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Faith. As Christians, we talk a whole lot about it. Sometimes I wonder if we know what it is or if we even actually care about it anymore. Troy and I go to a college worship service every Wednesday night at Westmeade Baptist. It’s a good chance for us to just chill and be refilled. This week the topic of the sermon was on faith. Now, I’m pretty positive we have all heard sermons on faith before but something about this one had me thinking about my life and what I’ve seen God do. It really had me thinking about faith and whether or not I had much faith resting in God. See, Jesus said that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed, we can move mountains. The sad thing is most of us don’t have even that little amount of faith. Brandon, the youth minister at Westmeade, used an example from the Bible that many of us have heard before. I’m going to use it in this blog as well but I’m going to ask that you really look at for its reality. I want you to see it as the truth that it is, not as a cool story you’ve heard over and over. Really think about it.

See when David fought Goliath what we see is a teenager fighting a giant that has the entire fighting force of Israel scared to death. David heard Goliath challenging any one of Israel’s soldiers to a fight and taunting God. It infuriated David and he took Goliath’s challenge. David didn’t have faith in himself, he had faith in God. He had faith that the same God that protected him when he was taking care of his father’s sheep would protect him now. So David went out and got several rocks for his sling. Why would he get more than one? David had faith in God, right? He got more than one stone because he knew Goliath had brothers. He didn’t expect to miss. He expected to take on a giant and his family…And win. In Brandon’s words, David was going to “mow that fella down” and then if Goliath’s brothers wanted some, they could have some too. So David faced the giant. He slung one stone and dropped Goliath right there. Then he cut Goliath’s head off in front of the Phillistine army as if to say “anyone else want to take on my God?” 

How did David have that kind of faith? When he was tending his father’s sheep he spent time with God. He was close to God. He would, in fact, come to be known as a man after God’s own heart. He had experienced God’s provision and guidance before and he didn’t let himself forget it. David was human, just like us and that means the closeness David had with God can be experienced by us as well, it is just a matter of seeking Him. See, many times we wait until we are standing in front of the giant to seek God and to muster up faith in Him instead of chasing after God while we are still just “tending sheep.” David grew close to God while life still felt mundane and easy. He experienced God’s direction, power and provision when wild animals would attack in the fields. He let God use those experiences to shape him. He sought after God in everything and when he finally stood before Goliath, he was ready and he had faith that God would deliver him. 

If we want that faith, we have to seek God. There is no way around it. That’s it. That’s the key. Seek and know God. Because when you know God, when you have seen how great He truly is, that giant you’re facing doesn’t seem quite so giant anymore.

It has been a while since I posted last. The summer has been absolutely insane. I know it sounds like a lame excuse, but I haven’t really had time to slow down to post anything. I struggled for a little while trying to figure out what exactly to write about. God has shown and taught me more this summer than I even thought was possible. I guess it was my disbelief that so much could be learned in one summer that prompted God to teach me that much. That’s just sort of how He does things. He has changed the way I see things, the way I view life altogether. It’s definitely not a bad thing, just unsettling. In this summer He brought me to a greater understanding of grace, a greater understanding of love, a greater understanding of forgiveness, a greater understanding of His majesty, a greater understanding of all that He is. What’s more He brought me to a greater understanding of all that I’m not. He’s shown me my own selfishness and pride and He has convicted me about them. It all ties together so strongly that it is hard to separate the lessons. It’s a difficult thing to try to explain. However, if I could share with you one thing that God has taught me it would be this: Evangelism, leading people to Christ, should not something we do extra for brownie points with God. It should be what we do. As much as we may not want to admit it most of us view sharing the gospel as something that is extra, that ultimately the point of Christianity is to vote republican and go to church when the doors are open. Unfortunately for us, Christ’s last command to us was not about what we do on Sunday morning. Christ’s last command to us was to go. He said to go and make disciples of ALL nations. He said to share the gospel with all people no matter what they looked like or where they were from. We’ve made it our goal to simply go to Heaven. Christ has commanded us to try to bring as many people with us as we can. If we claim to be sold out to Christ, to love Him wholeheartedly then why don’t we talk about Him? If we claim to love people more than ourselves then how are we okay with just letting them live an empty life without Christ and go to Hell? The gospel should clearly permeate everything we say and do. Living for Christ includes sharing Him with a broken world that needs Him. So, I leave you with this question: If we claim to live for Christ, but we don’t ever share the gospel, are we really living for Christ or are we living a religious life to gain the praise of men?

