Faith-Ball???

In a previous post ( Ouroborous Faith) I shared my struggle of being raised in a church but being unable to understand how I was to act on the command delivered to me from the preacher(s) - to put my faith in Jesus. I'd like to revisit this topic, but perhaps from a slightly different approach pattern. I think it's good to think over things, to turn the object being observed over and around; viewing it from various angles and under different degrees of light. It's good for the thinker as well as the reader. When one perspective doesn't resonate with a reader, another may connect to something they know and help them grasp the topic enough to consider it in their own mind. This is not to say understanding can be had without The Holy Spirit, Jesus said, "The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (John 3:8) While I know what I say is in vain unless The Spirit of God uses it, I do not know what He will use or when He will use it; but this is getting into the subject of grace, and while we will most likely end up there by the end of this post, the topic at hand is faith.

I was raised to think of faith as a thing I placed in another thing. It was like a ball of belief, that I would place in the hands of someone I trusted to score the winning goal, so to speak. The faith was not tied to me directly, rather it was a thing I possessed. My placing it in a thing or a person also required nothing of me, other than passing the ball of faith into their hands. Once the pass was made, I didn't really have to do anything else. Guarding would be nice, but it was up to the new handler to take and make the shot. This caused me many problems.

1. How does one pass the ball? I struggled with this. A ball is tangible and it was very obvious when it was passed and how to send it in the direction of the receiver. How did I know I passed my faith-ball to Jesus? Enter works. I somehow came to think the pass was done when the prayer was prayed. But I had played enough basketball to know that the one making the pass can send a bad one. So I began to be concerned that my prayer wasn't worded properly. Perhaps I wasn't sorry enough for my sins. Perhaps I didn't list them all, or wasn't aware of them all. Perhaps I wasn't sincere enough in my asking for Jesus to take me to heaven when I died. How did I know I made a successful hand-off?

2. How can I trust the receiver? The more I learned, the more I saw things I didn't know. I had been told Jesus could make the shot; but as I became more knowledgeable about other "players" I wondered how I could be certain they weren't just as good or better at handling the ball. What if Jesus was talking a good game, but couldn't deliver? What if I thought he was on my team, but I had been told lies in order to sabotage the game? What if myself, or even the sincere preachers who told me to pass the faith-ball were sincerely mistaken; just like when those little 5 year olds are out on the court and all excited they got the ball and are headed to the wrong hoop or pass to the opposing team in a moment of dazed confusion due to the current circumstances of life?

3. And lets add one more layer of complexity to this, this would be my first game with Jesus. I had only read about Him. I had been told things about Him by others. I had never seen Him play and certainly never wore the same jersey. So how can I prove I'm not passing the ball to an imagined player, only to realize all too late that I just threw the ball out of bounds as the buzzer sounds? How could I be sure?

I had so many questions. I was being torn apart. I had made multiple professions of faith. I had been baptized on three, yes THREE, separate occasions. I had been teaching/preaching since I was 13 years old. People looked at me and thought I was a good Christian boy. I attended, and graduated, from bible college and even got ordained by the church I grew up in to preach the gospel; but deep down, I struggled if I even believed it. I had tried so many times to pass the ball, but it seemed every time I looked in my hands I was still hanging onto it. So what did I do? I did the only thing that made sense, I threw the ball to the rafters letting it bounce around. Maybe it got lodged there, maybe it rebounded to the bleachers and was forever lost in the darkness of chewing gum,sticky soda lids, and half-eaten hot dogs. I didn't care, my faith was in nothing; and I walked off the court.

For years after, I had some people talk to me. I would let them talk, not really listening to them; but just letting them talk as I knew they cared for me and were only doing what they felt was right. I would just think, "I don't play ball anymore. That was a thing when I was young." One day, through a conversation being had with a friend, God began to move. My friend has said many things in the past, and even that day all sounded like "blah, blah, blah" until he quoted Proverbs 3:5-6 to me almost in passing as he was making a point, "Trust in The LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; in all your ways know Him, and He will make your paths straight." It hit me differently that day. I had heard, read, and even quoted that countless times in the past 39 years of my life; but this wasn't like those times. I became curious and for the next 3 days picked up the Bible and read every chance I got. I was not yet a believer, but I was being drawn. I started in Revelation, I think partially to see if it struck fear in my heart when I read apocalyptic literature, but somehow ended up in Hebrews. By the way, I didn't feel any fear of the end-times or what was in store for me on the other side of the grave (again, perhaps for another discussion at a later time).

In the book of Hebrews, the readers are told that Jesus is a prophet, but so much more. A heavenly being, but so much more than the angels. A son of King David, but so much more than David. So much more than Moses, so much more than any high priest; He is so much more as He is the Son of God, and due to His being so much more, we should heed what He says to us. The author of Hebrews goes on to speak of how God rested from all his creative labors on the seventh day and how we should enter into His rest as God has extended a promise to enter into His rest and that promise is still in effect. (Hebrews 4) Then in Chapter 11 we're given many examples of faith, but there is one man that stuck in my mind's eye - Abraham. "By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed and set out for a place that he was going to receive as an inheritance. He went out, even though he did not know where he was going." (Heb 11:8)

It was now a Thursday (before Easter Sunday), I was reading when I could and thinking about these things. I was about to head up the stairs and instantly I met Jesus. He was real. He wasn't physically standing in front of me, but when I turned around, He might as well have been. I didn't hear an audible voice, but I heard Him speaking to me, in my head and heart. I knew it wasn't an internal thought. It wasn't like when I finally understood a statistical concept or figured out how to write a DAX statement to create a metric needed in a report. No. This was a voice other than my own. I'll try to recount what happened in what felt like less than a fraction of a second:

I saw the cross and I was told to "just rest. Stop trying to figure it out. Just believe when I say 'it's enough', it's enough. TRUST ME." I felt my heart change. I could see sin that I highly cherished, and had wholly given myself to, as if it stood across from me and was no longer part of my heart's desire. I wanted to stop anything that was not pleasing to God my Creator and my Savior. He had saved me in Jesus and I wanted to live as He intended me to live. Not in order to earn anything, but because it was my duty and pleasure to do so. In that instant I saw repentance and faith were not two separate entities, but one. I walked up the stairs knowing I was a different man than when I had walked down them earlier that morning. The wind blows where it pleases. Just like God breathed into man on that creation day and man became a living soul (Genesis 2:7), The Holy Spirit breathed life into me and I was no longer dead in sin, but alive to God.

I had gotten it all wrong for years. Faith is not some object that we hold and choose to place in a thing or a person. When we believe a person, we place ourselves, our well being in that person. We put all our weight upon who they are. We are told in Hebrews 11:6, "Now without faith it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him." We are to place ourselves fully on the person of God, believing that He is and that He is who He says He is. It's about Him, not faith. You don't see faith, just like you don't see the wind. You can hear the wind, you can see it rustling the leaves in the trees, but those are just effects of the wind, not the wind itself. Faith is very much like that. When I was younger, I was consumed with looking at faith, but I am told to look to Jesus, the Author and Completer of my faith.

So what of all my questions? All my concerns faded away; how to correctly pass the ball was handled, there was no ball to be passed as I had been playing a game that Jesus never intended. As for concerns of His existence and His ability to save. That was handled in the instant He met me and gave me a new heart. When you meet Him, you don't doubt Who you just met. When He changes you, you don't question His ability. That's like being in 1st class, 38,000 feet in the air and asking the pilot if a flying plane is a myth.