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Not Just a Face in the Crowd

9/27/2017

“When Jesus … saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick” (Matthew 14:14).

It’s easy to read right over simple verses like this in the New Testament and not notice things.

First, it’s easy to miss what is actually said – that Jesus didn’t just have compassion on the sick in the multitude, he had compassion on the whole crowd, which led to his intervening wherever there was a need.

That means that Jesus didn’t just see and have compassion on the noticeable members of the crowd – the blind, the lame and those clearly afflicted with diseases and problems. It means he had compassion on the ones who were helping carry the lame, lead the blind and support the weak. It means he had compassion on the ones we might not notice as readily in a crowd – the shy, the grieving, the lonely and the discouraged.

Second, it’s easy – of course – not to see what’s not said. When we read the accounts of Jesus’ works, we tend to read them in a vacuum; but we have to remember how much the Gospel writers are summarizing each incident. When Jesus had compassion on the crowds, we get only the highlights of the healings – a kind of Gospel triage in which the most important healings and significant signs were recorded. But in having compassion on the crowds – not just the sick in the crowds – would Jesus not have noticed people with less obvious problems and had compassion on them also?

Surely Jesus saw the loneliness in the eyes of some and, having compassion, offered them a warm and accepting smile. Surely he saw the discouragement in the faces of others (Luke 18:24) and offered a few words of encouragement. In every case in the New Testament where we are told Jesus had compassion on people, he followed it with action; and having compassion on the crowds doubtless meant he interacted with and helped many more than the few people on whom he performed miracles of healing.

Perhaps we may feel we do not interact with crowds in the same way, but the totality of people we see and pass by as well as those we actually meet and with whom we interact in a day is often a small crowd, and for some of us a large one. If we are followers of Jesus, do we have compassion on that daily “crowd”? Do we seek to encourage and to smile, to check that people are all right? These may seem like small things and may seem hard to do in our over-crowded and impersonal world. But following in Christ’s footsteps means doing the things he did to the extent we can.

We know that God pays attention and knows the hairs on our heads, though we don’t tend to think of that in perspective of the teeming world of billions in which we live. But God does see every face in the crowd, and in his physical life the Son of God doubtless did his best to do so also. We are not just a face in the crowd to God, and no one in the crowd should be just a face to us.

Seeing Beyond the Storm

9/20/2017

[This blog post was first published on our sister site just before Typhoon Haiyan devastated large parts of the Philippines in November 2013. It is just as relevant now in the wake of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, and others that have followed. Hopefully, our prayers and any other support we are able to provide will continue to be with those whose lives have been affected by these and other storms.]

Sometimes it’s not the storm we are expecting that hits us; but whatever the storm, we can learn from it.

It was the weekend he said the tropical storm was supposed to hit his Gulf Coast hometown. His email said they were preparing for a big storm. A dangerous storm. That storm never hit, but a couple of days later his young son was hit by a car while riding his bicycle to school. With his son hospitalized in serious condition, another storm – my friend’s own personal storm - had arrived.

It seems that life is often like that. Sometimes the storm doesn’t hit when it’s expected, sometimes it’s not the expected storm that hits. Sometimes it’s not that which we fear that comes upon us, it’s that which comes out of left field, seemingly out of nowhere. It’s not the disease we fear because of family history, but a different one that we contract. It’s not the illness we are checked for, but another one that shows up in the testing. Yet we learn things in storms we do not learn otherwise.

The Book of Job is instructive in this area. Job’s ultimate life storm was certainly unexpected and terrible, but “the LORD spoke to Job out of the storm” (Job 38:1, 40:6). It’s a truth that we learn through our storms, the things we suffer, as even Christ himself did (Hebrews 5:8), and that surely is the message of Romans 8:28 – that all things work together for good. This doesn’t mean that the destruction caused by storms is good or that suffering is ever trivial or easily discounted; but that good can come out of the storm and faith is formed and deepened in these times.

It’s hard to think about storms without remembering the story recorded in the Gospels of how a great storm came up while Jesus and his disciples were crossing the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 8:23-30). Despite the storm, Jesus was sleeping peacefully on the boat until he was wakened by his fearful disciples asking him to save them. “He replied, ‘You of little faith, why are you so afraid?’ Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. The men were amazed and asked, ‘What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!’” (vs. 26-27). The disciples learned something from this experience about the Son of God and how God can control the outcome of storms in our lives.

Katrina, Hugo, Sandy, Harvey, Irma and many others brought great suffering, as future storms will also. Other types of storms in our lives are no different. But for the Christian, every life storm is an opportunity for God to work something within us that might not have been there otherwise. Believing good can be brought out of the storm does not mean the storm is good, but that the One who allows the storms of life to touch us and teach us has the power, when he is asked, to calm the storms around and within us.

What Is Faith?

9/13/2017

Basic as it might seem, the concept of faith can be confusing for many people. The word itself can be understood as what we believe (“the Christian Faith”) or how we believe (“their faith is strong”), though the Bible usually uses the word in the second sense.

But even if we focus on faith in the sense of how rather than what we believe, many people still only understand part of what faith is all about.

