Last week we proposed that what we have heretofore called faith is not really faith at all. The idea that we can somehow control God, by our prayers, our piety, and our behavior—that we can leverage God to work things out to our advantage—is not faith but something I’ve labeled antifaith. I also propose that true faith has a predictable, personal, and very authentic outcome: Peace. What is promised through faith is not provision, not prosperity, not even protection. What is promised is peace:
Peace I leave you, My peace I give you; not as the world gives, do I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, nor fearful. (John 14:27)
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentle spirit be known to all people. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and pleading with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:4-7)
For some, this idea was a bridge too far. It’s giving up too much. Is peace enough to expect from your faith? Ought we to expect more? Is this “peace” just really a cheap bargain? Is it, as Jeff suggested last week, “amorphous codswallop” to call peace the ultimate outcome of faith? Is it self delusion? Is it rationalizing the whole thing and just giving up? Isn’t prosperity after all better than peace? Aren’t provision and protection better as well?
Is it better to serve a God who does what you want, or a God who does what is best for you? If you had a choice between a life of peace—however short—but serenely placid and free from fear, or a long life full of trouble, turmoil, and turbulence, which would you choose? Personally, I have anxiety about a lot of things: Bad weather, getting to work on time, whether my dog is going to bite the postman, the hatred that I see in my country, our political leaders, catching COVID. the safety of Asians, my children, my colleagues, my family, you, and much more.
I believe we severely underestimate the value of peace. Over and over in Scripture, when God shows up, the greeting is: “Fear not!” or “Peace be unto you.” The birth of the Messiah is heralded by the proclamation: “Peace on Earth and goodwill toward men.” Jesus himself is called the “Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6).
So I propose that peace is not codswallop, poppycock, humbug, hogwash, rubbish, or drivel, but is genuine, authentic, divine. It is more precious than gold, better than privilege, and even more precious than health and life itself.
There’s nothing worse than living a life of fear, and correspondingly nothing more reassuring than finding peace. George Miller, the great British evangelist of the early 19th century, said: “The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith. The beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.” This concept is perhaps best seen in the story of the three Hebrew worthies we’ve met many times in class. You recall the setting for the story in Daniel 3: After king Nebuchadnezzar has a dream and Daniel tells him the dream featured a large statue made of a variety of different metals, the king decides to make a golden statue and set it up on the plane of Dura in order that all the people of his nation would worship the statue and thereby worship him. But three Hebrew worthies—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—won’t bow to the statue and are dragged before Nebuchadnezzar, who says he will give them another chance to bow down to the statue:
Now if you are ready, at the moment you hear the sound of the horn, flute, lyre, trigon, psaltery and bagpipe, and all kinds of musical instruments, to fall down and worship the statue that I have made, very well. But if you do not worship, you will immediately be thrown into the midst of a furnace of blazing fire; and what god is there who can rescue you from my hands?” Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego replied to the king, “Nebuchadnezzar, we are not in need of an answer to give you concerning this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to rescue us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods nor worship the golden statue that you have set up.” (Daniel 3:15-18)
… For this reason, because the king’s command was harsh and the furnace had been made extremely hot, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. But these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, fell into the middle of the furnace of blazing fire still tied up. Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astounded and stood up quickly; he said to his counselors, “Was it not three men that we threw bound into the middle of the fire?” They replied to the king, “Absolutely, O king.” He responded, “Look! I see four men untied and walking about in the middle of the fire unharmed, and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods!” (Daniel 3:22-25)
Here we see no anxiety. Instead, we see complete freedom from fear. We see authentic faith that leads to perfect peace. “It is possible that God will save us,” they say, “but he might not. God may heal us. But he might not. God may protect us. Maybe, maybe not. His plans are unknown to us. But we’re at peace anyway, no matter how it turns out.”
The metaphor could hardly be more clear: In the fires of life, we have a companion. The furnace had been made so hot that it killed the men who threw the Worthies into it, but when Nebuchadnezzar looked into the flames he saw four men—one of whom appeared God-like—walking around in the midst of the fire without harm.
So if you had faith enough to know that regardless of how hot the fire of life burns around you God would be with you in the fire, would that give you peace? True faith leads to that freedom from fear. It is true, genuine, authentic, and everlasting; not phony, not self deluding. It is the peace which passes all understanding—a peace so unusual it is incomprehensible. I believe we seriously undervalue this type of peace. It is Godly peace. It is divine relief. It is holy immunization against fear.
