Find Faith

Last week we began a short sermon series we are calling “Seek and Find.” We are allowing 1 Peter to lead us towards finding ways for us to become closer to God. Last week we began with hope and how it is through finding hope in Jesus that we are able to become closer to God.

Another aspect of hope is that it is the basis for faith. This week we are turning towards “finding faith.” Our scripture comes from 1 Peter 1:17-23.

17 Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. 18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. 21 Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.

22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.

Let us pray…

Last week we defined faith in the book of Hebrews as confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” We went on to offer that hope for a follower of Jesus is related to expectations.

Therefore, faith is confidence in the expectation of what God has done, is doing, and will do. And the assurance that God is at work even though we cannot see him. It should be our desire to grow in faith so that we can become closer to our creator, our Lord, our Savior.

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Our scripture points out to us that we are empty without Jesus. We discover that the same problem existed then that still exists today. We can allow the world to define what should matter to us: fame, money, whatever can get into your way.

But instead, we should focus on the chosen one. The one who was chosen to be our Savior from “before the creation of the world.” The one who are scripture calls “a lamb without blemish or defect” who sacrificed himself for us in order to give us the chance to become full of life.

It is through seeking Jesus that we can find faith in such a way that we are no longer the person who we once were. We have allowed God to enter into us in such a powerful way that we have become a different person.

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Faith is all about trust. It is stating that I trust in the hope offered to me by Jesus. We are stating as we say in the Apostles Creed,

“I believe in God the father almighty creator of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ his only begotten son our Lord who was born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified dead and buried and on the third day rose from the dead.”

It is through trusting God more that allows our faith to grow. It is us offering ourselves up to God and turning our lives over to him so that we are able to journey with him and trust him to guide us on the journey.

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We are given free will. We are allowed to decide what our relationship with God is going to look like. We get to make the choice are we are going to become a follower of God through Jesus. What does that look like if we begin to follow him, or have we not had enough evidence to decide to follow him at all.

Christian pastor and author, Jim Cymbala says it this way: “The way we make decisions in life tells a lot about the kind of faith we have in Jesus. The very process of decision making often reveals our ‘faith temperature.’”

“Faith temperature” is a metaphor that Cymbala uses when speaking of the spiritual vitality and expectancy of one’s faith. It can give us a way to ask ourselves where we are at on our faith journey. What is my current “faith temperature” low, high, or somewhere in between?

Our first reading is a great reminder of the choices we make and how we should choose to live out these choices. We have three main characters in our story: the younger brother, the father, and the older brother.

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It is when we look at the choices made by the younger brother, the one we often call the prodigal or wayward son that we see that we can choose to follow Jesus, and accept his grace without changing our lives or possibly not accepting him at all.

The younger son has reached a decision. He doesn’t need his father. He doesn’t want to work for him anymore. He wants to live his own life. He wants to make his own decisions. How many of us have been there at some point in our lives?

(Transition)

He asks his father for his part of the inheritance. This is the son telling the father I would prefer you to be dead than for me to have to spend another minute with you. Surprisingly in the story the father is willing to do what the son asks and give him his share of the inheritance.

If you know the story then you know that the son goes to the big city and begins living his best life. He makes choices that are not good for him and would be against the way that God would want the boy to live.

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Eventually the money runs out. All the people that liked hanging out with him have left him and he is attempting to figure out how to live without resources and without anyone that he can trust. He feels completely alone.

Things get so bad that he ends up feeding pigs and wishing he could have what they have. God doesn’t make us follow him or show him “reverent fear.” But he also doesn’t make our lives easy. He may force us to have to make a decision.

He may force us to ask the question “do I want to keep doing what has led me down this path or am I going to be willing to turn around and find a better way?” The youngest son eventually makes the decision to go back to his father.

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Our second character is the father. He shows first a willingness to offer his son the free will to do what he wants to do. He allows him to leave with his share of the inheritance. What we also see in the father is someone who is always seeking for the son’s return.

He is constantly looking for his son, and we can assume he is praying for God to protect his son and return him back to his home where he should be. This culminates with the son deciding his best chance of living his best life is at home and he goes home, the father sees him and runs to greet him.

(Transition)

The young man doesn’t believe he is good enough to be considered his father’s son anymore. The father disagrees and desires to have a party because what once was lost has been found. He welcomes his son back home.

We can view the father in a couple of different ways. The first is as someone who is already a follower of Jesus who meets someone who either has walked away from the faith or who has never followed Jesus.

