11/15/2009 WHAT’S MISSING?
WHAT’S MISSING?
“So you are no
longer a servant but a child, & if a child, then also an heir, through
God.”
Galatians 4:7
What really scares you? What genuinely causes you a significant
degree of anxiety when you think about it?
Is it a terrorist attack that may
entail evacuating your home for a long time?
Is it flying in a plane that explodes in mid-air? Is it your child getting involved in drugs or
being kidnapped? How about a fatal
diagnosis of cancer or a debilitating stroke that lands you in a nursing home
with little hope of recovery? Does death
most rattle you: your death, the death of your child, the death of another
loved one? Is it losing your job &
no longer being able to afford the lifestyle to which you’ve been
accustomed? What most scares you?
An
Researcher, Joy Burnham, in The Journal of Counseling & Development
(July 2005) notes that children ages 7-10 most fear (in order): being
kidnapped, dying (self), AIDS, not being able to breathe, being threatened with
a gun.
By ages 11-14, those fears become: AIDS, not being able to breathe, being kidnapped, being raped, being threatened with a gun.
And by ages 15 to 18, the top five
are: AIDS, being raped, not being able to breathe, being threatened with a gun,
dying (self).
By comparison, 20 years ago, a teen’s
biggest fear was nuclear war, followed by the death or divorce of one’s
parents. In many studies today,
“something bad happening to my (their) family,” remains a serious adolescent
worry, according to Dr. Thom. Rainer in 2003, with “something bad” defined as
death, divorce, violence, or unemployment.
In Mark 13, Jesus talks about “wars
& rumors of wars.” While terrorism
& violence rank high among persons’ fears, there are plenty of other
anxieties we hold. Whether it’s the
bridge collapsing while driving on it or confronting a peer, what bothers many
of us is our faith, namely, how our faith interfaces with those fears &
worries. Depending upon the magnitude of
the issue, we wonder: Is my faith strong enough to deal with this? Is it even
real? Both are troubling questions.
We think to ourselves: “If I have faith – true faith
-- then why am I plagued with these fears & anxieties? Why do I suffer from so many imperfections
& make the mistakes which I do?
Wouldn’t a real Christian be better?
Shouldn’t a Christian be better?
Do I really have faith & trust in God? Is the faith I have equal to the demands of
life?”
Those kinds of questions nag at times, don’t
they? We often try to ignore & deny
them, but sometimes we just can’t. I
mean, many of us have grown up in the church.
We’ve been to Sunday School or parochial school. We know the Ten Commandments & right from
wrong. We can recite John 3:16 from
memory, & quite a few other verses when we put our minds to it, (maybe not
as many at the Baptists, but we can hold our own!). And we do believe in Jesus to be sure! Granted, we feel a little guilty when those
TV preachers talk about some grandiose, life-altering conversion experience of
being born-again, but all that aside, we are convinced, in the depths of our
souls & by the witness of the Holy Spirit, that we are honest-to-goodness believers
in & followers of Jesus.
So, what’s missing?
Before I suggest an answer, let me say that questions
& doubts are real. Let me also say
that although we love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, &
strength, we have not finished the race & received the prize (Phil. 3:12ff). We press on
to that goal. Salvation is but the door,
the beginning, of the faith life.
A man in our Tuesday morning group recently recounted
how he was cheated in a business deal. 80%
of what was agreed to went unmet. He
knew what he wanted to do to this swindler.
He also knew that what he wanted to do was wrong. It was natural & understandable for him to
feel this way, but it wasn’t the right thing, & he knew that. Thank God, his considering how Jesus would
respond not only checked his overreaction, but when he read our Bible lesson
for that week, found those verses speaking directly to him & his
situation. Amen!
Being a humble Christian, though, he lamented why the
right way to respond didn’t come to him sooner, automatically. Admirably, he wanted more & expected more
from his faith & felt guilty that his final conclusion wasn’t arrived at
earlier. This brother in Christ clearly identifies himself as a Christian –
he’s saved - but recognizes deficiencies & fault lines in his belief system. Isn’t he like many of us?
Salvation, often called justification, is what Christ
does for us & did for this man, but sanctification (being & doing
better each day) is what Christ continues to do in us & in this man. Salvation, as I said, is the door, the
threshold at which my friend stands, but going on to perfection is when he,
& all of us, step fully into the house of faith & live in it. We explore the various rooms that God has
built & furnished. “In my Father’s
house are many mansions (rooms, dwelling places),” Jesus says (John 14:2). This house of faith is quite a place God’s
prepared for us in this life! The great
Christian mystic, St. Teresa of
What I’m saying is that many of us get to the door of
salvation, but don’t get beyond the foyer, let alone the whole house. We are the ones who call ourselves Christians,
but also the ones who realize that something’s missing. There’s more to it, but don’t know how to get
to it.
“So, if I
arrived at the house of faith & set foot in the door, why do I feel like I
haven’t?” Or, to ask that earlier
question again, “What’s missing?”
Well, if we just stand in one place in any house, it
gets boring. The view, the experience
remain unchanged. We need to move in
& move on.
Faith changes & matures, just like
our bodies, minds, & emotions. One’s
relationship with Christ grows like other relationships grow. You don’t just become a parent & walk
away from that child. You don’t just get
married & quit at the end of the honeymoon.
You don’t just make a new friend & stop interacting with that
person. Relationships deepen &
widen: the ones with each other & the one with Jesus. Meeting Christ, finding Christ, salvation in
Christ is only the beginning.
