Daily Devotional For Thursday, May 16, 2024

Can you believe it? Terrific Thursday is here. For the last week or so, we have been looking at faith and what the Bible calls genuine faith or belief. We have been using several passages to do this. The first one is in Matthew 17:20, Jesus said this, “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible” (NLT). And the second one is found in Mark’s Gospel in Mark 9 where a father brings his demon possessed son to Jesus to heal him and cast the demon out of him. This had to be a terrible thing for this father because he told Jesus that when the demon rises up, he often causes the boy to foam at the mouth, grit his teeth, and becomes stiff all over (vs. 18). 

In addition to that, we learn that the demon has also done this in verse 22, “Many times the evil spirit has tried to kill him by throwing him in the fire and into water. Have pity on us and help us, if you possibly can!” (GNT). This means this boy is not only horrible scarred spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, but very visibly physically. And in verses 23-24 we read this, “Jesus said to the father, `Anything is possible if a person believes.’ (24) The father instantly cried out, “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!” (NLT). 

We also looked at Hebrews 11:1, 6, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction (evidence) of things not seen . . . (6) And 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” (ESV).

From all of these, I presented to you three reasons when faith or belief is not real faith or belief. Let me quickly summarize the first two reasons when faith or belief is not real: (1) First, when we do not trust God, that is not real faith or belief. Look at James 2:19, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!” (ESV). The demons believe who God is, but they do not trust Him with anything or trust in Him for anything. This father had knowledge that caused him to trust that Jesus could heal, but he just wasn’t sure if Jesus could heal his son. In this case, trust based on knowledge was not enough because trust is necessary for belief to be real. 

(2) There is a failure of commitment. Belief and commitment are totally different. Why? You can be totally committed to something and not believe in it. The father had some trust that Jesus could heal, but he still had doubt (i.e., “help my unbelief/trust”). Jesus in Luke 14:28 warned everyone who wanted to follow Him to “count the cost first” before committing. Why? It is what James says in James 2:26, “. . . faith without deeds/works/commitment is dead.” To follow Jesus means we die to self, daily crucify anything that tries to stop us from dying to self so we can carry our own cross (Luke 9:23). 

A lot of people have walked an aisle to give their life to Christ, but very few have walked with the Almighty God to give them their trust and commitment. There is a difference. If you want to move mountains, you first have to move yourself to go wherever and however Jesus says with no restrictions, limitations or objections. 

(3) There is a failure of knowledge. This may occur in two ways. First, you may not know what you should know about God. For example, you can’t trust God for your “daily bread” if you aren’t aware, have no knowledge, that He’s consciously and continually supplying your every need as Jesus says in Matthew 6:25-34:

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? (26) Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? (27) And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? (28) And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, (29) yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (30) But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? [Notice what Jesus said here and why? It is a trust issue based on lack of knowledge of God]. (31) Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ (32) For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. (33) But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (34) “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (ESV).

This is simply a failure to be informed, and would be expected if you never read or studied your Bible. Not knowing through experience. It’s in those living moments where we step out in faith and trust God with knowledge and commit to act precisely because God tells us to, that we enter into a living experience with Him. Because in those activities of our lives where we bring our actions into conformity with what God desires, His Holy Spirit is right there orchestrating the whole thing. This is what Paul meant in Galatians 5:25, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit” (ESV).

But as with each one, any one of the three by themself is not enough to constitute real belief and faith. Let me illustrate this about this one on knowledge:

If you are a parent or watched parents around a pool, you will sometimes see a parent telling their toddler to jump from the edge of the pool into their arms. Every time I have seen this, when it is the first time, every child does the same thing — the vacillate back and forth as to whether or not to jump out in to open air trusting that the parent or grandparent or whoever it is to catch them. Why do they do that? It is not an issue of knowledge. The child knows this is their parent who loves them or a grandparent who loves them or an older sibling or another relative who loves them. They know this person personally. This is not a stranger to them, but having that knowledge in that moment is not enough for them to trust initially and commit to jump, the other two requirements. One of these, trust, commitment, or knowledge is not enough for the child to have the belief to jump. Guess what? The same is true with us when it comes to real belief and faith.

