Transforming Faith

The definition of a word only has meaning to us based on our experience of that word.  For example, the word “love” means many different things when we use it.  It may be that we like something as in “I love ice cream.”  It may mean a brotherly affection for someone or it may only mean someone or something we lust after.  It takes an experience of God’s love before we understand what agape love is – a love that sustains, affirms, and energizes us in spite of all our areas of weakness and all our failures.

In the same way “faith” has many different meanings based on both our intellectual understanding of the word and our personal experience of faith.  It may mean a religious set of principles, a theological teaching, a confidence we have in a friend, or hopefully a belief in God that is the very foundation of our lives.

Another important consideration is the object of our faith.  Faith in religious principles or theological understanding will not sustain me – only belief in God who is revealed in Jesus Christ can do that.

In the Scriptures there is practically no effort made to define faith.  In Hebrews 11:1 there is a brief fourteen-word statement about faith, and even there, it is defined functionally, not philosophically; that is, it is a statement of how faith functions in us – not what it is in essence.

Rick Baugh, one who thinks deeply about his relationship with Jesus and his understanding of how Jesus has worked in his life, writes the following:

I embrace what Dallas Willard has written about genuine belief being when “my whole being is lined up to act as if something is so.”

My deep-seated core beliefs compel a great deal of my behavior, dominate how I see life, and determine a great deal of what I allow into my life. Indeed, my beliefs define the lens through which I view life. Are my beliefs based on truth or lies? – An important question.  What are my various reactions to a truth and how are they different?  What is the process of lining up my whole being to act on the truths God reveals to me?  The table is one way of expressing the different phases of a deepening belief in God. The term “truth” is used to refer to each new aspect of our growing faith as our faith expands into additional areas of our lives.

Rick continues with these comments

It is not until I get to the “belief” stage in the final row that most of the payoff occurs.  That is when my behavior is compelled by the belief. Many truths can be embraced by a conscious decision. One example is: marriage has priority over career. But until my deep-seated beliefs that compel so much of my behavior experience the transforming power of Jesus, they will not be lived out in my daily life. That is true even for those truths that are embraced in my mind.

Also, I do want to be aware that reciting a truth, acknowledging a truth, realizing a truth, and committing to a truth are not the same as belief of the truth. These are beneficial responses, but they do not bring me the results of belief. It is very easy to get snookered into thinking I have a belief when I only have commitment or realization of truth. Certainly, reciting truth is not the same as believing truth.

The benefit to me increases as I go down the rows of the chart. For example, committing to a truth usually brings much more payoff than reciting a truth. But the big prize is BELIEF. And the more I learn to totally embrace truth, the more I experience the flow of living water in my life.

Even if I have not gotten all the way to belief, I get a huge benefit – lack of belief predicts how much more of God’s love I get to experience. It gives me a glimpse of how wonderful this more encompassing love will be. How sweet will it be when I drop my defenses long enough for God’s love to drop deep down into my experience! Of course, my subconscious is a powerful defense intent on maintaining my existing belief. So having Jesus transform a deep-seated belief does not often come easily. The more the truths God is showing me are transformed into beliefs, the more I will be able to trust my reactive behavior as I move through life.

I realize that some reactive behavior is not compelled by beliefs but results from addiction that has its roots in chemistry NOT beliefs. Replacing beliefs will not materially change chemically stimulated addictive behavior. Some forms of depression and alcoholism fit this category and hence the above discussion does not apply to these situations.

The following are some statements by others who have embraced similar ideas in their journeys and they might nudge us forward on ours

John Ortberg in Faith and Doubt puts some of the same ideas into the following categories:

“Public beliefs are those convictions that we want other people to think we believe, even though we may not really believe them.

Private beliefs are those things we actually think we believe until they are tested.  We never know if we believe our convictions until they’re tested.

Core beliefs are the convictions that are revealed in our daily actions, based on what we actually do.  We will always act out of our core beliefs.  Jesus intends to change us at our core beliefs, to establish his embedded will in us.”

