A Good Church practices Robust Faith

Belief is a strange thing. It is something that is a part of us that is something that is connected to another reality alltogether.

Faith allows us to trust that there is more than ourselves to carry us.

This is good news because in an unreliable world, we need something reliable.

We love whatever is the most reliable thing in the moment. Infomercials are promising this all the time. You can’t put cereal in a bowl? Introducing the cereal-inator.

I experienced this mad grab for reliability a year or so ago on a flight from Milwaukee to Boston. We took off the runway and started climbing over lake michigan. Suddenly the engine on the left wing, right where I was sitting started exploding fireballs. Like three or four really loud explosions in the engine. I’m watching fire start shooting out of the back of the engine.

Immediately we begin turning back toward the airport. And next to me was a young couple that must not travel much and they start asking questions about what’s going on.

I offer them the idea that we are turning to go back because of the engine and that this is not the way to Boston.

There has been no announcement yet. But this couple starts getting a little anxious.

They were going on vacation and began to talk about knowing that this would happen. They knew something like this would happen. Then they start discussing plans.

The guy tells the girl that they should just go home. He can get extra shifts at work and this vacation was a mistake.

We land and as we are walking off the tarmac I hear him in front of me, rather loudly say, “I need a drink!”

Everything was normal until the plane was no longer reliable.

As soon as that happened, they turned to whatever was most reliable after that. Work, home. routine.

Maybe you havent had a plane engine explode but there are times when in the most unreliable event, we try to find something that is reliable.

When we are on a rickety foundation, we try to find balance. When we are in a difficult conversation, we try to argue back to find something reliable.

We all want something reliable in our lives. And it is easy to find poor substitutions all over the place.

Who wouldn’t want to say that there is a foundation and something completely reliable in our lives?

We all would.

So when we read this passage that begins

Hebrews 11:1 ESV

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

This is what faith is. It is an assurance, a trust, something reliable. It is something trustworthy.

Though faith is not an object, it is an action.

We don’t just have faith. We have to have faith in something.

IT is in what we have faith in that there is reliability and trust.

Anytime we mention we have faith we are involving something more than ourselves.

faith understands that Christ is the actor and we are practitioner.

It will always be satisfying the question, “where is Christ in this situation?” Faith searches for and is satisfied by seeing Christ in a specific situation and action.

So if faith connects itself to Jesus and conducts itself through Him, that is both something incredibly reliable and incredibly trustworthy.

That’s why it’s important for a church to have a robust faith. Because the only we are a church is because we have a life line connection to God. And it is the confession of our faith in Him that allows us to remain surrendered before Him and active in His will.

What if faith was the most reliable and the most real thing about us?

In order to see what faith is we are going to be looking at Hebrews 11, specifically the first 16 verses.

We want to see what faith is and why it is necessary for us.

Because we will be tempted to reach out and grab hold of all sorts of reliable things. We will want to look at the reliability of success or of strategy or of techniques. We will want the reliability of numbers and metrics.

We will want to put our assurance, not in Christ, but in our ability to be successful or to show off our strength. We want to be assured in Christ.

We want to live lives that only make sense when Christ is the most reliable thing in it.

TO understand what faith does we have to look at the verse before Hebrews 11

Hebrews 10:39 ESV

But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

This is the definition of the church of robust faith.

We don’t shrink back

We are not destroyed.

We have faith in a completely reliable God.

The definition we are given here today shows us that a robust faith

does not disintegrate in other situations.

can stand on it’s own

It has influence beyond itself. Acting in Faith is good for all those around you

It stands up and stands out.

It sees that activity of Christ within its community. Its practice of faith looks to Christ on the ground as practical action.

So when a church has robust faith it causes us to be able to stand up in the middle of anything, and stand on the God who does not move. And in that to see the God who does not move. Robust faith is encounter with God.

Faith finds the One who is the most reliable

Faith in our lives is what allows us to stand up and live. It allows us to persevere.

Because Faith should always point to the most reliable thing about us

We are going to look at the way faith is defined in the Scriptures.

It is “assurance of things hoped for”

and the “conviction of things not seen.”

Faith for the Christian is a trust, an allegiance to God who acts on our behalf and who is working in love in our lives.

It is the activity of the church that reflects the activity of God.

This word “assurance” has to do deal with a substrate or a foundation. If we have assurance then it means there is something reliable underneath us that we trust. Something that is causing us to be held upright.

We all have things that hold us up. We rarely question how well it’s working.

This is the blessing of the Christian life. We talk about and ask questions and wrestle with the things that we use to hold us up. Because Christ is ultimate and because He is the only One actually capable of holding us up, we have to find out where these smaller props in our lives are and cut them out so we can find Christ as the foundation of our lives.

Probably the most famous sermon of all is the sermon on the mount found in Matthew ch 5, 6, and 7.

Jesus tells us what life in Him is like. It is one that is surrendered to Him. It is one that lives for others and for the Kingdom of God. He teaches us how to pray, and fast. It is the building blocks for how to live in Christ. At the end of this sermon He gives an illustration. Jesus says that if people hears His words and does them they will be like someone who build their house on a strong foundation. When storms came and floods came, but the house did not fall.

He goes on to say that people who hear His words and do not do them is like someone who built their house on the sand. The storms cam and the floods came. And the house fell.

The difference is not in the house or in the storm but in the foundation of the house.

To be assured of things hoped for. Meaning to trust that what Christ has said He will fulfill, and to act on those things, is to build our house on a good foundation. No matter what comes our way, we don’t shrink back.

