“JUST DO IT!”
Nike?
Nope. Shia LaBeouf.
As much as it’s an old meme, the message is clear – believe in yourself, work hard and you can achieve your goals.
Your actions do matter; you study before for an exam and you’ll likely do well, work out consistently and diet and you’ll smash your fitness goals in no time. While faith is certainly a lived-in thing (continued acting in obedience to God) there’s a fine line between the why and who behind our actions and what we do.
Lessons from the Bible
Take, Mark Chapter 2 verses 1–5, the story of Jesus and the paralytic man.
A group of friends, heard that Jesus was coming, and knew that he was healing people. So they took their paralytic friend and fought through the crowd carrying him on a stretcher, towards the house where Jesus was.
They dug out the roof, made of mud and straw, and lowered their friend down before Jesus. Then it says this,
“And when Jesus saw their (the friends) faith, he said to the paralytic, son your sins are forgiven. — Mark 2:5 (ESV)”
The friends here did the work, but the encouragement here was not a call to a Shia LaBeouf-faith of self-belief that if YOU believe enough something will happen.
What happens when prayers aren’t answered? Is it because you didn’t believe enough? Maybe if the prayer was just a bit longer, a bit louder? How do I believe… more…?
A Faith That Brings Freedom
People can get so caught up in the Bible plans, prayer lists, attending and serving in church services, it creates a life centred on what you are doing. The work of faith is to first conform us into the image of God. When our “holy doings” become the object of our faith we’re simply swapping one idol out for the another.
Jesus was constantly calling people to seek God first (Matthew chapter 6, verse 33), and in the metaphor of the mustard seed (Matthew chapter 17, verses 14–20) reminds us that it’s not the size of faith that matters but the object.
God is loving (Rom:5:8), just (Psalm Chapter 37:27–29), wise (Job chapter 36, verse 5), all-knowing (Isaiah chapter 40, verse 28) and so much more.
“Having faith” is not about the strength of your own belief but an increasing trust in how God is described in the Bible.
A.W. Tozer sums what this trust means when he wrote this,
“True faith rests upon the character of God and asks no further proof than the moral perfections of the One who cannot lie.”
When Jesus tells us that his “my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew Chapter, 11, verses 28–30) he is saying we can rest, that our faith isn’t about effort but simply believing in him.
When we know this in our hearts we can pray and believe, fully knowing that no matter how prayer is answered that it’s in the hands of a God who is all-knowing, loving, wise and just.
Justin Sayson is a freelance journalist living on the Sunshine Coast. From about sport, music, faith or anything else, he’s always keen to discover more about the world around him. You can see more if his writing on justinsayson.com