Passive Faith

What type of faith are you living right now?

Passive: 1. not reacting visibly to something that might be expected to produce manifestations of an emotion or feeling.

2. not involving visible reaction or active participation

Active: 1. characterized by action, motion, volume, use, participation, etc

2. causing activity or change; capable of exerting influence (opposed to passive )

Passive faith slumbers

Proverbs 6:6–11 HCSB

Go to the ant, you slacker! Observe its ways and become wise. Without leader, administrator, or ruler, it prepares its provisions in summer; it gathers its food during harvest. How long will you stay in bed, you slacker? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the arms to rest, and your poverty will come like a robber, your need, like a bandit.

Proverbs 6:10–11 HCSB

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the arms to rest, and your poverty will come like a robber, your need, like a bandit.

Sleep and slumber are not the same thing, at least in my estimation they aren't. Sleep is necessary for our health. Sleep recharges out batteries. There are cycles of sleep, designed to enable us to get the most out of our day and to function properly, Sleep is important. We need sleep, Slumber on the other hand is a bit different. Slumber to me brings up a picture of laziness, of someone actively choosing to not engage in life, or worse yet attempting to figure out the way to do the bare minimum when it comes to a walk with God . Passive faith has this at it’s core a bare minimum approach to what is supposed to be an active vibrant engaged faith that pushes the individual out of their comfort zone and compels them to share life with the world around them. When I allow my walk with God, my faith life to become a list of do’s and don’ts, when I treat it like something that belongs on my shoping list for walmart as opposed to a relationship with a person that loves and cares for me and that I love and care for it begin the process of passivity.

Active relationship rests

Rest is different than slumber. We talked abut the importance of recreation of resting last month but it needs to be repeated. When I am resting I am doing so with the understanding that there is going to come point when that rest is over and activity is resumed. Resting is a chance to recharge a bit for the rest of the day’s activities. When we rest we have the opportunity to quiet ourselves, and in that quiet we can hear the still small voice of God speaking into our lives, telling us what we need to do and say.

Passive faith takes

A parasite is a pretty invasive thing. It takes from the host without any regard for the hosts well being. Parasites think only of themselves. They take and take and take and take until they have depleted the source of all the things that they find useful or desirable, only then do they move on, usually to another host that they can leach off until that host is also depleted.

Passive faith works much the same way. When I rely on other people to supply my faith with the fuel it needs to be real and active, when I sit and take and take and take from other people of faith, monopolizing their time, keeping them from others, asking questions that may be important but that with a bit of digging, a bit of reading, a bit of listening and a bit of praying I could find the answer for myself I am living a passive parasite faith. When I rely on others for my faith, for the things that help it to grow, for the things that make it meaningful, I don’t really have a faith at all, I’m pretending and in that pretending I’m missing out on what a robust relationship with God can be and I may be keeping others from coming to that faith.

Active relationship gives

Our body needs fed, it needs rest, and it needs exercise. Without all three of those things it will become soft, sick, and eventually give out on us. People who claim Christianity, many times are really great at the eating part, and they can get with the resting part but just like our physical bodies fight against exercise so to do our spiritual bodies. If I’m given a choice of working out or of plopping in front of the tv with a soda some snacks and a good movie or game controller, it’s so much more appealing to do the later. None of those things are bad, that’s the thing. It’s okay to take time like that, to recharge, to do things that you enjoy purely for enjoyments sake. If I had to name them they would be oasis moments when it comes to my faith. These me focused times, or me and God focused times are there to give me a bit of a push, or a shot in the arm. For me Orange conference and Orange tour are oasis moments. Sometimes God gives us Oasis moments that we don’t expect (Christ Tomilin Concert) These Oasis moments are fine but like any oasis moment they’re meant to be that moments in time that allow us to recharge our batteries, to catch a new vision or idea for what God wants to do through us and then to move us out of our comfort zone and into active service for Christ. Active faith doesn’t just serve out of obligation, or because of what that service will get for me. Active faith serves from a place of love, and compassion. (Talk about Corrie ten Boom)

In May 1940, the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. Among their restrictions was banning a club which Ten Boom had run for young girls.[1][page needed] In May 1942 a well-dressed woman came to the Ten Booms' with a suitcase in hand and told them that she was a Jew, her husband had been arrested several months before, her son had gone into hiding, and Occupation authorities had recently visited her, so she was afraid to go back. She had heard that the Ten Booms had helped their Jewish neighbors, the Weils, and asked if they might help her too. Casper ten Boom readily agreed that she could stay with them. A devoted reader of the Old Testament, he believed that the Jews were the 'chosen people', and he told the woman, "In this household, God's people are always welcome."[2] The family then became very active in the Dutch underground hiding refugees; they honored the Jewish Sabbath.[3]

