the gift of faith

There is nothing we can do about it; we're all shaped by our stories. We are moulded by the experiences and conversations we interface with every day, and this shapes our thinking. The way we see the world is not based solely on a collection of reasoned decisions, but by a multi-layered, complex collection of ideas that we have consciously and subconsciously adopted to help us navigate through this world.

My story has a lot of its roots in evangelical Christianity, with a lot of input from the charismatic movement that has swept across the West. I owe a lot to the people behind it all who challenged a lot of cessationalist thinking and largely opened the door to experiencing the Holy Spirit in personal ways. This meant that I have been grown up taking these things for granted. Healing is cool but no big deal, speaking in tongues doesn't send me running for the nearest door and the power of God is alive and well beyond metaphor and the pages of history.

From my observations, however, it seems that despite all of this great impact, some things get a little muddy and confusing when trying to put all this experience together with the God revealed in the Scriptures. One of these things that often confuses me is the way that people use the little word 'faith'.

From being part of the evangelical world for the last 25 years, it seems to me that most of the time it's used to describe a sort of Christian 'power up' token. You are able to obtain new abilities and wield God's sovereign power, as long as you have enough faith points stored up. You can build up more faith points by praying really hard for it, by working yourself up to do something really scary or by watching Benny Hinn every morning.

Now obviously I'm being a bit facetious, but the essence remains. It has led some of my church leaders to say things like 'I have faith for this' or 'God has given me a gift of faith for this situation' and ask their congregations 'Do you have faith for this, church?' But what are they really saying here? I never knew how to answer that last question. What is faith and how do I know if I have (enough of) it? I'm still fairly confused by this way of using the word. Is it some mystical positive mindset? Is it an excitement that I get when I think that God might just do something cool? I just don't know.

Now I know what you're thinking: 'Sam, it's simple. Read Hebrews 11. Faith is being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see.' But when you read that verse on its own like that it can be twisted and used along with all the talk we discussed just before. You can hope for whatever you want! If you give Hebrews 10 and 11 a good look you'll see that it is rooted in an epic story of people who trusted in the promises of God and acted on them. They were looking to the day when God is to make everything right. It wasn't wishful thinking dressed up in spiritual language, but an obedient action in light of what God had actually said to them.

There is a bit difference in trusting in God and trusting Him for the things you want.

Francis Schaeffer in his book 'He Is There and He Is Not Silent' talks about faith like this:

Suppose we are climbing in the Alps and are very high on the bare rock, and suddenly the fog shuts down. The guide turns to us and says that the ice is forming and that there is no hope; before morning we will all freeze to death here on the shoulder of the mountain. Simply to keep warm the guide keeps us moving in the dense fog further out on the shoulder until none of us have any idea where we are. After an hour or so, someone says to the guide 'Suppose I dropped and hit a ledge ten feet down in the fog. What would happen then?' The guide would say that you might make it to the morning and live. So, with absolutely no knowledge or any reason to support his action, one of the group hangs and drops into the fog. This would be one kind of faith, a leap of faith.

Suppose, however, after we have worked out on the shoulder in the midst of the fog and the growing ice on the rock, we had stopped and we heard a voice which said, 'You cannot see me, but I know exactly where you are from your voices. I am on another ridge. I have lived in these mountains, man and boy, for over sixty years and I know every foot of them. I assure you that ten feet below you there is a ledge. If you hang and drop, you can make it through the night and I will get you in the morning.'...The historic Christian faith is not a leap of faith because He is not silent...

Not a leap of faith based on positive thinking, but based on a relationship. Based on obedience. Let's be clear on our Christianese!