Most of you know the story of Hezekiah, found in the book of Isaiah (and parts of the story can be found in Kings and Chronicles). Hezekiah was a king of Judah. He was 39 years of age. He had been 14 years on the throne. He finds himself in trouble with some kind of skin condition (possibly smallpox):
In those days Hezekiah became mortally ill. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, came to him and said to him, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Set your house in order, for you are going to die and not live.’” Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, and said, “Please, Lord, just remember how I have walked before You wholeheartedly and in truth, and have done what is good in Your sight.” And Hezekiah wept profusely. Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah, saying, “Go and say to Hezekiah, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of your father David says: “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will add fifteen years to your life. And I will save you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria; and I will protect this city.” (Isaiah 38:1-6)
Notice that when King Hezekiah becomes ill, the Lord sends Isaiah with the message: “Put your affairs in order because you’re going to die. You will not recover.” The Lord informs Hezekiah that his illness is a terminal illness. It is God’s will that Hezekiah’s earthly life be terminated at this time. But Hezekiah refuses to accept the fate that God has clearly revealed to him. Rather than resign himself to the will of God, Hezekiah pleads with God that his will be overruled and that his own will be done instead.
Hezekiah offered up prayers with bitter tears, like a little child begging his father to allow him to have his own way. And out of this he writes a song—the so called Song of Hezekiah which reveals the thoughts of his heart. He bemoans the fact that he is too young to die. He sees himself as being at the pinnacle of life and feels that he is being deprived of the remainder of his years. He refers to the fact that the Lord has cut his life off and likens his life to a shepherd’s tent which has been taken down and carried away, or as a weaver’s cloth, rolled up before being cut from the loom. Just as the Lord swiftly and surely brings a day to a close, so he has brought Hezekiah’s’s life to an end.
But his response to Hezekiah’s plea is a very strange one. He decides to overrule his previous decision and decides to give Hezekiah 15 more years of life. We’re not here to discuss exactly what that means, but it has an impact on the story. What happens next is that those who are from neighboring countries notice that Hezekiah has had a miraculous recovery, and one of the kings from Babylon comes to visit him.
Hezekiah has promised to live in grateful devotion to God but when the Babylonian ambassadors show up he demonstrates that his well-intended promise is not reliable. Hezekiah receives the envoys gladly—their visit makes Hezekiah feel good and important. He shows them all that he has, all the treasures and the wealth of the nation and everything in the temple as well, all of his arms in his armamentarium. And as a consequence of that pride, the Lord declares that he will cause the Babylonians to take away all that they had been shown of the wealth of Judah. Furthermore, some of Hezekiah’s own sons would become emasculated eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.
We don’t know the end from the beginning. We don’t know what the future holds. We don’t even know what the next man knows. See how useless our point of view really is! Yet God hears our cries of faith. Sometimes peace comes with healing. Sometimes peace comes without healing. Sometimes peace comes with restoration. Sometimes peace comes with death. But peace is the ever-sure outcome of true faith. We see in the story of Hezekiah the outcome of antifaith. We see that what we long thought was faith demonstrated in these kinds of requests is truly antifaith. Never, never underestimate the value of peace.
Don’t say that the peace that faith brings is self delusional and un-genuine. Don’t say that peace that faith brings is inferior to provision. What would you give for a life of peace, and a death in peacefulness as well? What are your thoughts about faith and about antifaith, about peace as a true and genuine outcome of faith—an authentic end product of faith. What do you think about a new way of seeing faith, of teaching faith, of living faith? What do you think about the three Hebrew worthies who demonstrate through their faith the kind of peace that is promised? What do you think about Hezekiah, who demonstrates through his antifaith the fear and the destruction that is a consequence?
Should we, after all, expect God to hear us? And if we expect him to hear us, what should be the expectations to how he answers what we asked for? And is it possible that you can serve a God who gives you peace but not provision?
David: Two days ago, under a frozen lake in northern Finland, Johanna Nordblad beat the world record for distance swimming under ice in a swimsuit and without breathing apparatus. She swam 103 meters, beating the men’s record of 76 meters, in two minutes and 46 seconds. She’s one of those people who seek peace through danger, through risk, through excitement… and finds it. Like all extreme sportspersons, she reaches a near-death point where a kind of Nirvana. a very deep peace, sets in. It’s such an attractive place, apparently, that you want to stay there—you’re ready to die.
Would the rest of us prefer a life of peace without risk? A lot of people seem to think that would be boring. We all seem to need some element of danger, of risk, of excitement in our lives, though not necessarily taking it to such extremes as Johanna.
Donald: That’s quite a remarkable feat. I’m confident—because God is my Creator—that heaven will be wonderful. But here on Earth, peace is boring. It seems necessary to overcome some level of fear to achieve a peace beyond boring. I’ve never been involved with drugs over the years, but is that what people are attempting to accomplish through drugs?
