Active Trust in a Faithful God

Faith Mission

It’s World War II, an american soldier is facing enemy fire. He is shot, and lay there wounded.

As he lay there wounded, God gives him a vision. It’s a vision of a very specific ridge line. God gives him the name Gouno. He recognises that this ridge line is in Papua New Guinea, but precisely where, he’s no entirely sure.

This wounded soldier is treated for his injury and sent back to America.

The soldier recovers back in America, but this vision drifts from his mind.

The soldiers name is Ben Wertz, and he’s now married to Tilila and they have a young daughter named Ruth.

A few years have now passed since his time at war and he’s starting to settle down. One day he’s outside painting his house, and the very same vision appears to him again. It’s the same ridge line and that same name: Gouno!

God is calling him. He knows it.

The problem is, there’s a whole lot of uncertainty about it - after all, where even is Gouno?

He tries a number of mission agencies but they all tell him his too old - he is after all in his 30’s by now!

But this call of God doesn’t leave him. If he goes, he’s going to have to go in faith.

He doesn’t know exactly what he’s got to do, but he does know one part. He needs to go to Papua New Guinea.

The year is 1952, and commercial flights between America and Australia are still 2 years away. To get to the land God has shown him, he’ll have to take a boat. So he sells his house, and with only about $3000 to his name, he takes himself, his wife, and his young daughter to Papua New Guinea.

He arrives and searches for the ridge line in his vision - the place called Gouno. He searches in all of the patrolled areas, but can’t find it.

He knows he needs to go into the unpatrolled areas. But walking into these unpatrolled areas is not really something you’re meant to do.

But he negotiates with the officials. They tell him, you will need to buy the body bags and pay $3000 in case we need to come and rescue you. This was his entire life savings.

So what does Ben do?

If he is going to do this, he’ll need to do it by faith.

You’d be forgiven for thinking at this point that Ben is a bit crazy. Many people thought he was.

The officials patrolling the land thought he was. After all, the people living in the unpatrolled lands were known canibals.

But Ben steps out. This was not just a single dream he’d had many years prior and on a whim thought he’d see what happens.

This was a prompting of the Holy Spirit. This was a series of confirmations that God gave him along the way. This was a man that was willing to take the step and listen to what God says next.

Ben walked through the wild jungle.

Actually, it was interesting that last Sunday, I walked between two villages to get to church. Part of the walk went along this thin path that went down into the valley and then back up again. It was noted by some of the locals that it would have been path’s like this that Ben would have walked along when he first found the ridge line he was looking for.

He walked for a long period, until there he stood… on the edge of a mountain, and the very image of a ridge line that God had placed on his mind was right there in front of him.

He moved towards that ridge line.

Now the interesting thing was, in this village on the ridge line that was indeed called Gouno, one of the chiefs also had a vision of a white person coming to visit.

As Ben walked up, he greeted him.

This was to become the start of faith mission.

It’s no surprise it got the name Faith Mission, because it all started with a journey of faith.

What is Faith?

But this begs the question: what does it mean to do something by faith?

In 2 Corinthians 5:7 Paul says: “For we live by faith, not by sight”.

Paul also said in Romans 1:17 “For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.””

So, what does it mean to live by faith?

It’s an interesting question, because sometimes it can sound a lot like blind optimism or just positive thinking.

What I mean by this is that if we just think lots of positive thoughts and really believe it, then it will happen.

Well, let me just state up front why this is wrong. When you walk by faith, generally speaking, you’re nott going to be moving towards a life style that is typically desired by most people in this world. Quite likely, you’ll be getting less money and the conditions won’t be as good.

You see, when we talk about walking or living by faith, the object of that faith is not our own desires, but that which God has called us to. What is valuable and desirable to God, tends to be quite different to what our human desires long for.

A defintion

So let’s start with a definition.

The passage we read earlier gives us a great definition so let’s look at this.

Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”

You know as we look into the future there is always a lot of uncertainty.

If I were to ask you what you’re going to be doing this time next year, you might be able to make a few assumptions and have a pretty good guess. But then again, a lot can happen in a year. How confident can you actually be?

But here we’re told that we can have confidence about what we hope for.

But as I alluded to earlier, the important part isrecognising the source of this hope. This is not just any hope. This is not just a ‘make-a-wish’ foundation.

You see, in our passage in Hebrews, the author points to various Old Testament characters that were commended for their faith.

The important thing for us is to walk through them and discover what it is that they put their hope in.

Creation

Verse 3, gives us a great example of how faith works and it uses the example of creation.

Now, when we read verse 3, we understand this from our modern perspective where the Creation debate is over whether it was all happened by random chance or whether God did it.

Let me tell you, that debate did not exist when this was written. Every single person on the planet at this time would have believed that some sort of god-like being made this world.

The prevailing belief was not that the world was created with some random chance, rather that there were these chaotic scenes were various gods battled things out and essentially fashioned some pre-existing material using some rather bizzarre means.

What the author of Hebrews is saying, is that what they believe is very different. It was not fashioned out of chaos, it was rather created from nothing, at just the command of God. It’s saying that this world around us is good and carefully designed. It can be trusted because it comes from a good creator.

How do they know that? By faith.

