Last
week I talked about the Tremendous power of Hope; this week I want to
talk about the Tremendous Power of Faith. Next week I will talk about
the Tremendous Power of Love.
We learned last week that there is great power in hope. I hope we can
learn this week that there is even greater power in faith. The Bible
puts it this way: Faith is the confident assurance that what we hope
for is going to happen. That definition of faith is from
Hebrews
11:1. You can see that faith moves us up to the next step. When we
hope, we have a desire for something to happen, we expect something to
happen. But when we have faith, we have confidence, we have assurance
that something will happen.
As we explore this very important subject, we will be looking at two
persons who had amazing faith. And their faith was in JESUS. Because of
that faith, JESUS answered their giant-size prayers. The first was a
woman. The second was the father of a little girl.
The woman is described in Matthew 9:20. She had been suffering from
hemorrhages for twelve years [and] came up behind [Jesus] and
touched the fringe of his cloak, 21 for she said to herself,
“If I only touch his cloak, I will be made
well.” This woman had amazing faith. She had a
prayer
in her heart that she was acting out. So she plunged into the
crowd, stretched out her hand, touched the fringe of Jesus’ robe,
and immediately felt healing power coming into her.
At the same instant, according to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus felt
power go out from him. He turned and looked at the woman, and
we
are told that she was struck with fear. I think its because she had
rubbed shoulders with the crowd even though Jewish law required that
she isolate herself because her sickness made her unclean. But Jesus
swept all of that aside and said, “Take heart, daughter.”
He graciously encouraged her, and then commended her faith:“your
faith has healed you.” And [the text tells us] the woman was
healed from that moment.
Of course, it was power that came from Jesus that healed her. Yet,
Jesus wanted to affirm her bold faith, her audacious faith, because it
was her faith to which his power responded.
How does one get this kind of rock-solid faith? Karl Barth, the leading
theologian of the 20th century, called faith a miracle. He insisted
that we can believe in God only as God chooses to make himself known to
us through His Word, only as He reveals Himself and his plans to us.
This faith cannot be guaranteed, coerced, or pinned down. It is gift.
This woman had probably heard Jesus speak. And instead of
being
skeptical or doubting, she opened herself up to believe. A picture
formed in her mind: if she would but touch the hem of Jesus’
garment, she was somehow given confidence, assurance, even certitude
that she would be healed.
By the way, “faith” in the New Testament is never general
belief in the existence of God. Rather, faith is getting in touch with
Jesus,-- bringing your prayer requests to God, but through Christ,--
having the expectation that Jesus will provide you with new
possibilities of growth and service.
That’s what he wants to do for everyone of us: give us new
opportunities of growth and service. That has certainly been the case
for Carol and me.There have been new possibilities, even as
we
have moved into the stage of life that is referred to as
“elderly.”
I remember a lady at a barber shop in Manila a couple of years ago. She
was one of the workers there. She looked at me and said, “You are
elderly!” I don’t know why she was making that observation.
I wondered, “Why do I deserve that?” Filipinos are very
humble & gracious, and we love them very much, but as I said
before
from this pulpit, they can also be very blunt! I nodded,
smiled
and said, “Yes I am elderly,--- but not as elderly as my 101 year
old mother.”
I retired a year later to take care of my mother. She lived to almost
103. During that time, I was keeping in touch with Jesus, bringing my
prayer requests to him, having expectation that Jesus would provide me
with new possibilities of growth and service. And he has.
Look at
what he has arranged. Here I am standing in this marvelous pulpit of
the American Church in Paris. It’s hard to imagine that I would
be given such an opportunity.
What new and exciting possibilities does Christ have for you? Are you
in touch with him? Are you making yourself available? Are you trusting
in his wisdom? --His perfect planning? --His power to bring to
completion that which he has begun in your life?
Susan, our new Interim Associate Pastor, told the Council yesterday
that her husband, Dave was feeling that he and Susan needed a new
challenge. He started praying that God would lead them to something
new. Two weeks later, my email arrived asking if Susan might be
interested in coming to Paris. And Susan commented, “I think this
qualifies.”
Let’s look at the second person in our Bible lesson, a father who
has faith that Jesus can raise from the dead his precious
daughter. Matt. 9:18 tells us that a ruler came and knelt
before
him and said, “My daughter has just died. But come and put your
hand on her, and she will live.” 19 Jesus got up and went
with him, and so did his disciples.
This father is a model of faith. First he worships Jesus. He kneels
before him. Next, he tells Jesus that his daughter is
actually
dead. And then adds a “but.” “My daughter has just
died, but—come and put your hand on her and she will
live.” Talk about a person who believes in the power od
Jesus. “My daughter is dead, but”—What do you mean
“but!” Dead is dead. There are no buts with death.
Unless, of course, Jesus gets involved. With Jesus all things
are
possible.
Our text surprises us by saying that Jesus followed the father of this
dead child. Jesus is always taking the lead, but in this case he is
following. Why? He was responding to the father’s extraordinary
faith! My daughter has just died, “but” --That kind
of faith has power to move Jesus.
What we find in the Gospels is that where there is faith, Jesus always
responds. That’s because Jesus knows that that where there is
faith, there the Father has been at work awakening this faith. And the
Father and the Son always work together as one.
Our Bible story tells us that When Jesus entered the ruler’s
house [He] saw the flute players and the noisy crowd. They were
expressing deep sorrow, but their wailing was a hindrance to faith. So
Jesus put the mourners out. He said to them,“Go Away!”
