Not a Faith by Works, but a Faith Unleashed!
Posted in UncategorizedI grew up most of my life on a farm and a ranch in southeastern Wyoming right next to the Nebraska border. Wintertime was spent in a larger town, but come spring, we were prepping for calves to be born and wheat to be harvested.
My hero growing up was my dad. He was the total cowboy. He roped calves, broke horses, and I think he chewed manure instead of tobacco he was so tough. In my head as a little boy, he was the Lone Ranger without the mask. I literally believed my dad could do anything, and it used to freak my mom out!
One of our favorite ways to get a rise out of my mom was for me to jump to my dad from the ladder of his combine during harvest season. Every year I would try to jump from a higher and higher step. And as I increased in the height, my mom quit watching. The reason I would do it (besides the joy of seeing the horror on my mom’s face), was because underneath me I would hear my dad say, “Jump! Daddy has you.” And I knew he did.
That is the concept of faith and that is one of the major premises of the entire Bible. It is loaded with stories of God saying to his people, “Jump! Daddy has you.” To Noah, God asked him to build a boat.
To Abraham, the father of the faithful, God told him to move to a land and expect a son (only to be told to sacrifice him a few years later). Moses was asked to confront the leader of the then known world and take Abraham’s offspring back to the Promised Land. And the list goes on and on, but to all of them God said the same thing: “Jump! Daddy has you.”
This is what James was talking about in the letter he wrote to
the Jews dispersed all over the Roman Empire. At the very heart
of his letter, James proclaimed to a group of beaten up people,
“Its okay. Jump! Daddy has you.” James knew they were struggling trusting God.
In the first chapter of his letter he wrote, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (v.17). When talking about “variation” and “shadow,” he was using the idea of a candle. If you have ever seen the shadow that a candle casts, then you know that it dances all over the wall. The light that a candle puts off is unstable and unreliable. When he calls God the “Father of lights,” however, he means he is like the sun in the room. You won’t find an erratic or wavering shadow, but instead, no matter what the situation, you can TRUST him!
That is why James could write, “You see, faith (TRUST) by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless”
(James 2:17). My trust in my dad didn’t become faith until I jumped. And if all we are is a bunch of people who say, “God can,” but we never trust him, then we really don’t have faith. God desires to show himself off to the world through people who really believe and live like he has us.
Will God ask you to jump? He will and in ways that will seem much scarier than me jumping off the top stair of my dad’s combine. Will it seem “crazy?” It will only to people who don¹t know your Father in heaven, a “Father of lights.”
May 26th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Thank you for this post. I’m watching God teach me this kind of faith every day. It can be difficult at times…today being one of those times…but then I end up on this site reading this post and my heart of faith is strengthened and renewed. He will always catch us when we jump in faith!!