Daily Devotional For Wednesday, May 15, 2024

For the last few days we have been looking at faith and belief. What is it? How do you know you have it. It is my opinion that even the most mature Christians struggle with faith at times. 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). 

For some, those mountains are addictions, or life-threatening health and medical issues, or abuse issues or relational issues and etc. Each of us have our own definition of “mountain.” I have known people with all kinds of addictions: drugs, alcohol, sexual struggles, porn struggles, shopping struggles, hoarding struggles and etc. They have prayed and prayed and those “mountains” did not move. 

When we read the stories in the Bible many of God’s saints and believers did unbelievable and unimaginable miracles because God helped them. God used Moses to bring about 10 plagues in Egypt. God used Joshua to cause the sun and moon to stand still. God used Elijah to bring drought, then rain and also to raise a dead boy to life. God used Samson to personally slay 30 Philistines. God used a shepherd boy, David to slay a giant. God used Peter to heal a lame man and God caused prison doors to be open for the Apostle Paul. I could go on and on. These are some “mountains.

Yesterday, we saw how knowledge is not enough to be called 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 Jesus Christ is and they tremble in fear. They have knowledge of who Jesus is but that does not cause them to repent. For over 60 years the U.S. Surgeon General was warned us with knowledge about the dangers of smoking cigarettes. Even though people believe cancer is possible from smoking, even with that knowledge, they still smoke. Thus, knowledge alone is not enough to be called belief. 

In yesterday’s devotion, a father brought his demon-possessed son to Jesus to heal and cast the demon out. When Jesus put him to the test, we read this in Mark 9:23b-24, Jesus asked. “Anything is possible if a person believes.” (24) The father instantly cried out, “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!” (NLT). 

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. Are you honest with God about your doubts? This father was and God healed his son. We saw yesterday that admitting our doubts to God is ironically a demonstration of belief and faith as well. So, the first reason we have trouble with belief is we do not really trust God.

So, this brings me to the second reason we struggle with faith and belief. There is an failure of commitment. Belief and commitment are totally different. Why? You can be totally committed to something and not believe in it. 

For example, there are many people who are committed to us switching to Ev’s — electric vehicles. They wrote about it, lobby politicians to force us to eventually move from fossil fuel to electric. Yet, we know that China, our adversary, owns nearly all the mines in the Congo where the Cobalt and lithium are minded to make the batteries for these EV’s. The truth is, much of these minerals are mined by child slave labor. As more and more of these advocates who believe in EVs learn this, their commitment to push for this is dwindling. As Dallas Willard says, “Commitment is simply a matter of choosing and implementing a course of action” (Source: Dallas Billiard, Knowing Christ Today, p. 16).

I think it is possible to commit without believing, I do not believe it is possible to believe without committing. And this in my experience is where many Christians fall short. Why? They have not done what Jesus said in Luke 14:25-30:

"A large crowd was following Jesus. He turned around and said to them, (26( “If you want to be My disciple, you must, by comparison, hate everyone else—your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be My disciple. (27) And if you do not carry your own cross and follow Me, you cannot be My disciple. (28) “But don’t begin until you count the cost. For who would begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if there is enough money to finish it? (29) Otherwise, you might complete only the foundation before running out of money, and then everyone would laugh at you. (30) They would say, ‘There’s the person who started that building and couldn’t afford to finish it!’” (NLT).

Specifically, I want to focus on Jesus words, “. . .  count the cost . . .” Jesus says we all need to count the cost before we consent to believe. Meaning — there are costs to be Jesus’ disciple. Many people say they “believe” but never really consider the cost to be committed as Jesus’ disciple. What is true with being a disciple of Jesus, is also true of many other experiences in life. Consider these below:

For example, many people “fall in love” (as if they fell into a ditch) and then want to get married. All they know is they believe they love that person, but to marry someone has costs and consequences. And eventually they file for divorce due to “irreconcilable differences.” Those differences were there all along, but they allowed their feelings to blind them to the truth. 

The same is with high school grads who want to go off to college. They believe they want to get a college degree but many quit and flunk out because they did not count the cost. Instead of studying, they party. The same is true of people who believe they want children. Talk about an area where you should count the cost, this is one of them. Anyone can make babies; not just anyone can raise them well. 

According the the Book of James, such belief or faith is not faith at all. In our sermon series on James we read these words in James 2:26, “For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead” (ESV). James is saying words or belief without commitment or actions is dead. Faith is only real when there is commitment. Our faith can grow and increase and there are some experiences that require more faith. What both Jesus and James are saying is there is an error many make: they attempt is make or keep belief a mere feeling or profession, existing only in the abstract arena of thought but never demonstrated through commitment or actions.

But in fact, such a “faith” according to James is really no faith. Why? As James puts it, “faith without deeds is dead” (2:26). This is perhaps the most important aspect of faith, because in committing ourselves to action, our faith becomes real. And our faith can grow by degrees, since some acts of commitment require more faith than others. How vital it is, then, to enter into the school of the spiritual disciplines (e.g. prayer, study, meditation, etc.), where we practice the “easy” faith steps in private, so that we’ll be prepared for the “hard” ones when they find us in public.

