Healing Faith

If you had to choose one or the other - would you rather have excellent physical health or extremely healthy faith in God? Many people see God as a means to the end of good physical or emotional health. For them, good health is the goal, and God is the way to get there. There is some truth in their position. God, in fact, guarantees everyone who is in life-saving spiritual union with Jesus Christ perfect wholeness in paradise forever. However, temporal good health is not the end. Reconciliation with God is the end, and God uses health, good and bad, to win people to it.

John 4:46-54

In the second miracle John records in his Gospel, we see Jesus winning a household to saving faith in Himself as God’s Messiah by mercifully restoring a man’s critically ill son to full health. This is not so much an account of ‘faith healing’ as it is an account of healing faith. Healthy faith is unconditional, active trust in God expressed through faithful actions. Our actions reveal what we actually believe. For example, if you tell me that you are going to pretend to hit me, and I tell you I have absolute faith that you will not actually hit me. Then I flinch, duck and cover when you swing. My actions indicate that my faith is not so absolute after all. I may doubt your motives or your eye-hand coordination, but I doubt something. Likewise, we can say that we have faith in God, but our actions sometimes demonstrate that we do not. In those moments, we may doubt that God is good all the time or that He is almighty, but we doubt something. Healthy faith acts according to the reality that God is always willing and always able to do the ultimate best for His glory and our good.

So, how did God use physical health to bring spiritual health to the household in our text? Well, what motivated the official to run to Jesus in the first place? It was not his desperation for reconciliation with God. He was driven to Jesus by the painful reality that his son was in the middle of a medical emergency. God can and does use such emergencies to turn us to Him, and I am glad He does! Many of you know my dad’s story. I would not wish the physical suffering he endured during his final years on anyone. It was a brutal combination of amputations and complications that eventually brought my dad to his breaking point. My dad was an extremely independent, self-reliant man, who was hardened to the gospel. That is until God met him at his lowest point and providentially used 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 to win my dad to Himself. I do not wish illness on anyone, but if that is what it takes to get a person to turn to God, I prefer them to find eternal wholeness through difficult means than to temporarily enjoy good health on their way to eternal destruction.

Jesus’ first sign was a miracle of transformation, water into wine. This was a miracle of restoration, illness to health. God promises everyone who turns to Him to save them from sin’s penalty, power, and presence both transformation and restoration. He transforms everyone who turns to Him into new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17), and He promises to restore everything we lost in the Fall, including paradise and the eternally healthy bodies perfectly fitted for it (Revelation 21). You and I have a certain date with death unless Jesus returns first. No matter how we try to preserve it, our health is going to fail. A right relationship with God, not health, is the end. Jesus is the Way. Healthy faith in Him will never fail you.

Satisfaction II: Work for Food

Last week we looked at quenching our spiritual thirst for God through worshipping Him in spirit and truth. This week, let’s look at satisfying our hungry hearts with the spiritual nourishment that comes through accomplishing God’s work: JOHN 4:27-42

Have ever noticed that for us to enjoy something completely we need to share the enjoyment with someone else? We see a magnificent sunset by ourselves and think, “I wish_____ was here - they would really enjoy this.” We go to a great game or event but a friend or loved one can’t be there, and while it’s great, it’s just not complete without them. If the Miami Dolphins are ever great again, I’ll enjoy it, but not as much as I would if my dad, who got to play a season with them, was here to enjoy it with me. I think we are made that way. We are meant to be joy spreaders and even if we are enjoying something or someone immensely our joy is incomplete until it is shared with others. This is especially, even ultimately, true about our delight in God.

Genuinely delighting in God - feasting on His infinite excellencies - is the key to losing our appetite for sin’s dumpster scraps, but our enjoyment of God is incomplete when we see empty seats at His table and recall our starving friends still foraging for leftover bits of Big Mac in the dumpster of sin. For the worship feast to be complete we need to share the delight we have found with those who are still starving for love and settling for scraps.

That is exactly what the woman from the well immediately went to work doing. She left her waterpot behind - perhaps symbolically - and went to invite everyone she knew to meet the Way to the banquet. Notice how she used a question and an invitation to get people to investigate Jesus for themselves. She did not go to them arguing a case. She told them about her personal experience with Christ and invited them in an intriguing way to investigate Him for themselves. We would do well to follow the example of God’s ambassador to the Samaritans.