Thus the Ten Booms began "the hiding place", or "de schuilplaats", as it was known in Dutch (also known as "de Béjé", pronounced in Dutch as 'bayay', an abbreviation of their street address, the Barteljorisstraat). Corrie and Betsie opened their home to refugees — both Jews and others who were members of the resistance movement — being sought by the Gestapo and its Dutch counterpart. They had plenty of room, although wartime shortages meant that food was scarce. Every non-Jewish Dutch person had received a ration card, the requirement for obtaining weekly food coupons. Through her charitable work, Ten Boom knew many people in Haarlem and remembered a couple who had a disabled daughter. The father was a civil servant who by then was in charge of the local ration-card office. She went to his house one evening, and when he asked how many ration cards she needed, "I opened my mouth to say, 'Five,'" Ten Boom wrote in The Hiding Place. "But the number that unexpectedly and astonishingly came out instead was: 'One hundred.'"[4] He gave them to her and she provided cards to every Jew she met.

Secret room[edit]

With so many people using their house, the family built a secret room in case a raid took place. They built it in Corrie ten Boom's bedroom because it was on the house's top floor, hopefully giving people the most time to hide and avoid detection, as searches usually started on the ground/first floor. A member of the Dutch resistance designed the hidden room behind a false wall. Gradually, family and supporters brought building supplies into the house, hiding them in briefcases and rolled-up newspapers. When finished, the secret room was about 30 inches (76 cm) deep, the size of a medium wardrobe. A ventilation system allowed for breathing. To enter the secret room, a person had to open a cupboard in which there was a sliding panel in the plastered brick wall under a bottom shelf and crawl in on hands and knees. In addition, the family installed an electric raid-warning buzzer. When the Nazis raided the Ten Boom house in 1944, six people were using the hiding place.

Arrest, detention, and release[edit]

On February 28, 1944, a Dutch informant told the Nazis about the Ten Booms' work; at around 12:30PM the Nazis arrested the entire Ten Boom family. They were sent toScheveningen prison; Nollie and Willem were released immediately along with Corrie's nephew Peter; Casper died 10 days later. Corrie and Betsie were sent from Scheveningen to Herzogenbusch political concentration camp (also known as Kamp Vught), and finally to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany, where Betsie died on December 16, 1944. Before she died, she told Corrie, "There is no pit so deep that He [God] is not deeper still."[5]

Corrie ten Boom was released on December 28, 1944. In the movie The Hiding Place, she narrates the section on her release from camp, saying that she later learned that her release had been a clerical error. She said, "God does not have problems — only plans." The Jews whom the Ten Booms had been hiding at the time of their arrests remained undiscovered and all but one, an old woman named Mary, survived.

Passive faith runs away

The bottom line is when my faith is passive, it’s not all that important to me. When something or somone isn’t important, isn’t worth it in my eyes then abandoning them will be pretty easy. When my faith isn’t important to me, it is easy to abandon that faith when it’s convenient, or when things start to get a bit hard. It’s much easier to run away from my faith when I’m faced with a choice if it’s passive.

Onesimus operated in this space. NO one knows why he ran from his master. We do know that for some reason he left his situation, ran away and ended up hearing the Gospel message from Paul. Now Onessimus had a choice, He could continue to run, he could continue to ignore God’s reaching toward him. We all face the same choice when it comes to our relationship with God. We all can continue to run, to actively continue on our own, attempting to fill the hole in our lives with things that don’t matter. Passive faith runs from anything that will stretch it, make it stronger, or challenge it. Passive faith is really no faith at all.

Active relationship accepts

Philemon 8–16 HCSB

For this reason, although I have great boldness in Christ to command you to do what is right, I appeal to you, instead, on the basis of love. I, Paul, as an elderly man and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus, appeal to you for my son, Onesimus. I fathered him while I was in chains. Once he was useless to you, but now he is useful both to you and to me. I am sending him back to you as a part of myself. I wanted to keep him with me, so that in my imprisonment for the gospel he might serve me in your place. But I didn’t want to do anything without your consent, so that your good deed might not be out of obligation, but of your own free will. For perhaps this is why he was separated from you for a brief time, so that you might get him back permanently, no longer as a slave, but more than a slave—as a dearly loved brother. He is especially so to me, but even more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

This Week’s Challenge

Take stock of your faith. Have you been going through the motions?

Read Philemon and write down three things that you can take from it to help move your faith to an active relationship.