most important aspect of faith is actually the object of that faith. Reflecting on some of the examples I’ve already shared, it’s pretty evident that having faith in a chair is a whole different thing than having faith in the God who created the universe. So we need to reflect on who or what we put our faith in, along with our trust and hope. I’ve chosen to put my faith in Jesus and what is written about Him in the Bible. Others might put their hope in other religious ideas or ideologies, or put their faith in their country, or political party, or even in themselves. That’s their choice of course, but it’s hopefully clear that who or what you put your faith in is very important in steering your life and shaping who you are. In this regard, Jesus has never disappointed me, and so I wholeheartedly recommend having Him as the object of your faith.

Reasoned faith vs blind faith

Many years ago I overheard someone saying that you have to have a blind faith, and just trust God. I don’t accept that faith is totally blind, at least not the Christian faith to which I adhere. My own experience is that it’s possible to have a reasoned faith based on the evidence we see and what we read. God is logical, and I think He has given us plenty of evidence for His existence. The complexity of the universe, the laws of science, and even the simple fact that the physical universe exists, all point to a creator behind it all. The Biblical record of Jesus’ life, backed up by extra-Biblical writings, archeology, and the long history of the church, also provide tangible evidence that Jesus was and is real. So God gives us plenty of evidence that points toward Him. We can use logic and reason to help us seek God.  The ex-journalist turned author Lee Strobel has written several books and articles on this if you want to investigate more, including the book that describes his own personal journey from skepticism to faith in The Case for Christ.

Weighty faith

So, we have a decent definition of what faith is - trust, hope, belief - we recognize that the object or focus of our faith is important, and we note that we can use logic and reason to help us with faith in Jesus. So, why did I start this blog out by saying it’s a word I’ve wrestled with over the years? Well there are two aspects of faith I’ve grappled with: (1) why has God made faith so important, or even necessary at all, and (2) what does it mean to live by faith in the day-to-day?

Starting with the first one, the Bible makes it clear that faith is very important. Back in the book of Hebrews, a few verses down from the ones I quoted near the start of this blog, it says “…without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” I’ve always found it easy to accept that love is important: loving God and loving people is probably the strongest guiding principle for my life. But why does God place such an emphasis on having faith too? I really don’t have a good answer, except that He says it’s so, and that by having faith in Him I’m showing Him I love Him. I just have to accept it and I’m OK with that.

Possibly the harder one for me is trying to figure out how to live by faith. I’m an engineer, and one that tends to overthink things. This combination is not ideally suited to letting things go and simply living by faith. But when I do live that way - not worrying so much about everything or trying to figure it all out - trusting that God has things in hand and putting my focus on seeking Him, then I do experience a peace that’s hard to explain (see previous blog!) I’m definitely a work in progress when it comes to faith.

So what about you? What does the word faith mean to you?

Let me finish up with the lyrics from a song by Michael Card:

To hear with my heart, to see with my soul
To be guided by a hand I cannot hold
To trust in a way that I cannot see
That's what faith must be