Home Children   Young Adults Missions New Faces Photos/Video About Us   Students Teaching Blog PDO

 

Faith is...
May 20, 2007

            Hebrews 11 begins:  Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.  (All Scripture is from the New International Version except where noted).  I first memorized that from the KJV, which puts it: Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.  After a few quick examples of faith, v. 6 tells us how important it is to have it:  And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Most of you know that my Dad died last Saturday afternoon after a short battle with cancer, just a few weeks past his 66th birthday.  I just can't tell you how important Dad was in shaping my life and faith in hundreds of positive ways.  His illness and death have naturally got me thinking about faith - what is it, what does it look like in the face of such a situation, and how does a person of faith respond to dying?  Today I want to share with you some teachings from God's Word on that subject, things that have been brought into focus through my experience over the past month and especially the past week.

            Let's read a bit in Hebrews 11 ..  These people of old, these heroes of faith can be a little intimidating...
      
1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for.

3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. 4 By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead.

5 By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. 6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

7 By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. 9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

11 By faith Abraham, even though he was past age—and Sarah herself was barren—was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise. 12 And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

             Do you see why I say this is intimidating?  These are some of the greatest heroes of the Bible doing some very heroic things and having a closeness with God that goes way beyond anything most of us would claim.  There's Enoch, who God liked so much that God took him home without Enoch having to pass through the pain of death.  There's Noah and also Abraham, chosen for singular missions and hearing God's word in such a direct fashion that they had no doubt about God's will for their lives. 

            I DO want to point out that in each case so far (except for Enoch), faith brought to these guys something other than a peaceful, happy life, which is just about the highest ideal we can imagine for ourselves.  Abel, for example, died young, murdered by his brother.  It's kind of discouraging to note that as soon as you see two men worshiping God you have a church split and religious persecution.  Noah, because of his faith, found grace in the eyes of the Lord, but it was a costly grace in that it required him to go out and spend 120 years building an ark miles from the sea, which made him more of an outcast and a fool in the eyes of his neighbors than he had been before.  Most of us would have trouble putting up with that for a few weeks but Noah did it for 120 years!  Abraham probably had the best of it.  He was rich and prosperous and powerful, and yet his life was defined by this one very difficult act of faith mentioned here that basically describes faith for all of us:  He set out at God's command on a journey and he had no idea where he would end up.  Isn't that what you're doing too?

            In my newsletter article last month, I tried to say that faith isn't so much about believing that God is going to do some special thing for me (unless he makes an explicit promise that he will) but rather faith is just believing God, about whom someone said that "God is too wise to be confused, too good to be unkind, and if I cannot always trace his hand, I can always trust his heart."  V. 11 backs that up, saying that God promised that Sarah would bear a child, and even though that seemed impossible, Abraham believed it because he considered him faithful who made the promise. 

            Still, this list of faith heroes is pretty intimidating to me, even out-of-reach...until you get down to v. 13 where it says:  All these people were still living by faith when they died. It's easy to forget this very simple fact, and it has been so important for me to remember it as I have lost my Dad.  These heroes are larger than life in Scripture, and yet they died, and faith didn't deliver them from that destiny, and it didn't make their lives always rosy either.  The verse continues:  They did not receive the things promised (speaking of the coming of Christ which we have received and also the fullness of his kingdom which we also have to look forward to); they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.  They were living by faith when they died, and death wasn't an obstacle to faith nor was the prospect of death a reason to doubt.  This becomes even clearer as the chapter concludes: 

32 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. 35 Women received back their dead, raised to life again.  All that sounds wonderful, but:  Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. 36 Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. 37 They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. 39 These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. 40 God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