Faith is this instance doesn’t mean that they just heard a story and thought it sounded good.

You see, Faith actually allows for us to look at the evidence. In this case, you see how God shows himself in creation. You see how creation is ordered and predictable. You see that what God says about it is true.

You see, faith looks at the evidence… it looks at what is being said, and it accepts it based on the trustworthiness that God has shown.

It’s not blind faith, because that would assume there was no evidence. Rather God shows his trustworthiness, and then says, based on this record, I want you to trust me - to have faith!

So, understanding how the world work actually requires faith.

Righteousness

So that’s the first example of the type of thing we put our faith in. Verse 4 shifts the focus onto being commended as righteous.

The idea of being righteous is all about doing what is right. God has a design for how we should live, and when we perfectly live up to it, we’re considered righteous.

Of course, there is a massive problem - no matter how hard we try, we can never get there.

Now, from our New Testament perspective, we get a well defined path that describes how our righteousness comes from Jesus who died for our sins, and that we just need to accept it by faith. But what is particularly interesting is how in a number of places in the New Testament such as this verse 4 of Hebrews 11, we actually see that even people in the Old Testament who lived before the time of Jesus were actually commended as righteous because of their faith.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the cross was always necessary… the cross is what makes this effective… but being righteous before God has always been saying to God: ‘I’m going to trust you, and in faith, I’ going to follow you’.

This is what Abel did.

You might recall the story way back in Genesis 4. We normally remember this incident as the first murder, but it’s being recalled here as Abel doing what is right. Abel gave an offering to God. It wasn’t just the leftovers - that’s effectively what his broth Cain did. Rather he gave the best to God.

Now, from a worldly perspective, what Abel did was foolish. Firstly, by giving the best to God, it meant he missed out on these best bits. And secondly, well… it ultimately ended up in him getting murdered.

But yet, being commended as righteous is going to be better by far in the long run.

When we live by faith, from our worldly perspective, it might not make sense, and yet we find we get the greatest blessing - a blessing from God.

This is our confidence. Not in gaining money or material possessions… but a confidence that we can know, when we walk by faith, we will be blessed.

Rooted in God

The important thing to recognise with this whole discussion is that faith must always be rooted in who God is and what he has done for us.

We can know this by what’s in the Bible.

How do we know we can rely what’s in the Bible? Well, I’m going to say we take it on faith!

But then you might think I’m just creating a circular argument - that is, the bible informs our faith, but it is only in faith that we trust the bible is trustworthy.

But this is where it’s important to note - we’re not talking about blind faith. I’m not saying just trust it because I say so. I’m actually saying - if you look at the Bible, you see that it matches with archaelogical evidence. It matches with reason. And it matches with the experience of countless people before us.

There is evidence before us that proves the reliability of the Bible. The faith that is required is just to say, based on the trustworthiness that God has already shown, I’m now going to believe the promises that are yet to take place. I’m also going to trust him in the parts that don’t quite make sense.

The reason we can live by faith, is because we know that when God says something will happen, it always most certainly does happen. This is a key characteristic of who God is.

Another key characteristic that he has, is that he is good.

You might question that because a whole bunch of bad stuff has happened in your life. That might be true, but I’d challenge you, think back and think how God has carried you through those difficult times.

We walk by faith, because God is good.

Application

So I’ve spoken quite a bit about what we’re talking about when we talk about faith, but in practical terms, what does it mean for us to live by faith?

I gave the example at the start off Ben Wertz who started Faith Mission up at Gouno.

The truth is, this is a pretty full on example, and you might be thinking, there’s no way I’m about the sell everything I have and go to a foreign place I know little about.

Well, perhaps God won’t call you to something so big - after all, he’s not calling us all to pioneer something so big.

But, what it does mean for us is that we should be listening to God and stepping out where he calls.

Now, next week, I’m going to explore this a bit further by looking at the example of Abraham.

But for now, I want to urge you - put aside your worldly ambitions. Say to God, I want to surrender to you… I want to recognise God, that your way is going to be so much better than my ways.

Sometimes walking by faith might mean that you say, even though I don’t have a lot of money, I’m going to be generous with all that God has given me.

Walking by faith might mean when you face that big decision during the week, you’re going to choose the option that means you don’t gain as much as you could… even that you might lose the upper hand… but that you know it’s the right choice because it honours God the most.

Walking by faith means valuing the unseen blessing from God, over the promise of possessions that is directly in front of you.

Why? Because we have confience in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

Conclusion

Walking by faith is something we might talk about a lot as Christians, but too often in our materialistic world, we’re actually more accustomed to walking by the promises of worldly rewards.

In the story of Ben Wertz, he would have undoubtedly had lots more money had he stayed working in America. But yet, in walking by faith, he chose to bless countless people.

When we were up in Gouno only a week ago, we met people who were there when Ben arrived 73 years ago. They were able to testify to the changes that have occured as the result of Ben’s walk of faith.

It hasn’t always been easy. In fact there have been many challenges along the way.

But God has always remained faithful.

And this is the important part for us to remember.

The reason we have faith, is because God has already proven himself trustworthy and good.

We just need to surrender and in faith, trust him.

Let me pray...