I think we’re all pretty comfortable with this antifaith vs. authentic or true faith concept. But does faith then equal peace? We’re trying to get to a point of accepting peace—authentic peace. How do you get to that point?
C-J: Faith is what we were introduced to, which is “Thy will be done.” Peace is cognitive, and transient. Johanna Nordblad’s experience is chemistry. But then we transcend chemistry. And as far as that arc of needing to have stimulation: That goes back to the amygdala, the deepest part of our brain. And so we need both in this dimension, so that we know where we are. It gives us an awareness. So fight or flight, peace, and so on. But I notice that if my dog doesn’t get enough stimulation, she becomes a mope, she’s bored. When I take her out, she comes back happy and perky. We communicate, we have fun.
Thinking about things I see that just don’t seem right. I can’t stand that choice. Today, I was fussing with it about a neighbor. And I said to myself: If you can just ask yourself the question, “Where does the soul come from?” And the answer for me is God. So if you can reflect that you’re aware that you’re connected to God spiritually, and not deal with what you don’t like in this dimension, but let that person watch you and understand this in your mind, not fuss with it. That person has the same Spirit of God within them but they don’t know it. That individual is unaware of the presence of God, of being connected to the Creator.
It changed my attitude tremendously. I don’t have to deal with the person, I just need to see God in that person, that namaste thing. And it to me just made it a whole lot easier to find peace, because all is well if I trust God to do the work, whether he uses me as the instrument or time and place. It’s not my job. My job is just to be the reflection and to work on my own relationship with God and the people are brought in to me and that I hear God’s voice speaking through you, and even people I don’t like. What is God telling me? That’s the peace that isn’t biochemical, that’s the peace that goes to “Thy will be done.” Does that make sense? Then I’m not accountable for it. I’m only accountable for my relationship with God that should transcend the temporal.
Carolyn: One of my greatest questions is: How does prayer life change as a result of the way we’ve been raised, especially when we are used to praying for people? I’m befuddled by our discussion, because I cherish my prayer life. I always say “Thy will be done” but I also expect that God will hear my prayer in the way I would want it. I know it isn’t always perfect.
Donald: This week, every time I’ve said grace or offered a prayer, I too have stumbled because we have learned how to pray a particular and repetitive way—”These are the people we pray for and these are the things we would hope for.” If this is going to be the center of how we understand what faith is, then our prayers have to change quite radically. And I thought it was very difficult to say just “Thy will be done.” What do we say after that? You really want to add: “…and this is the way I want my will to be done!”
David: The Lord’s Prayer says: “Thy will be done,” but then it adds: “Give us this day our daily bread….” Give us. Give me. I’ve said before I think this has to be a human, not a divine, addendum. It’s our prayer, not God’s prayer; or, rather, it’s both. It gives us the best of both worlds—material and spiritual. It asks for both God’s will and our will to be done. But Jesus gave no guarantees about the outcome. He simply said it is what you should pray every day. He did not say it would work.
C-J: I think prayer in the way that you’ve just used that as a format is mindfulness. But if I go back to the garden of Eden as a metaphor, I think it’s communion. I think it’s a relationship where you can ask the big questions. Prayer should be creative, in this sense: When a child says, “Mommy, why is the sky blue?” she replies: “God made it so because he wants to surround you with beauty.” But as the child grows older she learns it’s just the way the light bends in the atmosphere and what the eye can perceive. I think, oftentimes, of the verse in Scripture that says “As a child…”, that we have this wonderment about what we perceive, and we allow our mind to drift into “How does that work? Why is it like that?” It’s the nature that I believe God has put in us to be creators—for peace, for war, to have children, to build homes,…
All of that, I think, is what makes humans different. It’s not just being self-aware and using tools, I think it’s this wonderful capacity that if we were to evolve more as a species, we would become more telepathic, that we would be able to use our intuition (for lack of a better word) to really coalesce into this incredible sense of wonder. We wouldn’t set boundaries and limitations—”I can’t,” “I don’t want to.” But I think our conscious thoughts would be much more profound.
Whenever I think about physics, I’m in awe. Why is there’s more dark matter than what I can see? Why is it there? How does it work? What am I not able to see? What if I could see? Would it have light and not just energy, and properties that are measurable? I would just love to experience that. I don’t know if its explicable. But I just think it would be an incredibly different way of being, and it would transcend the organic.
