Faith is the thing

On New Year’s Eve my husband prayed: “Father, my prayer in 2014 was that another of our children would be saved. Since this did not happen, I am excited that you have an even better plan!”

This is the kind of prayer I would only share “in-house.” To tell it to unbelievers would hand them ammunition and give scoffers cause to scoff, saying we Christians are so stupid that even evidence doesn’t burst our fantasy.

But the kind of faith God prizes always looks foolish. It searches for explanations consistent with God’s faithfulness. In God’s faith-building boot camp there are levels. Level one is praying in faith—and receiving. A notch up is praying in faith, waiting a long time without wavering in doubt—and receiving. The Heisman trophy goes for praying in faith, waiting a very long time without doubting—and not receiving. And still believing.

Scripture’s Heisman is Hebrews 11. It may not be an exhaustive list, but it is an exclusive one. The people on it believed with all their hearts and died without receiving. “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised” (verse 13). “And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised” (verse 39). Surely the guys who were “stoned … sawn in two … killed with the sword … destitute, afflicted, mistreated” were praying in faith not to be stoned, sawn in two, killed with the sword, destitute, afflicted, and mistreated. When they ended up stoned, sawn in two, killed with the sword, destitute, afflicted, and mistreated anyway, they kept believing that God was faithful.

God is not a theory, He’s the Lord. He demands belief in Him above your very senses.

In the worldly sciences this kind of credulity would be called nonsense and unscientific. The not receiving part would be an obvious disproof of the hypothesis—and that would be correct as far as the scientific method goes for experiments in a closed system. If my theory is that rocks float, and I proceed to drop a rock in my filled bathtub, repeating the procedure 100 times, and if the bit of quartzite sinks, I must change my theory. In science there must be falsifiability for the experiment to be meaningful.

But God is not a theory, He’s the Lord. He demands belief in Him above your very senses. This is why, when Abraham finally attained the promised son Isaac after years of nothing happening, and his skin turning to fish scales—and then God told him to go and kill his son, well, his only reasonable conclusion was that God was planning to raise the boy from the dead (verses 17-19). Wouldn’t that be your only reasonable conclusion? (Wouldn’t it?)

Where human faith slips the orbit of the ordinary and launches into galactic realms is when we make a request (in faith, that is always the condition) and then do not see our request granted. Any mother’s fool could ask-receive-believe if God were a candy dispenser that automatically dispensed your Twix bar upon insertion of four coins. Where would be the faith in that? Where would be the stretching? Faith is always in the stretching.

In fact, psychologically speaking (if I may put it this way), faith is always only exercised in the not having. Once a person receives, the faith, in a sense, ends, at least in that particular exercise. Indeed, in one sense a faith-filled person is recognized not by all the things he has received in prayer but by the things he is believing for in the absence of receiving.

What God finds precious and desirable is your believing without seeing. Whatever it is that you are looking to get from God, God is looking to get from you a growing faith. And He does that by creative and judicious deprivation: “For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?” (Romans 8:24).

You think a better job is the thing. Or a spouse is the thing. Or a new car is the thing. Or the salvation of one kid in 2014 is the thing. But for God, faith is the thing. Faith is not only the means; it is already the victory (1 John 5:4). The stuff that comes from faith is wonderful, but the faith itself is the top prize. In heaven it will be rewarded.

Email aseupeterson@wng.org