We can make the decision that we are going to hold the past against someone, or we can decide to be like the father in our story and welcome them back or into a relationship with God with open arms.

How we treat those that are attempting to connect with God often defines how they will view other Christians and the church. It is why we have “loving all people” as a part of our mission statement. God loves each person as they are and so should we.

That is the other role the father plays in our text. It does not matter what you have done. It does not matter how far you have walked away from God. You can’t be to far away from God. God will forgive, God will forget, and God will be pleased that you have decided to be in a relationship with him.

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Our last main character is the older son or who we often refer to as the good son. He has stayed by his father’s side. He has listened and done what his father has asked for him to do. He wants to know what is happening that is causing so much commotion around the house.

When he finds out that a celebration is taking place because his brother has returned he is not happy. He is angry that his brother is being accepted back with open arms. He doesn’t believe that his father’s reactions is fair.

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If we are not careful, we can have the same reaction. We can begin thinking that we are so much better than those around us that we harbor anger or resentment for the way that someone new to the faith or returning to the faith is treated.

We should instead praise God for what has happened. We should thank God that someone has discovered what they are missing in their lives. We should be the first to be there welcoming someone into a relationship with Jesus.

(Transition)

What are some signs that we are growing in our faith or trust in God. Let’s focus on three signs today they are passionate worship, intimate prayer and extravagant love. Our scripture calls our worship of God “reverent fear.”

It is us being willing to humble ourselves before God and live lives that will be pleasing to God. It is us recognizing that he is God and we are not. This is played out through what Jesus calls the greatest commandment:

“Love the Lord your God with your heart, mind, soul, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.” This is the Jewish people and Jesus stating that God is our creator and is therefore worthy of worship through our whole being.

We, of course can take our worship of God a step further. We get to view God not only as our creator but also as our example and our Savior. Our scripture speaks of this, what we have been given is imperishable.

We have been given the everlasting, always available, never wavering love of God through Jesus. Jesus was willing to live amongst humanity. He showed us how to live, love and worship. This should have us be even more willing to choose to follow God and worship God.

 Worship in this context is not just what we are doing right now on a Sunday morning. Worship is acknowledging God and thanking God throughout the day. It is us attempting to place God before ourselves in all we say or do.

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This would include praying to God and thanking him for the ways that he has impacted our lives. Corrie Ten Boom was a Dutch Holocaust survivor. She is known for sheltering and smuggling Jews out of the country during World War II.

Eventually she was arrested and placed in a concentration camp along with her sister. The sisters led prayer meetings amongst the other prisoners. It was during one of those prayer meetings that they read that they were to give thanks to God under all circumstances.

Their living quarters were infested with fleas. Corrie was horrified and complained bitterly, but Betsie insisted they give thanks to God for everything—even the fleas—. Reluctantly, Corrie obeyed.

Later, they ended up discovering something remarkable: the guards avoided entering their barracks because of the fleas. This allowed the sisters to hold Bible studies, pray openly, and encourage other prisoners without interruption.

What seemed like a meaningless irritation became an unexpected instrument of grace. In time, Corrie realized that even the fleas, something she could not understand or appreciate at the time, had been used by God for protection and ministry.

If they can thank God for the fleas, I hope that each of us can find our own way to praise God to thank him for what he has given you and done for you.

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We also show our love to God through the love we show to those around us. Jesus showed us what love is. He led a life that acknowledged each person that he meant as someone who was loved by him and loved by God.

We should chooseto make the same choices with the way that we interact with those around us. We should be people of compassion.  We should choose to reach out to those that we find that are hurting and see if there are ways that we can help.

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We are not only to show love to those outside of the church but also to those that are fellow Christians. There are differences between different denominations. But those that call themselves Christians should choose to be united under the same banner and that is Jesus.

We know that this is not always the case. We have much infighting within Christianity because the focus is not on what can unite us, but on what divides us. We have to choose to look towards those areas of belief that unite us so that we can choose to follow the scripture offered to us today.

(Transition)

All of what we have focused on today goes back to what Jim Cymbala calls our “spiritual temperature.” How is your relationship with God? How closely connected do you feel to him? It also is possible that you are here today or online as a part of our YouTube worship experience and you don’t yet have a relationship with God.

I want to make sure you understand what I stated earlier. It does not matter what you have done. It does not matter how unworthy you may feel. God desires to be in a relationship with you. What he desires for you to do is to ask for your sins to be forgiven today.

Let us pray…