Don: I had the same thoughts this week about “Thy will be done.” But the more I thought about it, the more it began to occur to me that praying the prayer “Thy will be done” is itself antifaith. It’s really remarkable that I would think that I should have to give God permission to have his will be done. “This is what I want, but if you really want your will to be done then go ahead and do it your way.” As if my permission for God to do it his way is necessary! It made me begin to recalibrate a lot of my thinking. Even the simple permission to God to do his will seemed to me to be a stroke of antifaith on my part. I don’t know if that makes it worse or better,
Donald: Has that affected your thinking as you pray?
Don: No. In some ways it’s a release in some ways it’s a freedom.
David
I don’t see it as permission. I see it as acceptance. I accept that God’s will be done. I’ll stop kicking against the traces. I surrender. It’s not that I give you permission to do what you want. I accept—I know—that your will will be done. Simple as that.
Anonymous: The night I came back from my dying daughter’s house I opened my Bible at random and it opened to Jesus praying in Gethsemane: “Not my will, but your will be done.” I felt peace at that moment. The burden that was on my back, I just gave to God. That kind of peace comes from feeling powerless, when we know we cannot do anything. When we stop listening to our ego telling us if we pray harder we might get what we pray for, and instead surrender to God’s will, it brings great peace and true faith.
That sounds like I’m claiming to have true faith, but in fact I have struggled so often to accept God’s will. My acceptance was exceptional that time. But life has taught me that in those moments when I have true faith, it brings great peace. For me, that means reaching a state of not complaining, not being sad, not being passionate about anything, not being angry or upset. You just feel like you’re going with the flow as God wants, as God wills. And so you accept everything. You accept whatever life throws at you. That’s genuine peace.
It’s different than the peace that the world gives. The world gives temporary peace and soon you lose it. But walking with God and accepting his will into your life gives you ongoing peace until something happens and your weakness returns to hinder your faith. It might be something so insignificant, but it catches us in a moment when our faith has weakened and we’re not alert to the enemy lying in wait to insinuate a reason for us to become unsatisfied, unhappy, uneasy. It could be something very, very simple. Everybody knows how that goes in their lives. We all experience true peace and worldly peace, so we all know the difference.
As for the Lord’s Prayer: One day, some weeks ago, I was praying in the morning and reading the Bible, and I’m “in the spirit”—I mean, I’m really deep in my satisfaction and my feeling with God. And I remembered David’s comment about omitting “Give us our daily bread” from the Lord’s Prayer. And I thought, “bread” includes the peace, the enlightenment that we need every day, that we need to ask for every day. We ask God for bread not only in a material sense but also in the form of forgiveness, for instance. We need we always need to be saved from our lukewarmness every day; that’s part of the daily bread, we need to depend on him every day, for everything.
Being thankful is hard sometimes. So we ask God to give us thankfulness. That’s our daily request to God: “Make us today so thankful that we don’t have any trace of dissatisfaction inside of us that might shake us down from our rock, Jesus Christ.” This is our daily bread. This is what we pray for every day. And if we don’t get it from God, and if we don’t pray for it, and God knows that we need it every day, he wouldn’t have taught us to pray that way.
Carolyn: Very beautifully said. My question is, I talk to God in my daily devotions and as I walk through the house, but when I meet people who look to me for support and I want to pray with them, I have to adjust my thinking if my goal is just peace. I ask the Holy Spirit to guide me and put me in a place where I can find it, and I can have the confidence that Jesus is there, helping me. As for our daily bread, the Holy Spirit can show us where to find it, but when we try to comfort or just show love to the people that we meet every day, I find myself now broken, and I think I need some help.
C-J: When I pray for people—unbelievers—I usually ask the Lord to open their eyes of understanding. God knows who they are and where they are. It’s not my responsibility, My responsibility is to be a reflection. When I share my faith with them, I tell them the message is in the story. It’s like reading a child a book and asking “What is the lesson that we’ve learned in this book?” Is it to be good friends, or to be kind or to keep our neighborhood clean? Whatever the story is, there’s a purpose in that message. So I tell them look to the stories because these were real people, historical figures who had the same questions you do, have had the same pain that you do.
I don’t try to be a theologian. I don’t try to pray according to what they think they need or what they want. But that you would reveal the path that you would have us take with understanding and purpose with the intention you have given. And in doing that, I think I release them to discover God. We don’t tell our children who they can be, but we guide them in the matter of things that will do them harm. And we tell them, if you choose this, this will be the consequence, or might be the consequence, or choose this and it’ll be a path of enlightenment—you will learn, you will grow, you’ll meet the people that will help you learn and grow.