By the way, isn’t it wonderful how God heals and turns lives around?! God chose to save the believing Samaritans through the woman whose search for love once left her so alone that she went to the well at noon instead of in the cool morning or evening when women went together. In an instant, He took her from town tramp to town treasure! God knows just who needs what and He knows just how to work everything together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes. He also delights in putting the seemingly foolish and discarded things of this world to great, God-glorifying use. Wherever you have been - whatever you have done - whatever kind of reputation you have - turn to God, the master of turning trashed lives into treasure.

Much as Jesus used the well’s water to help the Samaritan woman discover the eternal spring of living water, He used the disciples’ food to help them and us find our spiritual food. He helped them see beyond the physical realm to the spiritual situation in their midst. He told them that it was harvest time and that He had already nourished His soul when He sowed new life into the woman, who was now working for Him reaping a harvest of new worshippers for God. It may seem ironic that we get nourished by expending energy in God’s work, but we can’t out-give God, who feeds our souls as we work to bring worshippers to Him. Finally, notice Jesus said His food came not just from knowing God’s will or from starting God’s work but from completing God’s work. So as Paul, one of God’s greatest harvest workers, once wrote “let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”- (Galatians 6:9) So, never give up. Give yourself to God! Give yourself to treasuring Him and to finishing His work, and He will make you a spiritually satisfied treasure to those He brings to His feast through you!

Satisfaction I: Worship for Water

If life came with a label it might say "Satisfaction NOT Guaranteed." We often feel empty, unfulfilled and dissatisfied. For most of our hungers and thirsts there is some earthly solution. If I am physically hungry, there is food to satisfy me. But, to varying degrees of awareness, there is an often undefined, underlying dissatisfaction deep within every human heart that nothing on earth can fill. We sing about it. Write novels, plays and movies about it. We look here, there and everywhere for the solution to it, but no amount of substances, sex, success, or stuff can satisfy our hungry hearts. In our text, we meet a spiritually parched woman who has been desperately seeking satisfaction in the wrong wells just as she meets the physically thirsty Savior seeking sincere worship for His Father. Let's look at JOHN 4:1-26 and focus on the relationship between God's desire for worship and our need for satisfaction. The two definitely go together.

In our text, we see Jesus intentionally making His way across social barriers to a divine appointment with an important person. Of course, no one would have guessed the Samaritan woman who was making her way to Jacob's well in the noon sun was a VIP. It is very likely that she was a social outcast. It is a tragic irony that this woman's efforts to find love, acceptance, and relationship were the very actions that resulted in her social isolation. The wells we turn to in our efforts to satisfy our thirsty souls seem to work that way. We go somewhere to cope and try to fill the void, and the places we go often take matters from bad to worse. The first key to finding satisfaction for your thirsty soul is to look in the right place and that place is in a right relationship with God. You and I were created to enjoy a living relationship with God and without that relationship, we are spiritually dead inside. Romances, reruns, and religions about God all eventually run dry, but a real living relationship with the real living God never does. No wonder God pleads with us in places like Isaiah 55:1-2 to seek and find our satisfaction in Him.

We not only need to look in the right place - a real relationship with God - we also need to look in the right way. Sadly, many people who have experienced genuine reconciliation with God, by turning from sin to Him and trusting their lives to the care and control of Christ, still fail to enjoy the abundant satisfaction that is available to them. Why? I think much of the answer is found in Jesus' and the woman's discussion about worship. God's glorification and our satisfaction are mutually complimentary. John Piper has done a great job broadcasting his phrase, "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." That is true. When we are so abundantly satisfied in God that the world's wells no longer hold any appeal to us, people can see that we have found something superior in God. Filthy food scraps by a dumpster don't look appetizing unless you are starving to death, and in the same way, sin's pleasures don't look nearly as appealing when you are spiritually feasting on the richest fare in the universe by delighting yourself in God. God tells us over and over again in Scripture...Rejoice! Delight! Celebrate! These are not burdensome commands. God works to wean us off of the world's dumpster scrap pleasures not to starve us of pleasure. He knows we need to enjoy beauty. He knows we need to express appreciation for excellence. He weans us off the world's pleasures so that we can enjoy the vastly superior pleasures of delighting in all that God is and in all that God does. God is infinitely splendid and His excellencies (Psalm 103) are an inexhaustible source of celebration!

