Experiencing God: Crisis Of Faith

"Experiencing God:  Crisis of Faith"
1 Corinthians 10:13

Maybe some of you used to listen to Paul Harvey on the radio.  When I listened, I remember his show came on at noon, and I'd listen to his news and his spin on the news while I made my lunch.

Later on in his career he started a radio segment called, "The Rest of the Story."  He'd spin some true story about some seemingly obscure character, and some troubles they caused or ran into.  Then at the very end he'd say something like, "The young man in this story was Abraham Lincoln.  And now you know, the rest of the story."

I feel like that's what I need to do with this chapter from Experiencing God.  There was something I wasn't liking about it the whole chapter, and I finally put my finger on it when I was going over it again, re-reading it.  There's more to this chapter that Blackaby is not making clear, or that he maybe doesn't realize.  There is more to this story.

I came across a line in the chapter that epitomized what was kicking off my feelings.  Blackaby wrote:
When God lets you know what He wants to do through you, it will be something only He can do...If you lack faith, you will not do what He wants, and that is disobedience.  (page 211)

My sense of logic recoils at that statement.  If God asks us to do things that only he can do, then why is he asking us to do them?  Why doesn't God just go ahead and do them?  Why does God need us?

And then for Blackaby to make the statement that if I don't have enough faith I'm a loser and disobedient to God.  So my question here is, how much faith is enough?  How much faith do I need to exhibit so that I know when I've crossed the line over into enough faith?  Where's that line?

And if I don't have enough faith, I must have to try harder, or do something different, or do more, so it will get me over the line.  And you can probably understand where that would get me--it doesn't become faith any more.  It becomes working at faith.  It's not about faith at all anymore.  It's about me working hard to make myself approved by God so God won't call me disobedient.

Which is the very thing Paul said we shouldn't do.  There's no grace anymore.  There's nothing about grace in Blackaby's statement.  You are either working at being more faithful or you are disobedient.

Paul saw that as the dog-chasing-its-tail syndrome.  He wrote about it in Romans where he said,
But I need something more!  For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help!  I realize that I don't have what it takes.  I can will it, but I can't do it.  I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway.  My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions.  Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.  (Romans 7:17-20)

Paul's answer to his dilemma:
The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does.  He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.  (Romans 7:25)

The "crisis of belief" that Blackaby is trying to explain is the wrong crisis of belief.  The crisis of belief isn't about doing or not doing some task that God may or may not have asked you to do.  The only crisis of belief that has to do with faith is allowing God to save you from yourself and your sin.  You can't do that as much as you may try.  God, through Jesus Christ, has to do that.

Paul knew.  He tried.  And it didn't work.  Every time he tried to save himself with some technique, with attempting something more, better, or different, he ended up back in the sin hole.

This isn't about doing stuff for God.  God could do all that stuff himself.  This isn't about making brownie points with God so that you don't get the "loser" label, or "disobedient" label pasted to your forehead.  This is about letting God do what God does best:  letting him save us from our sinful selves, and being welcomed into the arms of God's grace.


The other point that aroused my disagreements with this chapter had to do with the basic premise of the chapter.  Let's go back to that line I quoted earlier from the chapter:  "When God lets you know what He wants to do through you, it will be something only He can do."

I want to reword that statement to read thus:  "When God lets you know what He wants to do through you, it will be something only you and He can do." Listen to this statement again (reread).  Can you catch the power of that one little word change.

We who believe, know what God can do.  What can God do?  Anything and everything.  Is there anything God can't do?  No!  So in the back of our minds we know we need God.  We understand we can't do life without God.  It's a given.  Are we all agreed on that?

And, by making that statement, as I said before, if God can do everything and anything, God doesn't need us.  God could do it all by God's self.

BUT, God chooses not to.  God chooses to enlist us to accomplish what God wants done in the world.  Therefore, God needs us.  Because God has chosen to use us human beings, as frail as we are, tending to sin as we do, God still has chosen to use us in the plan.  God has chosen to need us.  We need God--definitely.  But just as importantly, God needs us.  Has desired to need us.

That's why God has given us all certain gifts, abilities, talents, particular usefulness, to use as we make our way through life.  These gifts God has given us are to be used to help God accomplish what God want's accomplished.  If God didn't need us, God wouldn't have endowed us with some great gifts and characteristics.

So the crisis of faith, as Blackaby calls it in this chapter, is not, as he states, Do we have faith enough in God to accomplish something huge God wants done.  The crisis of faith is, for each of us, Do we have enough faith in ourselves to do what God wants done?  God has given us all the resources we need.  God has picked us for accomplishing distinctive parts of God's plan.  God believes in us.  Otherwise God wouldn't have chosen us for the particular tasks God has.  So once we are chosen by God, do we believe in ourselves, and what God has endowed us with, to do it?  That's a crisis of faith!

In one of the old All In The Family episodes, Edith and Archie are attending Edith's high school class reunion.  Edith meets up with an old classmate named Buck, who has allowed himself to become extremely obese.

Edith and Buck have an engaging conversation about old times and the things they did together.  Remarkably, Edith doesn't even notice how extremely heavy Buck has become.

Later, Edith and Archie are talking.  She says, "Archie, ain't Buck a beautiful person?"
Archie replies, "Edith, I'll never figure you out.  You and I can look at the same guy and you see a beautiful person and I see a blimp."
Edith replies, "Yeah, ain't that too bad."

"Ain't that too bad."  Ain't that too bad that God sees something in you, has endowed you with certain spiritual gifts, believes in you, and has provided for you amazing opportunities to serve him.  But you don't see it.  Not only do you not see it, you don't believe enough in yourself so that you can get done what God wants, and by asking you God clearly sees you have it within you to do it.

Blackaby says, "When God lets you know what He wants to do through you, it will be something only He can do."  But I say, with Paul,
No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face.  All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he'll never let you be pushed past your limit; he'll always be there to help you come through it.  (1 Corinthians 10:13)

People usually misquote or misrepresent this verse.  Usually people use this verse when they are going through some awful experience, or a loved one is going through an awful experience.  But Paul isn't talking about that.  Paul is talking about dealing with our temptations, which are ultimately tests of our faith.

And I think one of the biggest temptations we face has to do with our belief in ourselves in respect to what God may ask of us.  That temptation is the ultimate test of how we see ourselves vs. how God sees us.  Our temptation is to succumb to the message that we can't do what God wants us to do, not because we don't think God could do it through us, but because we don't believe in ourselves.

The temptation is not to be receptive to God's nudgings because we don't think we have it in us, that we are not worthy, or we are not able, or that God just doesn't have it right about what he's trying to tell us about our individual strengths and abilities.  Our biggest temptation is to tell God we think he has it all wrong about us.  That he's chosen the wrong person.  The temptation is not to believe in ourselves when God absolutely believes in us, or else he wouldn't have beckoned us into his work.

What will it take for you to see what God sees in you?  Because once you see it, you will know the rest of the story.