Contending for the Faith
Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people.
Jude 1:3 (NIV)
Who we worship matters. And the distinct way we see Jesus matters too. What we say about Him matters. Jude really challenges us that defending our faith matters as well. The faith we practice matters. The worship we offer matters. The Bible in its entirety—from Genesis to Revelation—all of it matters. And yes, that even includes passages that make us think about culture, morality, sexuality, and politics.
Jude encouraged and admonished Christians to fight for the preservation of the faith that was handed down to them from the prophets and through Jesus, a faith that was being attacked by people who just could not surrender to a Christ-centered spirituality.
Unfortunately, the Christian faith is a favorite of most people to express doubt about, to make comedic fodder of, to find easy excuses for abandoning. People are inclined to give themselves permission to ignore it, to adjust it, to extract important Scriptures from the Bible and disregard the rest. Some people in our culture think themselves too highly enlightened to believe in the Bible. Others have become disheartened. And way too many are afraid to defend the core beliefs of the Scriptures as we know them.
When your faith is being targeted for dilution or destruction, listen to what Jude says in verse 3: I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith. That word contend in the Greek can be transliterated into fight for it, preserve it.
If you’ve got a faith that is growing, your faith is always wrestling with doubt. That’s because it’s easy to have enough faith to be on the boat while Jesus is on board, but your faith is stretched when Jesus invites you to meet Him out on the water. It is easy to have a faith in a God who comes to you saying, “I’m going to give you a son,” but it’s not as easy to exercise that same faith when God comes along and says, “Take your only son, the son you love, and meet me on the mountain and sacrifice him there as a burnt offering.”
You can doubt, you can be curious, you can search, and you can wander and come back— because Jesus is the center. His blood has redeemed us. Not only is Jesus the Son of God, but Jesus is God the Son. That is the faith entrusted to us that we must contend for.
If you’re not wrestling, you don’t have faith. But here’s what faith says: don’t you ever forget, child of God, that while men and women may come and go, the Word of God shall abide forever.
Finding The Secret Place
He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
Psalm 91:1 (NKJV)
Jewish tradition attributes authorship of Psalm 91 to Moses. But what is the “secret place” it mentions? It was not the tabernacle itself that he is referring to (Exodus 25-31); it is more about his spiritual relationship to his God. Why? Because the tabernacle erected in that desert is obviously no secret. And yet Moses says that he or she who dwells in that “secret place” will abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
What is this secret place? And where can I find it? Is the secret place the Word of God? Well, it can’t be that because everybody, believer and unbeliever alike, has access to the Word. Is it a church building? The Church as an institution cannot be the secret place; everyone has access to it. It’s not worship either, because anybody can do that. So what is this secret place that puts me right under the shadow of the Almighty?
When he alludes to a secret place, where he says he can feel accepted and affirmed and protected by the shadow presence of an almighty God, the secret place must be a place that provides cover enough that you would want to abide there and rest there forever.
The secret place exists under the covering of Christ, who sacrificed His body for our lives. Among all the issues of our time—fires burning, multiplying viruses, threatening conflict, brewing tensions, mounting wars, violence in the street—His death has given us a safe place.
We are hard pressed on every side and the only place that protects who we are totally is the secret place of the Most High God. Only from that place can we balance on one hand the stress of these strange times, and in the other hand the goodness of our Almighty God.
That’s the secret place. The Holy Spirit did not come to visit or pass by. The Holy Spirit came to indwell permanently so that if surrendered, we are always aware of being in God’s proximity.
The secret place is the internal surrender to the Holy Spirit that always keeps you right under the shadow of the Almighty.
The person who lives his or her life in the surrendered space of being led by the Spirit has found the secret to living a life that counts, a life of meaning, a life of substance, a life of resilience. Living your life with your internal spaces surrendered to the Spirit means you abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
Are You an Acts 11 Christian?
And when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.
Acts 11:26 (NIV)
What made Luke, the writer of Acts, decide that it was important for later generations to know that it was in Antioch, after a year of Barnabas and Saul’s teaching, that the disciples were labeled as Christians?
Prior to this, those that were now called Christians were simply called disciples, brethren, believers, those being saved, or people of the way. Now from Acts 11 on, they are called Christians. And, interestingly, they are called Christians not by naming themselves. They are called Christians by an unbelieving public in Antioch.
This means to people in Antioch, Christ gave them the frame for coining the epitaph “Christiano.” It simply became the familiar way of talking about the peculiar change that had taken place over the last year for those who had surrendered themselves to the teaching of Barnabas and Saul.
They were called Christians because in that one year, they had convictions about a belief that Jesus is the only God and savior and teacher and model that can be imitated and emulated to ensure a person can live out God’s perfect will for their life. You don’t become a Christian and then go out and live however you want. No, when you’re a Christian, it is a very deliberative devotion.
