Keep Faith Alive!

(I have been missing in action for a couple of days.  Sandy blew through and disrupted life. We are  grateful for a generator  which has allowed us to stay warm and keep our well pump operational. We still have no power, no phone, no internet, no cable at home and it may be another week or so before we do. It’s been our privilege to help our neighbors, to have people in our house warming up, charging up, and cleaning up! Hopefully, over the next few days I can return to the normalcy of life and ministry.)

Keep the faith!

The fire in our fireplace in the living room is a beautiful thing. The flames give light and warmth, delighting our eyes with their dance. Keeping the fire going demands attention; adding wood, poking at the embers. As long as I tend it, I can enjoy the benefits it provides.  Faith is much the same.  When first lit by the touch of the Spirit, faith burns brightly, warming us with hope.  Remember those first weeks or months after you received the gift of faith through Christ Jesus?  With the weight of sin and guilt lifted, with the promise of knowing God became personal, when the hope of eternal life was yours to own; life blazed in vibrant faith. 

Does it still? Have you tended the flame?

It is a great sorrow to this pastor to find that many fail to tend that faith only to find the fire dying until the embers cool to dark, cold charcoal!  Jesus warned of this possibility. He said that tough times will come. Temptation will increase. Persecution will make life tough. Evil will take over all around us. Lying preachers will promise blue skies and full bank accounts.  The sad result for some Christians will be that " the overwhelming spread of evil will do them in—nothing left of their love but a mound of ashes. " (Matthew 24:12, The Message)  Mid-life can bring a time of increased influence and our most years that produce a lasting contribution to the work of the Lord, or it can bring the despair of failed faith, resignation to fate, and bitterness.

When I first met my wife, Bev, 38 years ago I was certain that she was the perfect woman. I just knew that when we wed our marriage would prove to the world that love was really that ‘many splendored thing.’  (I wonder if she thought the same of me?)  That infatuation gave way to commitment. We began to build a life together, around the Lordship of Christ. We raised children, shared in ministry, grew through times of grief and rejoiced in times of increase.  Our love, tended and nurtured, has given us a partnership that increases our individual strength by many times over what it would be if we were apart.  Most come to Jesus Christ with childish expectations. They mistakenly believe that their faith will produce a smooth road, an easy life of comfort.  When Jesus does not magically take away every problem, heal every sickness, or eliminate temptations; they have a real choice:  grow deep or grow cold.  If you’re reading this and thinking that people who experience such things must be less spiritual or somehow deserving of their own disappointment, think again.  Jesus says that we all will experience “the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things,” and for some, it will “choke the word, making it unfruitful." (Mark 4:19, NIV) But for those who build their faith, "who hear the Word, embrace it”  there will be “a harvest beyond their wildest dreams.” (Mark 4:20, The Message)

We must tend our faith. How?

We feed it with consistent intake of the Holy Scripture. 

We strengthen it with regular times of personal and corporate worship. 

We build it by dealing with sin with quick repentance and confession that keeps our hearts warm to the Spirit’s Presence.

Just like love, faith matures!

Here’s a word from the Word. May it strengthen you in the faith!

"So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For in just a very little while, “He who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him.” But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved." (Hebrews 10:35-39, NIV)