Faith: week 3 in Fight the Good Fight Sermon series
Seems like I keep coming back around to faith but since it is a central topic for Jesus-followers, I guess we’ll keep re-visiting it! I’ve already received some good questions and thoughts regarding the topic. Here they are:
So now I have been thinking abt faith. Many of the passages I have been reading during Lent talk abt how the season and the message is always the same – it is a constant backdrop for us who are called to change. It is only the “constancy” of Christs story that we can notice how much our lives change. Which led me back to poor old Peter when he said —-In this you should rejoice though now for a little while you may suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, which though perishable, is tested by fire. (1 Peter 1:7)
Does this mean we really have to experience trial by fire to have faith? I know it is in the toughest times that I feel the deepest faith – that in crisis I can feel Gods presence now quiet and calm and full of love but is that really necessary? Can we live, see and feel God absent the contrast of hardship? Or is just nitwits like me that need to be smacked a few times to really get it!?
As a topic, faith is filled with possibility and uncertainty. Where to go and what to say about this third topic? Faith is the underpinning of all we do in following Jesus. More than simply giving in to a set of thoughts, faith calls out a pattern of living. Still, how will we express this pattern? What does faith look like in everyday living? Is “true” faith borne only in the crucible of struggle and hardship as 1 Peter implies or is faith “true” no matter the context in which it is borne?