Belief and Trust

First, the word used in the New Testament for faith (pistis) primarily means belief and trust. It involves not only believing that God exists, but also trusting him. When Jesus taught “… believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15), he was not just saying believe that the gospel exists, but trust that the message of the gospel is true.

In the same way, the author of the Book of Hebrews wrote “… faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see … 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” (Hebrews 11:1, 6). This makes it clear that faith involves both belief and trust.

Faith and Faithfulness

However, there is another aspect to faith that even many Christians miss. To see that dimension of faith it helps to go back to the Old Testament. In the book of the prophet Habakkuk there is a vitally important verse that was translated in the King James and some other English translations as “… the just shall live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4). But the New International Version and several other recent versions translate this verse as “…the righteous person will live by his faithfulness.” Why the different translations? The answer is that the Hebrew word translated “faith” in the KJV really can mean either “faith” or “faithfulness” (see Isaiah 11:5 where the word is used of the faithfulness of the Messiah).

This verse in Habakkuk was seen as so important by the early Christians that it is quoted three times in the New Testament – twice by the apostle Paul (Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11) and once by the author of Hebrews (Hebrews 10:38). Looking at the context of these verses we see that while Paul stresses that the believer is justified by faith, the author of Hebrews stresses the aspect of the believer’s faithfulness (see verse 36).

So true faith can – and should – involve both a trusting belief in God and also faithfulness on our part. Faith and works are sometimes said to be antithetical, but they are not. Although the Bible says clearly that we are saved by faith, not works (Romans 3:28, 31), it also shows just as clearly that living, saving faith will produce good works (James 2:17). In that sense the aspects of believing faith and active faithfulness are both expressed in true faith.

The Gift of Faith in All its Aspects

Although we may have some limited human level of faith, deep faith is a gift of God (1 Corinthians 12:9, Ephesians 2:8) that is developed through ongoing spiritual growth and transformation (Romans 4:20, 12:6, Jude 1:20), and this applies just as much to our trust in God as to our faithfulness toward him.

In all of this we see that true faith is far more than just an emotional feeling or even a belief. True faith involves a living trust in God that affects every aspect of our lives. But at its most basic level, true faith is belief and trust on the one hand and faithfulness on the other.

* Extracted from our free e-Book These Three Remain: Why Faith, Hope and Love Are Even More Important Than You Think. Multiple formats are available to read on any computer or e-Reader here.

What We Love ... and What We Don't

9/6/2017

“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:1-4).

It is often said that what we love in life shows more about us than anything else. In his second letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul gives us some particular insight into that truth. Paul lists a number of characteristics that he says will be prevalent in “the last days.” But we should understand that from the perspective of the apostle’s writings (as is also found in other Jewish writings of that era), the “end times” could be any time from the first coming of the messiah to his second coming. In this sense, the “end times” included the day in which Timothy was living, as Paul says specifically that Timothy should “… Have nothing to do with such people” (2 Timothy 3:5); though the traits Paul lists would also continue and perhaps worsen over time.

But if we read Paul’s description carefully, we see that the characteristics he mentions all revolve around one thing: love – or the lack of it. Love is specifically mentioned six times in just these few verses, and the repeated use of the word seems to form a pattern.

Paul stresses that many people will love: 1) themselves, 2) money, and 3) pleasure. On the other hand, the apostle tells us, these people will not love: 1) others, 2) good, and 3) God. The negative versus positive characteristics are clearly interlinked in verse 4 which speaks of “lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God,” and it seems clear that Paul is making a comparison with the other characteristics as well. He seems to indicate that people will be:

Lovers of themselves rather than of others
Lovers of money rather than of good(ness)
Lovers of pleasures rather than of God

These selfish characteristics may seem bad enough, along with the negative corollaries that Paul also lists with them – being boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient, etc. – but what we may miss in our English translations, in reading about these aspects of self-centeredness, is the degree of intensity Paul says will be seen in them. The Greek word for “terrible” (chalepoi) that he uses in saying “There will be terrible times in the last days” means almost uncontrollably “harsh,” “fierce,” or “savage” and only appears one other time in the New Testament – where it is used to describe the two demon-possessed individuals who were so violent no one could go near them (Matthew 8:28). In other words, Paul warns that the degree to which many people will put themselves, money and pleasure first in their lives will have terrible consequences.

But what Paul says also has a positive application. We can turn his words around to provide us with antidotes to the problems he describes. By increasing our focus on loving God, goodness, and others, we find a sure way to avoid placing too much emphasis in our lives on money, pleasure and our own selves.

As we said at the outset, what we love in life often shows more about us than anything else. Carefully thinking over how much of our lives we dedicate to money, pleasure, and ourselves – above what is necessary – can tell us a great deal about what we love. Paul’s words to Timothy also help us to see the consequences of what we love and to provide us with antidotes to the poisonous traits that characterize excessive self-centeredness. It’s a sobering but positive message. Sometimes the beginning of loving rightly is coming to see what we really do love.

Not Just a Face in the Crowd

Seeing Beyond the Storm

What Is Faith?

What We Love ... and What We Don't

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