So what is a Christian today? What does that label mean? If you interact with a Christian, what do you think you ought to hear and what should you encounter?
The tension we have when holding Acts 11:26 next to Christianity today is that there is very little resemblance between the two. There are so many lesser, lower, lighter, ludicrous definitions attached to what it means to be a Christian today. In our culture, the definition of a Christian can sometimes be dangerously different than what it meant originally to those describing the disciples in Antioch. What does it mean to you to be a Christian?
The power of being a Christian is the change, the behavior, the lifestyle, the interaction that you have with others that forces them to describe you amidst all the descriptions they use, as Christian. They come away saying, “I interacted with a Christian, and I know I interacted with a Christian because we couldn’t get through the conversation without Jesus coming up! They could not talk to me without pointing to what Christ has done, who Christ is, and the significance of Christ for our human salvation!”
Are you behaving, speaking, and thinking like an Acts 11 Christian?
Because He Cares
Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
1 Peter 5:7 (NIV)
Peter, in chapter 5 of his epistle, makes the bold theological assertion and affirmation to people who are being gripped by anxiety, weighed down by worry, and living excessively concerned about so many cares.
Peter gets a peek behind the veneer of our worries, and he responds to us like this:
Child of God, amidst the backdrop of so much for which you ought to have anxiety, cast your cares on Him. Why? Because He cares for you. The word “cast,” when transliterated from the original, means to toss or to throw.
Casting our cares on Jesus is the appropriate spiritual response to the questions that worry will often raise.
Jesus’s care for you gives you a reason to wake up every day against the backdrop of all we are dealing with in the various seasons of our lives. Casting your cares on Jesus challenges your assertions and forces you to wake up every day to ask yourself, “How deeply do I believe in Jesus?”
He is concerned about what is worrying you. In fact, He grieves over it. He has an emotional response to your lived experience. He feels your pain. He is acquainted with your grief. He is touched by your infirmities. Therefore,
- Don’t feel like you’re putting too much burden on Him. He can handle it.
- Don’t feel like you’re talking to Him too much. He prefers you to talk to Him.
- Don’t feel like your complaints are going to reach ears that are too sensitive to hear.
When worry is squeezing us, He wants you to cast your burdens on Him in humility.
As Christians, we live remembering that we did not come here to stay. Our total emotional investment therefore can never be deposited, nor should it be withdrawn, in one season alone. That is to say, don’t let worry make you offer a withdrawal of your healthy emotionality.
Because of Jesus, we are assured a salvation that results in Him being exalted and His people being elevated to rule and reign. We have to really trust what scripture says when it teaches that all things are working together for our good (Romans 8:28). Despite the persecution, the pressure, the people, the problems, the peril, and the pain, we have a living hope. We stand in the midst of uncertainty, but we are certain of this truth: Jesus Christ is the complete fulfillment of God’s intent for humanity—and He cares deeply for you!
Jesus Is Willing
Now a leper came to Him, imploring Him, kneeling down to Him and saying to Him, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.”
Mark 1:40 (NKJV)
A leper came to Jesus begging for healing, and the first words out of his mouth speak so much to his life experience. He says to Jesus, “If You are willing…”
Do you catch the intonation of that? Do you hear the emotionality of it?
In those few words, it’s almost as if I can hear the leper saying, “I live every single day with people pushing me to the periphery. I am the nagging observation of everybody I come in contact with. Nobody wants to step into my malady. Nobody wants to get involved in the trauma that I’m living with every day. Nobody wants to extend compassion or sympathy. And I’ve heard about You, Jesus. I’ve heard You’ve caused blind eyes to see. I’ve heard that You’ve worked miracles. You probably wouldn’t want to waste time with a leper like me… but if You want to—if You are willing—You can make me clean.”
This man has been nurturing the fatigue that has gripped his life because of the way people around him have given up on him being anything other than a leper.
Verse 41 says, however, “Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I am willing; be cleansed.’”
In those words, we can read Jesus’s empathy. “Your condition doesn’t change who I am. Nothing about your leprosy is a threat to me. The threat in your life is not causing me any angst or anxiety. The horror of your life is not causing me to flinch or fear at all. I want to get involved. It’s maladies like yours that I step right into and speak to until they give way to health, wholeness, and restoration. I want to help you, and since you haven’t given up on yourself after all this time, I’ll step into the fight with you.”
Friend, this is why you can’t ever give up on you. Jesus will never not want to help you become a better you. Don’t ever walk away from your aspirations, your goals, your dreams, and your visions—because you are in relationship with the Christ who says, I’ll never leave you.
As long as you’ve got fight in you, you can count on Jesus being in there with you because He wants you to prosper. He wants you to be more than a conqueror. He wants you to experience life and to experience it more abundantly.
Jesus will always be willing to help you.
