Faith

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A little boy was afraid of the dark. One night his mother told him to go out to the verandah and bring her the broom from outside. The little boy turned to his mother and said, "Mum, I don't want to go out there. It's dark." The mother smiled reassuringly and said, "You don't have to be afraid of the dark. Jesus is out there. He'll look after you and protect you." The little boy looked at his mum really hard and asked, "Are you sure he's out there?" "Yes, I'm sure,” she replied, “He is everywhere, and he’s always ready to help you when you need him.” The little boy thought about that for a minute and then went to the back door and opened it slightly. Peering out into the darkness, he called, "Jesus? If you're out there, could you please hand me the broom?"

So what is faith and how is it relevant to our life? Is it something that is even important to have? You see often we associate faith with religion. When someone says “I believe in God” we immediately think this guy’s ‘religious’, but there is a big difference between faith and religion. Personally I don’t like calling myself religious and I don’t ever say I have a religion. I say I have a faith. And the reason is that religion is often based on what we as humans say and do. Religion becomes an institution or an organisation, and people ‘do religion’ without really understanding what lies behind all of their traditions or practices. Religion can become empty and lifeless. But faith is a whole new ball game. Faith is not religion but relationship. It doesn’t focus on the ticking the boxes or saying the right things, but its focus lies with the One you put your faith in. In Isaiah 29 God spoke about people who had a religion but had no faith. God said,

"These people come near to me with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship of me
is made up only of rules taught by men.

You see these people made a big show of saying the right things, but their hearts were never really into it. That relationship with God was never there. And that’s all that God really wants - a relationship with us. God created us to have personal interaction with him, that’s why we pray and sing and do all of those ‘religious’ things. They are all meant to enable us to grow deeper in our faith.

What my Christian faith means for me is this: that I was unable to have a proper relationship with God because I’m a puny human being that makes mistakes and he is a massively big and holy God. But he sent his Son Jesus to tell us that God loves us and then Jesus showed his love for us also when he died on the cross which made up for our shortcomings. And so now I can have a great relationship with God. Now I can pray and I can worship God by playing drums in my church band not because I have religion but because I have faith in God and Jesus.

People have said to me, “Oh you have faith because your parents must have been Christian”. But faith can’t be inherited from your parents, it can’t be forced onto you, not even a really hot girl that goes to church can make you believe. A living faith is a matter of personal experience. Even if my parents didn't have a faith in God, it would be up to me to find a meaning for faith in my life. And that’s not always easy. It’s hard to believe in someone when you can’t visibly see them, although I personally see God’s fingerprints all around me. But there’s a story that I really relate to.

One night a house caught fire and a young boy was forced to flee to the roof. The father stood on the ground below with outstretched arms, calling to his son, "Jump! I'll catch you." He knew the boy had to jump to save his life. All the boy could see, however, was flame, smoke, and blackness. As you can imagine, he was afraid to leave the roof. His father kept yelling: "Jump! I will catch you." But the boy protested, "Daddy, I can't see you." The father replied, "But I can see you and that's all that matters."

The fact is that faith does require us to step off the ledge and it’s scary to do. But what if there is a pair of arms that will catch you? Maybe those arms that catch you, may just catch you by surprise? God doesn’t ask the world of us, he doesn’t want religion from us, he wants our hearts.