“It requires a great act of faith to accept the love that is offered to us and to live, not with suspicion and distrust, but with the inner conviction that we are worth being loved.” The Genesee Diary by Henri J. W. Nouwen

“Like the eye which sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied with the Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all.  Thus faith is a re-directing of our sight, a getting out of the focus of our own vision and getting God into focus.” The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer

“Instant Christianity tends to make the faith act terminal and so smothers the desire for spiritual advance.  By trying to pack all of salvation into one experience, or two, the advocates of instant Christianity flaunt the law of development which runs through all nature.  They ignore the sanctifying effects of suffering, cross carrying and practical obedience.  They pass by the need for spiritual training, the necessity of forming right religious habits and the need to wrestle against the world, the devil and the flesh.” The Best of A. W. Tozer

“Great faith, like great strength in general is revealed by the ease of its workings.  Most of what we think we see as the struggle of faith is really the struggle to act as if we had faith when we do not.  Faith is not opposed to knowledge, it is opposed to sight.”  Hearing God by Dallas Willard

“Too many people confuse faith with presumption.  They are consumed by their own agenda, even quoting Scriptures that proves God will have to do it their way and end up disappointed when he doesn’t.”  So you don’t want to go to Church by Wayne Jacobsen

“To trust the real person Jesus is to have confidence in him in every dimension of our real life, to believe that he is right about and adequate to everything.”  The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard

“American evangelicals take as their foundation the notion that what they believe not what they do, is of utmost importance.  For many of us, our faith has thus become a series of propositions ‑ statements that are either right or wrong, but totally separate from what we do.”  Whatever happened to Commitment by Edward R. Dayton

“I treasure Mary as a biblical interpreter, one who heard and believed what God told her, and who pondered God’s promise in her heart, even when, as the Gospel of Luke describes it, it pierced her soul like a sword.  This is hardly passivity, but the kind of faith that sustains discipleship.” Amazing Grace by Kathleen Norris

What helps us have a solid belief in God?

“It seems to me that what Freud missed in his perspective of investment and disinvestment is the difference between material investment, which can be measured, and spiritual investment, which cannot.  If I have a penny, and I give it away, I no longer have it.  But if I have love, and I give it to someone else, I have more as a result.  If I have courage and I give it to one of my patients, I end up with more courage.  If I have faith and impart it to another, my own faith is increased.” Creative Suffering by Paul Tournier

“There was in the disciples’ a fervent attachment to Jesus.  They had forsaken all for him.  They believed in him, they loved him, they obeyed his commandments.”  The Beauty of Holiness by Andrew Murray

“When a believer really trusts anything, he ceases to worry about that thing which he has trusted.  And when he worries, it is plain proof that he does not trust.  You find no difficulty in trusting the Lord with the management of the universe.  Can your case be more complex or difficult than this that you need to be anxious or troubled about His management of you?”  The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith

“C. S. Lewis finally concluded that the kind of dauntless faith called for by Jesus occurs only when the one who prays does so as God’s fellow-worker, demanding what is needed for the joint work.   In other words, one who works in close partnership with God grows in the ability to discern what God wants to accomplish on earth, and prays accordingly.”  Prayer by Phillip Yancey

“A healthy faith before God cannot be built and maintained, without heartfelt celebration of his greatness and goodness to us in the midst of our suffering and terror.” Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard

“Life is a journey and our discoveries are made a bit at a time, and our faith develops a bit at a time.”  The Desert Journal by Carlo Carretto

“Faith is only real when there is obedience, never without it, and faith only becomes faith in the act of obedience.” The Cost of Discipleship  by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Research has shown that unless people do something with what they hear in a teaching within forty-eight to seventy-two hours, they are simply accumulating nice ideas that never get integrated into their lives.”  The Emotionally Healthy Church by Peter Scazzero with Warren Bird

A Final Thought

The deep-seated faith that produces a first response of trusting God is not revealed until we are in situations that are beyond our capacity to handle them.  Out of a desire to be better people we work on the first sections of the table.  We change our values and establish better goals and priorities for our lives and these are good things because we live better lives bringing good things to our families, our work places and every place where we have influence.  However, we only experience this deep-seated confidence in God when we are in situations beyond our control.  

Perhaps an illustration from an experience of the disciples and Jesus will make clear the difference.  Jesus and his twelve disciples were in a boat crossing the Sea of Galilee.  Jesus fell asleep and a horrendous storm arose on the lake.  In panic they woke Jesus and his response to them was, “Oh, you of little faith.”  They were committed men.  They had left family and work to be with Jesus. They had heard Jesus teach about the basic ideas of the Kingdom of God.  They had seen him perform miracles beyond anything they had ever experienced.  But when the crunch came they panicked!

My desire for me and my companions is that we will not trust in our efforts to come up with better disciplines, goals, or intellectual understanding but will have a deep seated belief in Jesus when the storms hit.  So let us not be disappointed in what we experience in our life because we confuse belief with commitment, realization, etc.  Rather than beat our self up because we discover we were fooling our self let us continue on the journey to experience even more of God’s love as we get our self in a position where Jesus can transform a belief. A basic change of this kind is not easy so let us not be discouraged by how long it takes.  It is a good journey with Jesus and with each other.