That kind of relationship growth takes
on many forms. It’s in the two-part
process called baptism & confirmation. In baptism, we recognize what God does for us
when we are too weak to embrace the God who embraces us, but also feel the need
to acknowledge God’s work in our lives & embrace that faith for ourselves
some day in confirmation. Other faith
traditions talk about water baptism at one point in our lives, and the baptism
of the Holy Spirit at another time. Many
of us experience times of renewal & revival, when we’re drawn closer to
Christ. Even language we use, like “on
my faith journey,” or “going on to perfection,” or “maturing in Christ,” or the
term “sanctification,” all recognize that our relationship with God, our faith,
our trust, may not come in one fell swoop. Now, it certainly can happen all at once. “With God, all things are possible”(Luke 1:37)!
For many other persons, though, developing a deeper,
more meaningful faith takes time, something, quite frankly, which a patient God
has an eternity of. If we want to move
fast(er), that kind of conscientious ambition is admirable, but I want to caution
you that our lust to have it all now, even with faith as our goal, may just be
our selfish desire at work. Perhaps, in
our too-fast-paced lives, God is teaching us that faith is different & not
subject to our time demands.
We can forget, “I want it & want it now, God!” God
is willing to take time, & may be less demanding of us, than we are of
ourselves. We have these extraordinarily
unrealistic expectations of our faith development, but God graciously moves at
a slower, realistic pace … which often means that we don’t reach our goal
according to our imposed timeline, then blame failure on God. God’s not the problem! It’s the unrealistic expectations of
ourselves that are the problem.
The one who created us really does know what’s best
for each of us. We need to be careful to
not impose our success-oriented, over-achieving, cultural mindset on God’s
kingdom & on our spiritual lives with Christ. There’s plenty of “church lite” or “faith
lite” religion out there in our sound-bite society. It’s quite popular. It meets a temporary need. But, our yearning for something more,
something that endures, something that’s missing in our faith is what I’m
addressing today.
Scholars who make it their life’s work to study John
Wesley, claim that despite being a “Type A” personality, he required time. He was quite definitely a “work in progress.” Although UM preachers most popularly talk
about Wesley’s Aldersgate experience as his one, main conversion, he actually
had four conversions over his lifetime.
Each one of these radical turning points brought him closer to the God
he loved & served. Faith can develop
similarly in us.
Wesley’s first conversion was of his lifestyle. He wanted to live right & be right with
God & his fellow humans. His second
conversion was a theological conversion of the mind whereby he gave
intellectual assent (agreed with God) to become an ordained priest in the
Church of England. (Lest any pastor think
that ordination is when we have spiritually “arrived,” Father John has something
to teach us!) … Because his third conversion, the one that he’s best known for,
this conversion of “the warmed heart” years after his ordination, helped him
realize that true faith is a matter of the heart, not just the mind. (He was quite the intellectual, so
transforming his mind was a big, necessary first step.) His fourth & final conversion was an
ecclesiastical conversion that altered how he saw ministry being accomplished
through him (his open air preaching) & others (especially women).[1]
Call these events
what you will -- conversions, spiritual transformations, revelations, or epiphanies
– they are progressive(ly), positive movements in holiness in one’s life. They
may come in this order or a different order. It may be one, sole spiritual experience,
four conversions, or a series of transformations. Faith is not an exact science! God works with us individually, just as God
created us individually. The good news to
take away from today is that God gives us the gift of time to grow in faith.
To express this idea, Wesley often used the phrase,
“saved to the utter-most.” Was he
saved? Yes! But it took years until he was “saved to the
utter-most.” Is it not the same with
many of us? God hasn’t given up on us,
yet. Why have we given up on ourselves
& feel frustrated, guilty, or discouraged?
In some cases, we’ve given up on God.
Why? Because we think God gave up on us!?!
Faith is often just another word for trust. Trust happens when we get to know someone
better. The more we know that individual,
the more we may love & trust that person.
Similarly, the more time we spend in prayer, participating in worship
& the sacraments, reading & studying God’s Word, doing the right kinds
of things, engaging in acts/ministries of compassion with the sick, hurting
& needy, we come to know Christ better, see his grace at work, & trust
him more. (If we’re doing one or two of
these items & our faith is not growing, maybe we need to try one of the
others. Don’t get stuck. Any relationship that isn’t growing the way
we wish, often requires a fresh approach.)
It may not happen all of the sudden at the moment of our
conversion. That’s just the
beginning. There’s much more to
come. God’s impact on our lives is
huge. God’s kingdom is vast.
The Apostle Paul likened this spiritual growth to two
kinds of faith: the faith of a servant/slave & the faith of a child (son or
daughter) of God. A servant wants to
serve the overseer (the one in charge, the boss, or supervisor). We grasp that concept. We want to serve & do right by God,
too. (That’s the man in our group who
caught himself before he did the wrong thing.)
The faith of a son or daughter of God, however, is
not just doing right because we want to, but doing right because it’s who we
are, it’s who we’ve become, it’s in our DNA & throughout every fiber of our
being. It’s when we can do nothing else,
but God’s will. We don’t act out of a
fear of punishment or hope for reward, but act out of this second nature that
knows nothing else but loving God & others.
(Again, it’s what the man who was cheated really wanted from his
faith.) When we come to realize that we
can be more than servants, but sons & daughters who literally have it
within us to be holy, we are, indeed, saved to the uttermost. There’s nothing missing, anymore.
Prayer
of Christian Discipleship
In the Name…. Copyright
2009 by G.D.Knerr at
[1] Tom Albin, Spiritual Formation in the Wesleyan Tradition: Then & Now, lecture at Evangelical Theological Seminary, Myerstown, Pa., 26Mar09.