There are those who would say that terrorists are real believers. They are committed to killing innocent lives even if if means they strap a bomb to their body and blow themselves up, killing themselves and many others, to demonstrate their belief and commitment to Allah and their cause. They have two of the three components we have already talked about: trust that they are doing the right thing and commitment to do it. But the question I ask is this, “Is this real genuine faith and belief as defined by Scripture and our Lord?” Pastor and author Thom Rainer tells this story about a woman named Kathi:

“In his book, The Unexpected Journey, Thom Rainer shares the story of Kathi, a woman who left behind a life of witchcraft and Wiccan paganism to become a follower of Jesus Christ. Immediately after her decision to become a Christian, she describes to Thom how God delivered her from the powers of evil in her life, as well as her physical deafness (Kathi had been suffering progressive hearing loss for years).

That next day [after I accepted Christ], we left on our family vacation, camping on the beach. I found a small … church for us to attend. Most of the time when I lip read, I am able to follow less than half of what someone is saying. But I was able to understand every word of the preacher at this church.

When the service was over, I spoke to him and asked him how he was able to speak so well for lip readers. He was puzzled, as he had done nothing special. I explained to him my condition of deafness, and he asked to pray for me. No one had ever done that before, but he did pray for my hearing to be restored.

After Kathi and her family returned to their camp site, Kathi fell violently ill. She was confined to the camp site's bathhouse for hours, vomiting to the point of dehydration. "It was at that point that I sensed God was speaking to me again," she says. "He told me that the other gods I had been worshiping had to go. Up to that point, I had seen my conversion as a lateral move. I still had my other gods. I wasn't convinced they were evil or that paganism was wrong. But now God said they had to go. I hesitated at first because I had become so comfortable with these other gods. They had been with me for many years."

Thom writes an account of what happened next for Kathi:

Kathi soon obeyed. She started calling each of the gods by the Egyptian names she knew and telling them in Jesus' name they had to go. There were many of them, because the ancient Egyptians had a deity to represent every facet of life. Kathi also told anything she had worshiped as a Wiccan and anything she had remembered from the folklore of her childhood that it had to go, too. "They resisted at first," she said. "But once they heard the name of Jesus, they left. As each god left, I saw them as they were, no lovely masks anymore. Instead, they had horrible, evil faces. It scared me witless. I knew then that these were no gods at all, but demons."

Immediately after they were gone, Kathi felt better. She left the bathhouse and went to her family and began to tell her husband what had happened. When he responded, she heard every word he said—but she did not have her hearing aids in her ears. She was able to hear everything—the ocean, the birds, and her children's voices. Kathi has never stopped thanking God for what he did for her. When she returned to the doctor who had initially treated her, he said he had never seen a condition like this reverse itself. Kathi simply said, "God did it." The doctor expressed his doubts. But Kathi knew. God did it” (Source: Thom Rainer, The Unexpected Journey, pp. 121-122).

Questions To Consider

1. As we saw above, James must have been from Missouri because he is “show me” type of person. He says, “You say you have faith and believe, then prove through your actions and commitment. Why is this so important to authenticating real faith and belief?
2. Why do you think we can pray asking God to move “mountains” in our lives such as addictions and they do not go away? Is it an issue of faith? Is it an issue of commitment? 
3. Jesus said this in John 16:23, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He will give it to you” (ESV). To ask “in Jesus’ name” means you are asking what Jesus Himself would ask. I think we all can agree that Jesus does not want anyone struggling with any kind of addiction or sin. So, when we ask God in Jesus’ name to free us from that, and it does not happen, what would be your answer to this question, “Why?”
4. In the story above about the deaf young woman named Kathi, her conversion was what seems in stages or steps from Mormonism. She had other “gods” she needed to confess and abandon. When she did, God healed her of everything and even gave her hearing back to her. Talk about a big mountain being moved, God moved it. Why?
5. I grew up in a violent alcoholic home as a child and teen. My father was a hard worker and a hard drinker. Many nights, if not most nights, my father would become enraged and violently beat my mother, my sister and me. There were occasion he went got his hand gun and shot at us. He missed only because he was drunk. The number to times I prayed and begged God to protect us and stop this and He didn’t. One time my father pushed my mother through a storm glass door and she needed hundreds of stitches at the ER. My mother was a lover of God, His Word and a prayer warrior. Talk about a mountain we all wanted move, and it wasn’t. You could interpreted this in several ways. Either God is not good and is cruel and this was His will for my mother, my sister and me OR, we didn’t have enough faith to move that moutain. We all were committed to praying every night as a family. My mother led us in nightly devotionals and prayer. Finally when I was in high school, my father had a stroke that left him completely immobilized on his left side and left him with slurred speech for the rest of his life. What answers would you give to me as to why this mountain was not moved before my father’s stroke?

Scripture to Meditate On: John 15:7, Jesus said, “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (ESV).

Prayer To Pray: “Dear Jesus, please help my unbelief. Pleas help me to both trust You, count the cost of following You and then be totally committed to you. I do not want to be a pseudo-disciple. I do not want to talk the talk but not walk the walk. I ask You do whatever is necessary to help me be a totally committed disciple of Yours. I ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen!”

I love you Southside! — Pastor Kelly