This post is one simple question. I ask you simply to spend time thinking about this question. I ask you to pray that God would reveal to you the way you should respond to it, not necessarily on this blog, but in your life. I submit to you that you can not leave a legitimate answer on this blog anyway. The Question: How will the world change, how will people know Christ, unless we do something about it? 

As most people who would read this know, I’ve spent the last few days in Pippa Passes, Kentucky on a mission trip. It will be a struggle to adequately explain to you what has occured in my life as a result of this experience. Simply put, I am broken-hearted. We encountered children who went days without eating or bathing. We encountered children who were hopeless because all they’d ever experienced was abuse and neglect. We encountered children who had to take on the responsibilities of an adult. We encountered anger. We encountered hopelessness. We encountered darkness. The worst thing we were forced to encounter, however, was ourselves. We saw our disgusting selfishness. While children were going hungry we were complaining because we thought our food didn’t taste very good. While children weren’t bathing we were upset because we felt that our showers weren’t clean enough at the dorm. While children went to bed thinking they have no chance at a better life, we went to bed counting how many more nights we had until we could stay at a hotel that we felt would be up to our standards. This selfishness rings true not just in our actions on this trip but in our daily lives as well.

The sad fact is that we have excess while innocent children have nothing. We like to use personal repsonsiblity as an excuse to not give. We say things like “Well, people should get jobs and take care of themselves.” Unfortunately a whole lot of people can’t take care of themselves, and every night our stomachs our full, it is our fault that their’s are empty. The only reason those poor exist is because the rich exist. How can we hold non-believers to any Christian standard anyway? We forget so quickly that the only difference between us and a non-believer who steals and mooches is Christ in our life. Assuming the person who has nothing is a Christian we can’t let them rot based on the fact that we can hold them to the Christian standard. I mean, let’s face it, we don’t even take care of other Christians who have nothing. How can we reach a lost world if we let everyone starve to death. Don’t misunderstand me, I believe personal responsiblity is important, but I’m going to give you fish while you’re learning to catch them. So many times we get angry because we don’t want the government to socialize medical care and all that, but if we would take care of each other, if we would love like Christ, the government wouldn’t have to do that sort of thing. You might be saying to yourself it isn’t your problem that these kids didn’t eat. It’s their parents’ fault. The fact is, if you claim to be a Christ-follower, it is your problem. Just because their parents aren’t feeding them or can’t feed them doesn’t mean we have an excuse to let them starve. Christians should spend their lives broken for the state of the world, broken for what breaks the heart of God. Unfortunately it is so often the “Christians” that have the hardest hearts….Why? How can we really be that selfish? How can we sit down at our tables every night, stuff our faces, and go to bed without even acknowledging that there are people who have gone days without food, water, or a safe place to sleep?

I am not the same as I was. I can never be the same as I was. I always recognized that there was social injustice, that people were hungry and broken but now I have no choice but to do something about it. James 1:27 says that “Religion that our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after the widows and the orphans and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” At that time the orphans and the widows were the most defenseless, helpless people in society. They had no one to look after them. In Acts it talks about how the early Christians would give all they could to those who had need. It didn’t say they gave to those they thought deserved it. They just gave. The only reason people go to bed hungry, naked, cold, scared, unprotected, alone, and unloved….Is because we let them.

So I’ve been on a Charlie Hall kick lately and one of his songs that absolutely love is called Chain Breaker. Before I go on with the post I want you to hear the song.

I remember the first time I heard the song. I was shaken by the power of it’s words. “We are free/We are free/Yeah the Son has set us free/Drop your chains, sons and daughters/Come and run in liberty.” It was, and still is beautiful. It reminded me of what Christ is and what He did. It reminded me of how He asks nothing of us more than that we come as we are to Him and cast off the chains of sin and death that He broke for us.He is the ultimate liberator. He is the savior of hearts. He’s the changer of lives.

He is the Chain Breaker.