Living by Faith

LIVING BY FAITH

About twelve months ago I began to get cold feet. I had been offered the Parish of North Mymms. I had announced my resignation to my Committee of Management and confirmed it in writing to the Archbishop of Perth and now I was getting cold feet.

At night I lay awake. Awake with excitement about the future. Awake with doubt, and uncertainty about the future. Had I made the right decision, both for myself and for those I was leaving and those to whom I was about to minister?

Was it right to return to parochial work having been out of it for so long? Was it right to return to the UK having lived in Western Australia for the past 12 years? And on the more personal side, could I adjust to the reduced standard of living?

My sleepless nights were not helped by my personal friends, both “downunder” and “upover” who suggested I was “bananas” and suffering from so-called midlife crisis.

Yet deep down I knew I had to leave the safe and familiar pastures of ministry to seafarers in Western Australia and go forth into the unknown parochial ministry of North Mymms in the UK. Inwardly I knew that I would find no peace until I had said "Yes", in spite of the doubts and uncertainties. I had to say "Yes" and go forth in faith.

I felt like Abraham, in the Old Testament. He was quite contented and happy, living with Sarah his wife, looking after his sheep. Then God upset his cosy existence by telling him that although both he and Sarah were well advanced in years they would have a son and that Abraham would become the father of a great nation. No matter how ridiculous it might have appeared to them and their friends, Abraham and Sarah did have a son. God kept his promise.

But that was not to be the end. He felt compelled to leave the safe and familiar area around Ur in South Mesopotamia, and to travel north through the fertile area between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates to Haran. From there he felt compelled to go forward through Syria into Palestine. And then he had to say "Yes" and travel on south into Egypt and finally return to Palestine, settling down at Hebron. As the writer of the letter to the Hebrews says: “He went out not knowing where he was going". He too, like me, felt he could say no other to that inner voice but. "Yes" and go forward into the future in faith.

To live by faith is easier said than done. No wonder the cynic says: "Faith is believing in what you know to be untrue". But, as far as I was concerned, and as far as Abraham was concerned, faith is not just wishful thinking. To live by faith is probably best summed up, again by the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, when he says, "To have faith is to be sure of things hoped for; to be certain of things we cannot see”.

Faith is not something vague and woolly. It is about certainty. It is about being sure. This may sound a contradiction in terms since we do not know what lies in the future.

Let me try and spell this out.

We tend to think of faith as something one has or does not have like an artistic or musical flair. "If only I had enough faith" we often say and view faith in terms of a commodity.

This is where we make the mistake. Faith is not a commodity. It is essentially a relationship in the same way as “love” is not a commodity, but a relationship. And, like love, it grows and develops over the years.

Like that first step in love, faith is always difficult. Once we find that love is returned we find it easier to make that next demonstration of love. And so it is with faith. Once we have taken that first step in faith and find we are not let down and that God can indeed be trusted, we find it much easier to make that next step.

You see, God does not expect us to walk, let alone run, in faith before we have learned to crawl in faith. It is from little acorns that big oak trees grow and it is from little acts of faith that big acts of faith are possible. So we go forward on the experience of the past in the confident expectation that the God who has not let us down in the past will not let us down in the future. The love we have known and experienced in the past will not let us down in the future. This then is the certainty and surety that the writer of the Hebrews refers to.

This is why the writers of the Old Testament never tire of recounting the many and varied ways God has acted in the history of the Jews. It is the past experience that feeds the present and enables one to go forward with the unknown in future.

As a practical exercise, over these coming days, it may prove very beneficial in strengthening your faith to write a litany of the grain of God’s action in your life to use it as a basis for regular prayer.

Stuart Blanch, the former Archbishop of York suggests that faith is a conviction based upon historical experience and reinforced by personal experience. In other words, to the historical experience of how God has not let people down in the past - people like Abraham and the saints of God - we add our own personal experience which seeks to give us confidence in the future to walk in faith.

If that is so, why should we be afraid of the future and reluctant to walk in faith?

There is a paradox here. On the one hand, we are able to draw strength and confidence from the past to enable us to go forward in the future; on the other hand, the leap of faith we are expected to make always exceeds that for which we feel comfortable. We know we can swim one hundred yards from past experience and so that enables us to take the plunge to swim. But this time, it is not a hundred yards we are expected to cover but two hundred yards. Next time it is three hundred yards and the next time four hundred yards. In other words our faith is continually being challenged to grow and deepen as we walk in faith. It is this reluctance to venture forth beyond that with which we feel confident, which makes us nervous, but which at the same time is the real test of faith.

Perhaps the supreme test of faith for Abraham came, after all his migrations, when he was asked by God to sacrifice his own son Isaac.

But my friends, we need never fear the unknown, not only because of our experience of saying "Yes" to God in the past, but because He will never allow us to be "tested” beyond our capacity. This is what St Paul came to realise when he wrote to the Christians in Corinth and said, "God keeps his promises, and will never allow you to be tested beyond your power to remain firm: at the same time you are put to the test, he will give you the strength to endure it, and so provide you with a way out. (1 Corinthians v 10-34).

My friends, don’t get cold feet when an act of faith is demanded of you. Faith is not a commodity you either have or don’t have. It is a relationship of trust that develops and grows between God and you and he will not push you beyond what he sees as your capacity to respond, though from our human perspective we may think otherwise.