How to Have Faith

"I wish I had a faith like yours," a man told me one Sunday. "It makes me feel guilty that I don't."
"Don't ever wish you were someone else, especially not me," I answered. "I believe in Jesus, for sure, and I'm grateful that He went to the cross and rose from the dead for people like me.

"But I'm just a forgiven sinner. And every day I still do, say, and think sinful things, things that don't show love for God or love for others. I have to go back to God every single day, asking Him for forgiveness and for help in living like a Christian."

The man said that he understood all that. What he wanted was a stronger faith. He wanted to be more sure about Jesus.

With a clearer grasp of what the man was getting at, I then shared with him one of the most important truths I've learned on how to appropriate faith in Christ, as well as on how to enjoy a deepening relationship with Christ.

"Here's what I've found," I told him. "You have to live into faith. No amount of praying, reading, or thinking will get you there, as important as those things are. Faith in Christ is a gift from God. All you have to do is grab hold of it. And you can grab hold of it when you live your way into it."

As many who have read this blog or heard me preach know, I was an atheist when my wife and I first married. Marrying an atheist wasn't the smartest thing Ann could have done. She was a Lutheran Christian and it would be hard for her to build a strong marriage with a husband moving in a different direction from the one in which she moved.

But early in our marriage, mostly to get Ann off my back for sleeping in late on Sundays, I started going to worship with her at the Lutheran congregation of which she was a member.

I liked what I saw and experienced there. The members were real, down to earth people who dealt with real issues in their lives and also had real faults. What I learned from them, as I've told others, is that the church--any church--is a hospital for hypocrites, a place for sinners to come and be nudged toward a new way of life by the God we meet there.

I found that whatever tough times or personal flaws of character the members of Ann's home church dealt with in their lives, they kept coming back to Jesus. They kept seeking healing and the power for living morally better lives in the hospital for hypocrites, the church.

In worship, they confessed their sins, heard God's Word of forgiveness and new life through Christ, and tried to follow Jesus in their everyday lives.

In spite of myself, I found that I wanted to be like these people. I wanted to have faith in Jesus. But I really didn't know how to get it. (I was also too embarrassed to tell even my wife that this was what I wanted. I guess I didn't want to appear either weak or ignorant.)

Then, without knowing that this desire to have the faith was percolating in me, the pastor of Ann's church stopped by our apartment one evening. "Would the two of you take over as leaders of the junior high youth group?" he asked.

I had never admitted to the pastor that I was an atheist. But I was still on the roll of a Methodist church in which I'd been confirmed. So, I tried to use that as a an excuse to say, "You know," I told him, "I'm not even a Lutheran." He wasn't buying it. "We won't hold that against you," he said with a smile. Left out of defenses against taking on this task, I retreated, certain that Ann would put a stop to the whole thing. "Ann just told him, "We'll do it." "Well, if Ann wants to do it," I told him, "I guess I could try to help her."

This was a turning point in my road to faith. My wife and I were suddenly supposed to provide some spiritual leadership to young people. That entailed getting to know the kids and providing them with an environment in which it was safe for them to talk with God and interact with others in their own unique Christian way.

I started doing things that were needed for me to play my role with some sort of authenticity and effectiveness. I...

• showed up for the evening youth group gatherings
• hung out with the kids
• listened to what was happening in their lives
• helped plan activities
• listened to their Bible devotions
• tried to pray, though at first seemed a little weird to me.

Later, I began to more seriously do things that would help me understand what I was doing alongside my wife when we hung out with the youth. Among other things, I...

• attended worship regularly
• began to read the Bible (I couldn't believe I was doing this. But I was...and enjoying it!)
• started attending adult Sunday School class and adult Bible studies

Notice the progression: I moved from activity to appropriation of the faith; from living the Christian faith to actually believing it.

If you want Christ in your life or if you want to enjoy a deepening faith relationship with Christ, I recommend following this pattern. If you're not a Christian, find a church and, without expecting to be a leader (in fact, always expect and aspire to be a servant), volunteer to be involved in some ministry the congregation does. It might be...

• helping collect food for area needy
• corresponding with a child sponsored by the congregation through organizations like World Vision or Compassion International
• driving an elderly person or a family with young children to church or to doctor appointments
• joining in whenever the congregation does a community kindness outreach
• if you're a musician, offering to play your instrument (it could be brass or woodwind, strings or piano, guitar or bass, harmonica or bongo drums, whatever) for worship or for other gatherings 
• volunteering to go on a church mission trip, whether it's in town or to impoverished Third World locations
• helping the homeless

It could be a million other things like these.

But whatever it is, if you want faith or you want a deeper faith, find a worthy Christian ministry and get involved.

Live into your faith and the living Jesus will live in you in ways that bring you confidence, hope, and...a deeper faith.
As long as you haven't landed at a church filled with institutional gatekeepers or where your particular talents are wildly out of sync, I believe something incredible will happen to you. As you live as a believer in Jesus, God will turn you into a believer in Jesus.

If you're a member of a congregation, this will entail getting off your tail. It will mean getting in the game. Suddenly, I think you'll find, that a faith you once found boring or meaningless will come alive. Jesus will come alive to you.