But it’s really their journey. It’s not for me to pray according to my will, or their will, or what I perceive Christianity to mean. I really try to avoid all those landmines. I’ll pray with them. Let them feel your peace, your understanding, your mercy, your kindness, your wisdom and discernment. Those are the words I use, not “Let’s pray about you getting a new job.” That’s dangerous and it can make people fall away. I believe God is my god of provision. But I oftentimes smile when I see it. The expectation is relationship. It’s about relationship.
People will disappoint us. When it doesn’t go my way, I wonder what just happened? I have to tell myself, “They meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” That’s hard. They meant to hurt you. They meant to destroy this or that. But God meant it for good to awaken our spirit so that we can do better, we should do better. We know how to do better. We are witnesses for the Holy Spirit that is resident within us. And if we can find our way back from our own egos, our own pride, our own messaging that we get from society or from the pulpit, then we can become that instrument in God’s hand instead of “I know what I should do.” But if we hold our breath long enough underneath the ice and trust God to bring us to the surface, it’s a completely different experience.
Reinhard: Our relationship with God grows more mature as we age. When we encounter people with problems and wonder what to do or say, if our hearts and minds are in tune with God’s word and God’s will, I believe the Holy Spirit will lead us to make the right decision and say or do the right thing. Maybe this is not the full answer or the correct answer, but it’s the best I can do.
To me, when we organize our life to face a certain situation, we have different priorities depending on our stage of life. When we are young, we think only about school or career. When we are old, our priority as Christians turns towards life after death. When we make routine decisions where we know the outcome, we tend to make decisions on our own. And I think God knows that. He gave us minds to discern bad and good.
But when we come to heavy decisions, major decision, such as between life and death, that’s where “Thy will be done” really matters, because we don’t know what the outcome will be. We may think we know what we want and pray to God for it, but maybe God gives us not what we want but what is best for us. When we receive his blessing, then we can enjoy to the fullest the things that we seek. God gives us the peace that the world cannot give us.
Worldly people get good things in life too, but they are temporary things. When we have God and feel the experience of receiving his blessing, we can enjoy life to the fullest. I think God wants us, while we live on this earth, to receive his blessing and return our thanks to him. That’s what being a Christian, being a follower of Christ, is. So all in all, putting everything together, when we have God then we have the peace that God wants for us. The more we have God, the stronger the relationship we can experience with him, because in every decision we have somebody—our creator—who knows exactly what we want. The strong relationship we have reflects the strong faith we have in God.
C-J: I think it’s true that we are supposed to be responsible. Even a small child has a responsibility of obedience and a teachable spirit. I love to use the book The Seven Habits of Effective People to lay out the program, the plan. We do need to understand each piece we put in that puzzle, because we’re working towards a goal. There’s a right way and a wrong way if you want to get a certain outcome. We have to be responsible, because this is where we live, this is our reality.
But spiritual matters are private, between me and my god and my Creator. What I believe is revealed to me is my attitude. Am I a reflection and a testimony? Am I being loving and kind? Am I being gracious? I think we grow in that way. And I cycle back. I go through this over and over. God is constantly pushing us in a direction and raising the bar, testing us not to become complacent, not to be presumptuous. We see that in the Bible, over and over, and in other holy texts, to not be presumptuous about what you will do, but to be submissive, open to those in authority that would come to you, even a neighbor.
My neighbor came to me the other day, saying she just had a sense, which she shared with me, and she was on the mark. I had not said anything to her. But God used that vessel for a message to tell me what she had to say. For me, it was like, we are never really alone. When we think about the grace of God, where God will intervene and say, “I know you’re thinking and feeling this. But I want to remind you of who I am—the Great I Am, the divine.”
It brought me back full circle to what we started with: What is faith? What is this relationship and is “Thy will be done” to believe that although I am here, there’s something much greater going on? It’s all of what we’ve said. How do we pray? Who are our relationships with? How do we reflect that higher consciousness being within us? And so much that doesn’t even come across the radar, but it’s there.
Donald: As a photographer, I look at the word reflect differently in some ways than other people do, For many weeks, we’ve been saying “Let’s not try to be God”. Another way of saying that is: “Reflect God, but don’t try to be God.” You’re not trying to be God, you’re not asking God specifics, because you’re not God, God knows. Your responsibility is to reflect God.
Don: We have a little bit more to do about expectation and faith, and about worthiness and faith. One of the things that comes through in the stories of faith, particularly in the New Testament, are the differences between those who expect or even demand something from God and those who have low expectations. And we need to look at faith and works, which will transition us to the next “Woe” of the Pharisees, where Jesus talks about cleaning out the inside of the cup instead of the outside of the cup. So we have a few more weeks on the topic of faith.
PLEASE NOTE: No meeting next week. We’ll meet in the first Saturday in April.