We are not a product of our circumstances.

We are the work of Christ and we respond from the God of the universe.

This changes how the church faces difficult things. It changes how you and I face difficult things.

We trust the foundation because the foundation has been tested. This is the second part of the definition

Faith allows us to encounter God and live reliable lives.

The second part of the definition is the “conviction of things not seen.” The word conviction mean that we trust it because it has held up under scrutiny. Not only can it hold us up, it can also hold up our doubts.

Faith is a supernatural gift, and in Christ in faith we can stand up and not shrink back. We can trust the testimony of Christ in our lives. We can trust His work.

Conviction, in this sense is the product of cross examining. IT is the ability to push and press and ask and prod to see if that thing is sea worthy.

The verse, as the definition of faith, is asking us to push and prod and ask questions. We are to cross examine our object of faith. That is what develops conviction.

One of the ways that I grew as a Christian when I was in my 20s is that I was attending a secular college university. Now I’m not saying that this is what everyone should do but I had already been attending a secular university and then kept on attending once I trusted Christ.

And even as a young christian I came across some pretty good pushbacks. My faith was cross examined right away

I was in a public speaking class and I chose to do the topic of Creation vs Evolution. And the professor asked from what perspective I would be speaking from. I answered from Creation. And He responded in front of the class, “we’re going to fight you on that one.”

My faith held up under cross examination

And while I have struggled a lot in faith, there is still something robust, something that doesn’t quit, something that finds Christ in creation. And when my faith can’t find Christ, when it is being heavily cross examined, it doesn’t stop searching.

We have been taught that faith is the absence of doubt. That is not true. Faith is trust regardless of doubt. I trust Christ and His work more than I trust my own ability to trust HIm. I don’t have faith in faith. I have faith in Christ. He is the One that sustains. And that is learned in the cross examining of faith.

It can be hard to be a Christian in a post Christian world. But in some ways I say welcome it. Allow the world to cross examine your faith. Because if Christ is who He says He is, then He can stand up and around and through and in and by any way we are cross examined.

That is why as a church we don’t want to fear questions. This is why we do ground floor. Why we try and discuss things. Why we pray through things. Because we trust that God is working through the cross examining of our faith.

We don’t have to fear the world that barells down on us. We have a God who stands much bigger and larger than anything that can come our way.

We learn what is most reliable and we learn to live reliable lives.

A robust faith doesn’t have to shrink back. It can stand up on it’s own. Even when things don’t look like they are going our way, faith doesn’t shrink. Look at verses 13-16

Hebrews 11:13–16 ESV

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

It is not in everything else being reliable that keeps us on solid ground. It is on God being reliable and our seeing HIm as the most reliable and most real thing we know.

When we trust in Christ Faith is the most real thing about us.

That may sound strange but look at how this chapter begins.

Hebrews 11:3 ESV

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.

We believe that everything that we lay eyes on, that our hands touch and ears hear, came from the spoken word of God. That what God has said has become reality

The word of God is the most reliable thing we know. What is visible was created out language and words that is not visible. The word of God spoken is the most visible.

Faith is reliable and trustworthy because it shows us what is most real.

CS Lewis wrote a book called the Great Divorce to give us a picture of heaven and hell. There is a group of people who get on a bus in hell and they take the bus into heaven. They are called ghosts and are described as just thin whisps of beings.

They get into heaven, into the far country, and everything is bold and bright and real. It is so real that they try to walk on the grass in this beatiful meadow and it hurts them. Not because the grass is hard but because it is so real.

As they walk further and further into heaven they begin to be able to interact with these material things. They feel the water in a waterfall and the sun is no longer a threat to them, too bright, but is pleasant.

They meet these solid people. People coming out of the moutains of the far country to talk with them. These are people with features and faces, who are solid and have no problem walking on the grass, it gives under their feet as they walk

Lewis is making the point that the closer you get to God the more real things get. Everything else is just whisps. The most real is that which is most Christ like. Even creation, coming from God’s voice is the most real. The ghosts can’t fully interact with it.

One of the solid people say:

But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.’”

This is the reality of our lives. For those who profess faith, we are living out that which is most real in our lives.

Faith will show the most reliable thing about us.

Faith is assurance and conviction.

Assurance and conviction of that which is most real.

To have faith means you have to walk on it and you have to work with it.,

Faith only becomes what it is when you use it,

Faith is our lives as we live through Christ

To live in faith means to encounter Christ. This happens when we act in the ways that Christ has called us to because of who He is in us.

Faith is intended for encounter with Christ. Faith is not for preservation or preparation. Faith is encounter with God today.

Faith is assurance and conviction because it is encounter with God.

Here’s the miracle of the church. We have a group of people who profess faith in Christ. The most real thing in the universe. And we don’t just say it, we are called to enact it. To act into it. To live an encounter with God.

So when we gather to worship or to eat together or to serve or to pray. When we love someone in the name of Jesus, ministering to them in Jesus name. That is the most real thing about us. The most real thing about you.

IT is the most reliable thing about you.

Lean into faith, lean into the reliability of Christ in His church

encountering Christ in faith will be the most real thing you do. The most valuable thing you do.

Wen we worship we encounter God in faith

When we serve we encounter God in faith

When we invest in another we encounter God in faith

When we take risks for the Kingdom of Heaven we encounter God in faith.

Christ is the most reliable thing in your life. Encounter Him in trust and faith.