I have seen this work in countless people. But how? The answer, I think, is that Christian faith is not about us. It's what God has done for us in Jesus. And it's about sharing forgiveness, hope, and new life that comes from God with others. Living into Christian faith--serving others in Christ's Name before we fully understand what that means--gets our minds off of ourselves, cultivating the belief that, no matter what, God is with us.

Freed from the slavery to ourselves, God's Spirit empowers us to trust in Christ and to get on with the business of living.

When that happens, the Spirit has an open will on which to imprint new ways of living and thinking.

Live into Christian faith and it will grow inside of you.

Servanthood Deserves Applause

Read about this "outstanding woman you should know" from Hilliard, Ohio, near Columbus. Small things done in the Name of Jesus Christ have an impact, though they rarely get noticed. I'm glad the many things Colleen Barta does for others in Christ's Name are being noticed. I've been privileged to know thousands of people like her through the years. They are the great ones among us!

Local Mission "Trip": Day 5

We crossed the finish line strong on the fifth and final day of the Saint Matthew Lutheran Church local mission "trip."

We divided into two groups.

One prepared the church's fellowship hall for tomorrow's Italian Dinner, the proceeds from which will help to support the servanthood and youth ministries--like the mission trip--of the congregation.

Another group put stain onto the two decks of Betty's house. The latter job, which, at first we thought would take about a half-hour, ended up being a two-and-a-half hour task, but looked great when completed. The sun not only seemed to dry the stain in a hurry, but did a fairly good job of baking us, too!

Our morning devotional period was built around 1 Timothy 6:11-12. 1 Timothy is one of two letters written by the apostle Paul to a young pastor. Paul gives all sorts of good advice to Timothy in these letters. Earlier in this particular letter, Paul talks about some the wrong paths that churches and Christians can go down--spiritual conceit, envy, argumentativeness, slander, suspiciousness, and believing that having more money means that one is better than others. Then, Paul writes:

But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. ¹²Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 

"Fight the good fight" were words that one of my mentors and spiritual heroes, Pastor Bruce Schein, lived by. He wrote them on his messages to my fellow students and me when we were studying to become pastors at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus.

But these were more than mere words to Pastor Schein. They reflected his own commitment to living completely for Jesus, as well as being an exhortation to all who bear Jesus' Name through their Baptism to do the same.

Pastor Schein had a doctorate in New Testament from Yale University. But faith was more than head-knowledge for him. As a young man, he learned that he was suffering from Parkinson's Disease. He decided not to marry, but to use his considerable gifts as both a scholar and a pastor in total service to God and others. For twelve years, he served as pastor of a Lutheran congregation in Jerusalem, where most of his parishioners were Palestinians. It was a challenging ministry that, each day, called him to renew his commitment to service in Jesus' Name. At the same time, he would hike all over the Near Eastern countryside, introducing students from Saint Olaf College and other institutions to the geography, history, culture, and archeology of the Old and New Testaments. Later, he was called stateside to serve as professor at Trinity.

He was a challenging professor, expecting us to come to class each day prepared, ready to answer questions and to be pulled and stretched in our faith. Once, aware that others were critical of his interrogative style of teaching, I told him that I appreciated it, feeling as though all my faith muscles were being challenged by the process over which he presided. "Mr. Daniels," he told me, "we're out to make spiritual Charles Atlases of all of you!"

Shortly after I graduated from seminary and had taken my first call as a pastor, Pastor Schein became seriously ill, nearly dying. I spoke with him later. "I was in the throne room, Mr. Daniels," he said. "I put in a good word for you." He was still fighting the good fight of faith in Jesus until the end. He died several months later, at the age of 42, offering more service in Jesus' Name than most of us are likely to offer in lifetimes twice as long.

The idea behind Christian service such as we've rendered during this week's mission trip, isn't to call attention to ourselves, but to glorify the One Who gives everlasting life to all who believe in Him, Who empowers us to live in love for God and neighbor, and Who gives us the great privilege of being His ambassadors in the world.

To all our young people and adults who served this week, I pray that we all will keep fighting the good fight...keep serving and loving in Jesus' Name! Our Savior is worthy of all our honor, effort, sweat, and sacrifice and can use it to bring His love, goodness, and everlasting kingdom to the people we serve each day.
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Throughout the week, I've been thanking our dedicated young people and our adult supervisors, and I thank them again. But today, I also want to thank those who allowed us to serve.

We human beings can sometimes be too proud to ask for help, interpreting such requests as a sign of weakness or personal inadequacy. Often, such reticence exemplifies our sinful natures trumping God's intentions for us as human beings. God made us, after all, to live in relationships of mutual dependence and accountability. The Ten Commandments demonstrate that God's will for humanity is that we live in relationships of love that include love of God and love of neighbor. Jesus later summarized these two tables of the Ten Commandments into what's known as the Great Commandment: to love God and to love others.

It's our failure to love that we typically confess each Sunday when we worship together, and it's for the power of the Holy Spirit to live in such love that we pray. But loving others isn't only impeded by our tendency to turn in on ourselves. In Galatians 6, Christians are told, "Bear one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ."

The only way that can happen is when we are willing to make ourselves vulnerable enough to admit, "I could use some help." When the community of love is activated in this way and Jesus' servants act, not for themselves, but to the glory of Jesus, then something blessed and special happens. So, thank you to all those who allowed our young people to serve them this week!