Then, He quietly gripped the girl’s hand and according to Mark
said, “Talitha koum!” He used Aramaic which the child would
have understood, not the normally spoken Greek used among adults.
“Talitha koum!” -- “Little girl, I say to you, get
up!” The touch of Jesus and the words of Jesus raise this child
from her sleep of death. It is an extraordinary miracle --
one of
three times in the New Testament that Jesus raises someone from the dead
It was God who gave the girl’s father faith so that he could
plead passionately with Jesus. And to the extent that we have faith, we
can be assured that it is God who gives us this gift to believe in him
and to feel and know his presence with us.
I say this on the basis of what Scripture teaches, and also on the
basis of my own experience and the experience of so many others I have
known through the years. And yet, -- we also acknowledge that there
many who don’t feel the presence of God, don’t sense his
consolations of joy or peace. Instead their experience is one of
aridity, dryness and doubt.
A Time cover story came out this week that has saddened and shocked
many people. It is a report on the new book, “Mother
Teresa: Come Be My Light.” The book consists
correspondence between Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a
period of 66 years.
We learn from this book that initially Mother Teresa experienced great
consolations in her prayer life and in her service to Christ. But then
she had a crisis of faith. She herself wrote that for fifty years, she
felt no presence of God whatsoever-- neither in her heart or in the
eucharist.
In 1956 she wrote, “Such deep longing for God …repulsed
… empty … no faith … no love….no zeal. The
saving of souls holds no attraction …..Heaven means
nothing….pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite
of everything.” You wonder: “Can that have been the
spiritual experience of the saintly Mother Teresa?”
Later she came to realize that her very craving for God was a very good
sign. Her confessor convinced her that only God, Himself, could give
her that kind of craving. She also came to realize that her prayer to
experience something of Christ’s passion on the cross was being
answered through this darkness. (Be careful what you pray for!) She was
experiencing the desolation, the forsakenness of the cross. Christ,
Himself, had cried out: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken
me?” That’s what she had been experiencing for so many
years: a feeling of abandonment by God.
Probably the most surprising and also the most inspiring aspect of this
story is the fact that Mother Teresa was faithful through the many
years, despite her doubt, despite the desolation in which she was
engulfed. Up at 4:30 every morning for prayer, taking care of
the
poorest of the poor, doing that difficult and sometimes repulsive work
without any feelings of faith, hope or love-- and yet outwardly
pretending faith, hope and love.
And so, despite her experience of 50 years of living in doubt and
dryness, Mother Teresa ends up being an incredible model of faith. The
most difficult kind of faith, faith without the support of warm, fuzzy
feelings; faith in the face of doubts, distress, and gloom. The
spiritual term that is used to describe her condition is “the
dark night of the soul.” St. John of the Cross, the 16th century
mystic and Doctor of the church is the classic expositor of this
condition.
If you are going through a period of darkness, it is most probable that
your darkness is different from the dark night of the soul.
(1) You may be suffering from depression. That’s different.
(2) You may be going through a normal emotional reaction to loss - like
divorce, bereavement over the death of a loved one -- that’s
different.
(3) You may be going through a hard time in your life, experiencing
troubles, problems, trials that are frustrating and discouraging you --
that’s different.
(4) You may be involved in behavior that is displeasing to God --
immorality, dishonesty -- And when you do that, God withdraws the sense
of his presence until you repent. That’s different.
All of these experiences of darkness are different from Teresa’s Dark
Night of the Soul.
It is possible that God could lead anyone of us into the dark night of
the soul. But it is far more likely that he will lead us, instead, into
a more vibrant faith in him. That’s what Jesus talked about again
and again. For example, in Mark 11:22, Jesus says: “Have faith in
God,” 23 “I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this
mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not
doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will
be done for him. 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask
for in
prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be
yours.
In a few moments we will be installing a new Council. The
council
members were commenting yesterday at the Council Retreat on how far we
have come in this past year. Look at what our faith and a lot of hard
work and wholehearted involvement have allowed us to do through our
Faith into Action Campaign. How important it is to remind
ourselves that with God nothing is impossible.
But you might say, I don’t have that rock-solid faith. How
do I get it? Here’s how! You must pray for faith. Let down
your intellectual defenses. You must let your modern world-view be
flooded by the self-disclosure of God. Have an open-heart for more
faith. Pray like that man who said to Jesus: “Lord, I
believe, help Thou mine unbelief. Lord help me to believe.”
And Jesus did.
One final thing. This great promise of God to answer our prayers, has a
catch, an important condition. Jesus continues: 25 And when you stand
praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your
Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” You want to be
powerful in prayer? Forgive! if you have anything against anyone.
That’s all-inclusive! If you have anything,. . . . against
anyone…forgive!
You have this list of people who have offended you in one way or
another, and you refuse to cross their names off of your list. Do you
realize what you are doing? You are clogging the power line of
prayer. You wonder why you don’t have vitality in your
Christian life. It has nothing to do with the dark night of the soul.
The problem is that you have not forgiven your spouse, or your
neighbor, or your adversaries -- whomever. And therefore the sense of
God’s presence has faded.
All that can change. Jesus assures us: whatever you ask for
in
prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. But
please don’t forget the condition for powerful prayer: 25
And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone,
forgive him [or her], so that your Father in heaven may forgive you
your sins.” Amen.
