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Corinthians 12:8-10; Joshua 2:8-14
August
Sermon Series: Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Faith
Where do you go to find
God? Sitting in my email the other day,
waiting to be opened and read on a week I knew I was going to be offering
thoughts on faith as a gift of the
Holy Spirit, was an online article titled “Finding God in Your Lucky
Charms.” My first thought … really?!
Right there amidst the marshmallow creations of yellow
moons, orange stars, green clovers, blue diamonds, and pink hearts?
Perhaps I’d been missing the marshmallow rainbow Trinity
all these years?
Finding God in a box of Wheaties, perhaps, but Lucky
Charms seemed a stretch.
The author, a young
pastor ministering in Tennessee, didn’t mention Lucky Charms in his opening
sentence. He instead mentioned heating
pads and Bengay. These are what he’d
entered a store to purchase. Comforting,
healing products sought at a time of feeling sore and vulnerable and in a dark
mood. You know that feeling, right? There was hope for this article after
all.
As he searched for these products, he had been greeted by
a store clerk. He instantly nicknamed her
“Captain Cheery.” Despite his feeling
rushed to get some relief, he paused long enough to make small talk. Here’s what he had to say about what he
heard from “Captain Cheery” – “I spent
the next few minutes listening to her talk about how God has given us a
beautiful day, how the sun and the blue sky are God’s gift to us, and how she’s
grateful for his grace. You know, the usual bunnies and sunshine stuff.”
He didn’t begrudge “Captain
Cheery” for having such an upbeat, faithful outlook. But he had to admit to himself that he was
jealous, because he’d never been a person to see God in nature. Or seen a Jesus
fish in their Lucky Charms as he’d once heard someone claim. That claim made him wonder if the Lucky
Charms leprechaun has sprinkled something sinister on the marshmallows to make
them magically delicious!
More seriously, he admitted that faith just didn’t come
easily to him. He more readily
identifies with biblical people whose faith came to them through difficult
daily paths.
Think Job and the authors of Ecclesiastes and about half
the Psalms.
From reading his words, I got the feeling this saint is
better able to see and lament sinful smudges in the world than find and
celebrate God’s good fingerprints.
After his encounter with
“Captain Cheery,” he found himself not only jealous, but also grateful. He walked out of the store praising God for
yearly seasonal cycles, for holding the world together, and for trusting that
he was not alone in struggling with darkness, doubt and detecting God’s
presence. “Even though faith does not
come easy for me,” he concluded, “it does come.”[i]
There are many ways that
the Holy Spirit gift us with faith. We
receive it during bright times full of energizing, illuminating sunshine as
well as times of feeling cloaked by dark nights of the soul.
It does come.
It always comes.
It’s like a pilot light of a stove that keeps burning
even when we have no idea what or how to cook.
When the apostle Paul
preached about faith, he used a specific Greek word. Like many words, it has a helpful root
meaning. The word is pistos and at its root it means “to be
persuaded.”
When you think about feeling persuaded, what first comes
to mind?
Decisions you’ve made after influential people convinced
you to make them?
When we feel persuaded, we find ourselves coming to
agreement with certain values and truths.
Sometimes this happens quite easily, as when a child or
grandchild persuades you to take them for ice cream.
Sometimes it
happens quite reluctantly, such as when you can no longer ignore the needed car
repair and the auto place guy’s voice gains authority.
Once in agreement, we acknowledge that we have
established a fundamental level of trust.
The Spirit moves in all kinds of
ways that persuade us to trust in God’s amazingly good grace and power through
Jesus Christ. So persuaded, we find
ourselves able to live more faithfully.
It does come.
It always comes.
And it comes to all
God’s children. Often in surprising
ways, at intense times. Just consider
the story of Rahab.
She became the mother of Boaz, who later married
Ruth. Boaz and Ruth welcomed a son into
the world named Obed, who eventually fathered Jesse, the father of King
David. In this way, Rahab found her way
into the royal genealogy of Jesus.
But before all this, she
had a much different reputation. She
had lived as a low-status, morally judged prostitute.
Her home was literally a hole in the wall of
Jericho.
If you’ll recall, the Israelite leader Joshua had sent
spies to this city of the Promised Land to determine its military
strength. There likely wouldn’t be a
song to sing about Battle of Jericho if Rahab hadn’t housed these two spies and
brilliantly devised a plan to hide them from enemy soldiers.
The Holy Spirit had filled her with the gift of a bold
faith. She became persuaded to side with
God. The fear that had caused many courageous
hearts to melt subsided. Rahab’s heart
was forged with faith. She was able to trust
and to give strong witness by saying, “the LORD your God is God in heaven above
and on earth below.”
Faith comes to all God’s
children.
It comes.
It always comes.
And the Spirit had a lot of holy persuading to do to the
ancient church in Corinth through the voice and leadership of Paul. The early Christians of that congregation weren’t
getting along. There had been social
posturing and cliques. Multiple
conflicts and tensions led them to forget that they were called to be one Body
in Christ. Instead of coming together
to focus on the gift of faith and using all their spiritual gifts together to
glorify God, they fought about
who their Christian leader was,
about having too much pride,
about worshipping idols,
about selfishness at church gatherings,
proper hospitality,
and about issues of sexuality.
If Rahab had been
living in a wall nearby, she wouldn’t have felt particularly welcomed at this
church.
A prayerful reading of
this letter from Paul, as well as all parts of the New Testament, reminds us
that conflict is an inevitable part of congregational life. This is something to simply accept and then
actively address.
According to Paul, the way to do so is always to stop
focusing on the strife and start fully celebrating spiritual gifts.
To have faith in God’s future plans instead of
foreboding.
To be persuaded together so there is no dissension.
To always remember that “if one member suffers, all
suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.”
This was and it remains a call to demonstrate great
faith at all times, to be one in the Spirit, one in the Lord.
“Just as the body is one and has many members,” preached
Paul, “and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is
with Christ.”
Where do you go to find God? How
is the Spirit persuading you toward great trust in Jesus this morning? Are you praying each day for this holy
persuasion, this strengthening of faith for your life, for our congregation,
for our connection to all of our sister churches?
Maybe you are
usually a “Captain Cheery” or jealous of someone who is.
Maybe you are joined at the hip with Job.
Maybe conflict is as common to you and you feel as constantly
under construction as NJ roadwork.
What matters most is that the gift of faith keeps
coming.
It always keeps coming.
It directs the traffic.
It reassures doubts, comforts afflictions, brightens
darkness.
But it needs willing hearts and minds to receive it, and
then to creatively live it out in community come what may.
Whenever, wherever and
however you feel your faith boosted, thank the Holy Spirit. Prayerfully ask to be persuaded further. As Christian peace activist and Nazi
concentration camp survivor Corrie ten Boom puts it …
“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known
God.” Amen.
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