5.21.24
This week we are looking at what it means to have faith. And as we saw yesterday, faith is first of all rational. Faith is following the hard evidence that we sense of a deeper spiritual world beneath the cold, scientific world we see every day. Longings for love and how our hearts are drawn to beauty - the sense that some things are just wrong - all point to the evidence that we all know there is something more to this world. And it takes a rational pursuit to seek it.
Today we see that merely rational faith is not yet the full picture of biblical faith. Because far too many people simply stop there. They believe that God exists. They believe in the truths of Christianity. They understand the story of the cross and the life of Jesus. But in order for biblical faith to grow, it must become personal. All of the characters of faith listed in Hebrews 11 display lives that were racially interrupted by God. Most were happy and content in their lives, only to experience the personal invasion of God’s presence. And that invasion was one that pushed them out of their comfort, to hear the “call” of God to pursue something deeper.
You know when the personal call of God is coming to you when you move from a safe, comfortable, generic understanding of God…and things start to get ultimate. And questions begin to haunt you like, “Why am I doing this? Why am I investing in something like that? Why am I living this way?” You start to radically question everything - everything you’re living for. And you begin to feel the weight of the big either/or. Either there's no God and everything is meaningless…or there is a God and nothing is more important than my relationship with him. And it begins to hit you that “if Jesus utterly gave himself for me, how could I not utterly give myself to him?"
Every person who genuinely comes to faith in Jesus has to move from a mere rational faith into a personal encounter that comes as a “call” on your life. A call to change things - a call to a new way of living - a call to more passionately pursue Jesus. Are you hearing that call? And has your faith moved from simply being rational and true to being personal - for you?