Michael Reeves in his book, Evangelical Pharisees, writes this:

Saving faith is not mere knowledge of Scripture or of Christ. Treating it like that is like treating a prescription as a medicine, or a signpost as a destination. It fails to see the difference between two types of knowledge: A detached “outward” knowledge and a personally involved “inward” knowledge” (Sources: (Michael Reeves, Evangelical Pharisees, p. 29).

C.S. Lewis found this distinction indispensable and illustrated it in his essay titled “Meditation in a Toolshed.” In this excerpt he wrote:

“I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.

Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.

But this is only a very simple example of the difference between looking at and looking along. A young man meets a girl. The whole world looks different when he sees her… He is, as they say, ‘in love’. Now comes a scientist and describes this young man’s experience from the outside. For him it is all an affair of the young man’s genes and a recognized biological stimulus. That is the difference between looking along the sexual impulse and looking at it.

It is perfectly easy to go on all your life giving explanations of religion, love, morality, honour, and the like, without having been inside any of them. And if you do that, you are simply playing with counters. You go on explaining a thing without knowing what it is. That is why a great deal of contemporary thought is, strictly speaking, thought about nothing — all the apparatus of thought busily working in a vacuum.

We must, on pain of idiocy, deny from the very outset the idea that looking at is, by its own nature, intrinsically truer or better than looking along. One must look both along and at everything… we must start with no prejudice for or against either kind of looking. We do not know in advance whether the lover or the psychologist is giving the more correct account of love, or whether both accounts are equally correct in different ways, or whether both are equally wrong. We just have to find out” (Source: C.S. Lewis, “Meditation in a Toolshed” in God in the Dock, pp. 212-215).

“Any person can learn a good bit about Christianity from the outside, e.g., by reading the Bible, studying the history of the church and what Christians believe. These are good things. It is important to remember, however, that a Christian is someone who has been born again, and knows God personally as Savior and Lord. Let us seek to know Him more deeply” (Source: Thomas A Tarrants, III, “knowing God Personally,” Knowing & Doing, https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/resources/knowing-god-personally/).

Genuine and real biblical belief/faith requires all 3: trust, commitment and knowledge. You will not have belief in God if you do not trust Him. You will not have belief in God if you do not commit to God without counting the cost. You will not have knowledge of God if you do not know Him personally, intimately and relationally. 

Questions To Consider

1. Do you struggle to live by faith? Are you frustrated with your “on again/off again” tendencies toward faithfulness? Do you long to see “mountains” moved, but obviously are short on mustard seeds of faith?
2. To counter this, you need to repent for not trusting God/Jesus Christ. Go to Jesus Christ and admit your failure to trust God completely. What area or concern in your life do you need to repent to Jesus Christ about this?
3. God says this in Hosea 4:6a, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge . . .” (ESV). The New Living Translation puts it this way: “My people are being destroyed because they don’t know Me.” You won’t commit to Jesus Christ fully if you do not trust Him because you do not know Him. In your relationship with Jesus Christ, where do you need to increase your personal, intimate and relational  knowledge of Jesus Christ?
4. Where in your life are you like that toddler, standing on the side wanting to jump into the arms of Jesus Christ, but you find yourself vacillating back and forth? Why and what does this tell you?
5. Would you say your knowledge of God is more “outward” or “inward” and why? Answer this question for yourself — “What does my faith actually do?”

Scripture To Meditate On: John 1:12, “But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God” (ESV).

Prayer To Pray: “Dear Jesus, please help me to deepen my relationship with You by increasing my experiential knowledge of You. This will give me the assurance and the evidence that I know without any doubt — so I will trust You, commit to leap to what You want to do with my life and bring You glory. I ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen!”

I love you Southside! — Pastor Kelly