To genuinely honor God and enjoy soul satisfaction, we must worship Him in spirit and truth. Both must stay together for genuine worship. Truth without spirit is just dead orthodoxy. We have the information correct, but we are unmoved by it. How honored would you feel if I knew a great deal about you but could not care less? On the other hand, spirit without truth is just ecstatic inaccuracy. In that case, we dishonor God by celebrating something He is not. Imagine meeting a famous singer-songwriter and going on and on about how much you love one of their songs only to discover another artist actually wrote and performed that song. The artist you were meeting might be amused, but they would not be honored. We must really delight in God as He really is. When we do, He will be worshipped, and we will be satisfied.

Less is More

Have you ever been disappointed with ministry results? Have you ever believed that the Lord called you to participate in a good work that you had high hopes for and that you zealously invested your time and energy into only to have the results fall well short of your expectations? I know I have. I also know that many of you recently worked hard to prepare and distribute more than a thousand very cool Easter Egg Invitations only to see very nasty weather and very few guests show up for Sunday’s Easter service. First, thank you for your hard work and faithful service. Second, let’s look to God’s word to learn from an exceptionally faithful man of God whose ministry was actually shrinking for the advance of the gospel.

John 3:22-36

In our text, John was tempted to discouragement and self-pity. His ministry had been huge, but now it was declining. Why? Would he take the bait and buy the lie that God was upset with him? Would he think he was no longer blessed or even loved? No! He stayed secure in his relationship with God, and rejoiced to see Jesus’ ministry grow. John was not in a baptism competition or a popularity contest. He was on a mission. John’s ministry was not about John. It was always all about Jesus as all of our ministries should always be. That’s the first thing meant by the “Less is More” message title.

In terms of motivation, our ministry must be less about us and more about Christ. We need to honestly examine our ministry motivations. We need to ask God to search our hearts and reveal our underlying motives. Do we need numerical success to feel important, impressive or loved? If so, that’s got to go. God has already said He loves us as loud as it can be said when He offered up His only begotten Son to save us from sin’s penalty, power, and presence. If you know, love, trust and treasure Christ, nothing in all of creation is able to separate you from God’s love. As it says in our text, those who have the Son have the life. Of course, it also says those who don’t trust and obey Christ remain under God’s wrath. Jesus is God’s Way out of death and into Life. And we must be less and less motivated by our needs and more and more motivated other’s need for our Savior.

Churches can easily fall into a business mindset. They think of starting and growing a church much like building a business. The bigger it grows the better it is, but it might help us to think of starting and growing a ministry more like providing health care. Health care comes to us through everything from huge regional medical centers to small local offices. I think what matters most to most people is not the quantity of people served but the quality of care provided. Similarly, I think the quality of the spiritual care we provide for people may be a better measure of ministry effectiveness than exclusive focus on the quantity of people in attendance. So, let's focus a bit less on quantity and more on quality.

Finally, in terms of the means we use to minister, we need to be less self-reliant and more God-reliant. As John said a person can receive nothing except what is given from above. Consider the effectiveness of Jesus' ministry and the following comments Jesus made about His ministry:

"The Son of Man can do nothing of Himself" - John 5:19.

"My teaching is not My own" - John 7:16.

"The word that you hear is not Mine but the Father's" - John 14:24.

If Jesus said He could do nothing without His Father, how much can we do without Him? The answer of course is nothing...at least nothing of any actual spiritual value. We need to be less and less reliant on our programs and processes and more and more reliant on prayer. Prayer is God's ordained means of effective ministry. I wonder how much ministry empowerment and wisdom we miss simply because we do not ask. As James once said, "We have not because we ask not." John and Jesus humbly relied on God and expressed their reliance through frequent fervent prayer. We need to be less impressed with our programs and more impressed with God, and we need to express that by relying less on ourselves and more - much more - on prayer.