            Faith, you see, didn't deliver these people from trouble and return them safely to their families and comforts.  Rather, faith was the rock they could stand upon when everything else fell apart.  It was trust in the faithfulness of God no matter what awful thing happened here.  It was the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
            Now I don't presume to put my Dad in the same company as these folks in Hebrews 11.  But since he is the one God put in my life, rather than Enoch or Abel, let me tell you a bit about what I learned about faith from him, particularly in these last six weeks.
            Dad received his diagnosis on March 30, Mom's birthday.  I believe that he probably did a little research on his own that night and found that his prospects for long-term survival were grim - 8-10 months at the most, with only a 5% chance of a cure.  Dad's uncle died of the same kind of cancer back in the late 70s and there has been essentially no progress against the disease since then.
            Now what should a person of faith DO in the face of such a prognosis?  People have all sorts of answers to that.  On one extreme are those who would say that you should just surrender to the disease, accepting your fate as the will of God.  At the other extreme, some would say that you should claim healing and wholeness in the face of the illness and believe till your dying breath that a miracle is on the way.  Oddly, someone at either extreme might advise against taking medical treatment, either in the name of acceptance or of expected healing.  And in between are a variety of variations on these two themes.
            Here are some of the things my Dad did:
            First:  Most of us didn't know it at the time, but on March 31, Dad drafted the legal documents necessary to close his engineering consulting business.  He also called his primary client and told him that he was done.  When the client told him that he would always have work for Dad if he should ever reconsider, Dad told him that he appreciated the gesture, but that he wouldn't be back.  Was he giving up?  Well...
            Second:  Dad entered a rigorous treatment program that would have included several weeks of daily radiation and months of chemo.  I think he did this not so much in hopes of being cured but at least of pushing back the cancer for a time and gaining some quality of life.  So does that mean he put his hopes in medicine? 
            Third:  Dad and Mom sought healing from God.  They prayed.  They enlisted prayer support from others.  They called upon the elders of the church to come and pray for Dad and anoint him with oil (which they did).  Dad prayed the Gethsemane prayer that Jesus prayed in the Garden (Luke 22:42) - "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done."  He and Mom also made a regular practice of speaking against the cancer itself, saying:  "This is a child of God, and you have no right to him".   Does that mean that he staked his faith on being healed?
            Fourth:  To anyone that said that his condition was unfair, Dad would respond that he just didn't see how you could call it unfair.  He had a great life, a wonderful marriage, a family that he was proud of.  He was only 66, but he knew that he had been blessed beyond most.  He didn't want to die.  He had plans and dreams for the future.  And yet he was ready to die, and he even told my oldest brother that he was looking forward to the blessings of the new life on the other side.
            Now, is that faith?  It bothers me a little to know that there are Christians, some of whom I know personally, who would say that Dad died because of a lack of faith, that he wasn't healed because he didn't believe enough, or maybe those around him (myself, perhaps) didn't believe enough.  After all, in Matthew 21:22, Jesus tells his apostles:  "If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer."  The folks who he said that to, namely the apostles who would succeed him, DID that.  I never have been able to confidently claim that as my own promise - the "WHATEVER you ask for", I mean - even though I believe God answers all sorts of prayers.
            Others will probably want to challenge me on how I understand answers to prayer.  Some will tell me that God DID answer our prayers, that he gave my Dad the ultimate healing by taking him home and into his presence.  To this I would say YES, I believe this, and of course it is a comfort to know that Dad is with Christ - but that isn't what we were praying for, it's the opposite of what we were praying for, and let's not sacrifice our good judgment by defining every outcome as an answer to prayer after the fact.  Someone else will probably want to remind me that "no" is an answer to prayer too, and that he just said 'no' in this case.  Well I accept that in faith, but the experience isn't hearing a "no" from God, but instead it's the experience of hearing silence.
            As for me, I have to come back to the definition of faith we began with in 11:1 -Faith is...the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.  What we hope for is life together.  What we long to see is a loving God in control of it all.  I believe in both, and Dad did too, and faith is the substance and the evidence of these things we hope for and do not yet see in front of us.
            On Friday morning (9 days ago), Dad's doctor leveled with him, and said it was time to put Dad under hospice care.  Dad spent that day hugging all his visitors, telling them how much he loved them.  When my older brother broke down and said that he wished he could do something, Dad told him that God already had done something, because God makes all things well.  By the time I arrived at Dad's hospital room about 3a Saturday, Dad wasn't saying much, except "I love you".  But as my youngest brother said, Dad made his last day all about everyone else, so that even his death was for others - which is pretty Christlike, I think.
            On April 23, Dad sent the following email to his minister, Dean Hammond:
            As you well know, I don’t know the outcome of this disease.  In the event, however, that you officiate a memorial service for me, I would like the following to be read:  

        Mourn for me for a season for that is only natural.  But, please, make it a short season.  For I immensely enjoyed my life, I loved my family, friends, acquaintances and experiences.  Also I’m now experiencing wonders you can’t even imagine.  I'd like to leave you with sometime I read somewhere; seek to love God with all that you are.  Having done that, learn to love yourself.  After that, love others as you love yourself.

            For a long time, my favorite Scripture on faith was the one from Mark 9 where the father said to Jesus:  "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!" But based on that email, I have to admit that my Dad operated by a better one,  Philippians 1:21 - For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

Comments?