Friday, August 24, 2018
Words and rest
Matthew 11:28
Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Knowing what the genuine teaching of scripture and the basis of our faith in Jesus are, is particularly important. We must know what we believe and why we believe it because when the challenges of life come we should be able to rest in these things.
With all of the gun violence that erupted in the United States of America in recent times, a popular phrase has been, “our thoughts and prayers are with them at this time.” After a while, “thoughts and prayers” seemed to ring hollow in the ears of suffering relatives and in communities and among terrified citizens all over.
Those words are often spoken by politicians. However, Christians persist with words and phrases that ring hollow too, words that often have no basis in scripture or faith. Biblical truth is either unknown or seems too harsh in the face of life’s challenges, so we reach for the nice sounding words of fake faith in the hope of making people feel better.
Today, the nice words of fake faith are made even more popular by social media. Every morning millions of people are sending out beautiful pictures of flowers and animals and scenery with beautiful words on them. Sometimes it’s a scripture verse, other times a quote from someone famous, and yet other times some words that someone put together that sound really nice. Many of these words, not the scripture verses, are seemingly harmless but they soon get incorporated into faith. These fake faith doctrines are then purveyed in a variety of circumstances as truth.
For example, when people are going through difficult times Christians come up to them and say, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” This, of course, is intended to give the person the courage to persevere in the trial but it is not biblically based truth.
I have a friend who has spent all of his adult life as a missionary in various parts of the world. He has had to learn new cultures, new languages, and new techniques for ministry where ever he was sent. Much of this time he worked as a professor teaching in Bible colleges that he first built with his own hands. He is a builder and a professor rolled into a missionary. For all this time his beautiful wife has been with him living a life without luxury, totally dedicated to the Gospel.
My friend’s wife got cancer and suffered tremendously, yet they pressed on in God’s service. They were far away from their home and relatives in the United States, and, as someone commented to me recently, far away from possibly the best treatment she could have gotten. She died a few months ago.
My friend is in anguish. He wrote a blog this week about how he is coping with the loss. “I love cooking. I am a fairly good cook. I often had to cook for both of us when the effects of chemo were too much for [her] to do so. And so, every day I cook and then I smell something I have smelled for weeks or do something I have been doing for weeks and then one of those times I am frozen by the reality of what has been missing and the aloneness that it reveals.”
The last thing I want to do is to pick up the phone and tell my friend “chill bro, God won’t give you more than you can handle.” That is not true. Often, it is when we are faced with more than we can handle that we recognise our need for Jesus who is the burden bearer. If we could handle it, we don’t need Him.
As the apostle Paul opened his second letter to the church at Corinth he mused on the times when the pressure in ministry as a missionary was more than he could bear. “For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia: that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life.” 2 Corinthians 1:8. Believe it or not but the great missionary apostle despaired of life. He goes on in the next verse to demonstrate how this pointed to God, “Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead …” 2 Corinthians 1:9.
Fake faith, faith that is based on feel-good phrases, have a short shelf-life. Life’s challenges eventually break down fake faith. The death of a loved one for example. I sat with a relative just as her husband, my cousin died. They had loved each other for almost 40 years and were married for more than 30 of them. Writing about it now is almost as painful as living it then. We didn’t need empty words. As a matter of fact, we didn’t speak any for a long time as we sat there.
Or it’s like the foolish platitudes that people try to share with me on account of the divorce I have experienced. When someone with whom you have lived for almost 25 years no longer wants to stand by the vow of “for better or for worse” because in their mind things are for the worse, fake faith doesn’t help. Fake faith statements are particularly hollow after you have fasted and prayed and things didn’t change.
Death, divorce, disloyalty, discord and the like test our faith. Only a genuine faith in Jesus who gives us rest in Him can get us through life’s struggles with hope intact.
The sons of Korah captured this in Psalm 42:5, “Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him For the help of His countenance.” Read that whole Psalm today.
Think on these things:
- Do you remember what people said to you in a time of loss or difficulty?
- Did the things that people shared help your faith at the time?
- Does your church have a system for providing direct spiritual support for members who are struggling with challenges or grieving loss?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that we seek to comfort the heavy laden with the truth of Scripture.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex