Replacing Obligation with Faith

 

        One of the biggest ways I knew I was struggling with depression and anxiety after my miscarriage was how I was going about my faith in the months that followed.

On the outside, I was doing all the things I always did, that I was supposed to do: attending Bible Study with my homework completed, reading my devotional and Bible reading plan daily, attending church. I was the picture of a devout Christian, turning towards God in my hour of grief.

But on the inside, I was numb. I was going through the motions of these activities, continuing to participate in them because I was supposed to, not because I wanted to. My prayers oscillated between indecipherable sobs and silence. I wasn’t engaged in my faith in any meaningful way; I was doing what I knew I should out of obligation.

In the early days of this feeling, I buried my inability to find the desire to practice my faith. I thought it meant my faith was weak. I thought it meant I didn’t have the right connection with God to dig myself out of my grief and find the desire to engage with Him again. And so I didn’t tell anyone what was happening to me. I thought, if I just tried hard enough, I would be able to pull myself out of the fog and get back on the right track.

But so many of the phrases in that paragraph are a dead giveaway to the flaw in my line of thinking: “dig myself out”, “pull myself out.” I was looking for the ability within myself to get over my depression and anxiety, and quite frankly, it just doesn’t work that way. When the chemicals in your brain get that out of whack, “pulling yourself out of the funk” likely isn’t going to happen from sheer force of will. We have to seek help from professionals, whose God-given skills with therapy can be life-saving. And for some of us (I’m raising my hand!), we need to seek the assistance of medication. It doesn’t mean we’re weak; it means that something has gotten out of kilter in our brains and we need something to help bring it back to center. God has provided the miracle of medicine for us in a whole host of ways, and antidepressants are just one of them.

What I found when I started my medication was that, once the fog had cleared, I was able to find my faith again. It was like it was buried underneath that fog and I couldn’t reach it without the fog being cleared away. Did it make my grief go away? Definitely not. Did it make me suddenly happy and help me forget about my loss? No way. What it did do was allow me to finally wrestle with God over the loss I had experienced and the grief of my situation instead of just walking numbly through it and going through the motions like “a good little Christian girl.”

And let me say something before we start digging into Scripture: to a certain extent, there’s nothing wrong with doing your faith activities out of obligation in seasons of struggle. Sometimes, we have to force ourselves to stay connected to our church and our people and our God during those times because otherwise, we will fall away all together. But at some point, we need to shift away from obligation and back to our faith. We have to reclaim our desire for those activities so that we can continue to grow with God. Going through the motions will only get us so far.

We’re going to do something a little different today; usually I start our dive into Scripture with the first mention of the word we’re studying. But I’m actually going to save the first mention of “faith” until the end, for one simple reason. I think if we start with the first mention, we might get discouraged about the implications of moving with God in faith. So instead, I’m going to share some of my favorite examples of faith from the rest of Scripture and come back to the first mention in the hopes that it will be more encouraging in the finale.

I’m sure it’s not shocking that the word “faith” shows up a lot in Scripture, but I was surprised to discover that it only shows up twice in the Old Testament; the other 229 instances of the word (in the KJV), appear in the New Testament. The main reason for this? Jesus.

Many stories of Jesus healing people during His ministry cite the person’s faith as the reason they were healed- in other words, they believed that Jesus could heal them and so He did. One example in particular provides some important insights for us to keep in mind as we work to shift from obligation to faith. In Matthew 17, a man approaches Jesus to seek help for his son who suffers from seizures. He had already gone to Jesus’s disciples, asking them to heal his son, but the disciples were unable to do it. Jesus turns to His disciples and calls them unbelieving, and then rebukes the demon that is plaguing the boy Himself. When His disciples come to Him to ask why they were unable to heal the boy, Jesus responds, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20 NIV).

At first glance, this may seem discouraging. Jesus is criticizing the disciples’ faith, telling them they didn’t have enough to heal the boy themselves. But when He declares that they only need faith the size of a mustard seed to move a mountain? Wow, that gives me so much hope!

Do a Google image search for “mustard seed.” They are small. That’s all the more faith we need to do amazing things in the name of God! When we are able to clear the fog of anxiety and depression, we may feel like we don’t have much in us to dig our faith back out. Praise Jesus, we don’t need much! And the definition of the Greek word used here qualifies what really counts as faith: “assurance, believe, conviction of truth in anything (specifically God and Jesus)” among others. We just have to be assured that God is good. We just have to believe that Jesus has covered our sins with His sacrifice. We just have to know the truth that the Holy Spirit is in us, helping us have the faith we need to move mountains.

While almost all of the instances of faith are in the NewTestament, those verses often refer back to figures of the Old Testament who were great examples of faith. In his letter to the Romans, Paul writes about both Abraham and David. “What does Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness’” (Romans 5:3 NIV). Paul quotes Genesis 15:6 and 22 to remind us that all Abraham had to do was believe that God would follow through on His promise of a son, and his faith was a credit to him. He also quotes David in Psalm 32:1-2: “David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: ‘Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them’ (Romans 5:6-8 NIV). Paul reminds us that David believed that the Messiah was coming, that the forgiveness of sins would be brought through his descendant, which was Jesus. Paul’s ultimate point is this: “However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness” (Romans 5:4 NIV). We don’t have to work for our faith; Paul notes this about David’s words in Psalm 32, “apart from works.” Going through those motions of Bible Study, church, service are not going to get us any closer to the type of faith Abraham and David had. It is our belief in God the Father and Jesus our Savior that will be credited to us.

This is not the only time Abraham’s faith is mentioned. He is a member of one of my favorite sections of Scripture: Hebrews 11, otherwise known as “the Hall of Faith.” The writer of Hebrews reminds us of the faithful lives of many Old Testament figures: Noah having faith to believe God and build the ark to save the human race; not just Abraham but his wife Sarah believing God could enable her to have a child; Moses having faith that God would help him lead the Israelites out of Egypt; and my favorite, Rahab having faith in a God she didn’t yet know and protecting the Israelite spies from her own people. Before you assume that these were perfect people with perfect faith, think again: Noah got drunk, Sarah laughed when she first heard God’s promise, Moses tried to convince God to send someone else, and Rahab was a prostitute. None of these people was sin-free and none of their faiths were perfect. And yet God inspired the writer of Hebrews to give them a place here, as an example for us.

The best part of this list? We’re on it! “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (Hebrews 11:3). This is our mustard seed, ladies. The writer is talking about us, believing that God is the Creator of all things. We get to stand alongside some of Scripture's most famous names for our faith!

Now, we’re going to talk about these examples more next week, because today’s discussion is going to give us a foundation for next week’s. For now, just know that these examples of faith can help you walk more confidently in yours.

So now it’s time to return to the first mention of “faith” in Scripture, one of only two references in the Old Testament. It is found in the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32. It is a song he taught to the Israelites to help them remember all God had brought them through despite their disobedience, and how He had faithfully delivered them to the Promised Land. And I’m not just putting words in Moses’s mouth: “He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he” (Deuteronomy 32:4 NIV). Moses wants the Israelites to be reminded of how faithful God has been to them in stark contrast to their actions: “‘I will hide my face from them,’ he said, ‘and see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful’” (Deuteronomy 32:20 NIV). Moses does not want the Israelites to forget how they turned away from God during their time in the wilderness. He doesn’t pull any punches: “Is this the way you repay the Lord, you foolish and unwise people? Is he not your Father, your Creator, who made you and formed you?” (Deuteronomy 32:6 NIV).

Oof. Can you see why I saved this for the end? If I had started with this, I think we would all be in despair that we couldn’t possibly get this faith thing right and that God would turn away from us because we struggle to be faithful. But I don’t think that’s Moses’s takeaway for the Israelites, and I don’t think that’s God’s takeaway for us either.

The end of Moses’s song reminds the Israelites- and us- that as His people, God is forgiving of even our unfaithfulness: “The Lord will vindicate his people and relent concerning his servants when he sees their strength is gone and no one is left, slave or free” (Deuteronomy 32:36 NIV). He knows we’re not capable of having perfect faith, especially when we are struggling or grieving. This is why He sent Jesus to die in our place, so that we no longer have to focus on the works of perfect faith, but instead we can rely on Jesus and the Holy Spirit to strengthen our faith for us. It is so imperative that we remember this that Moses told the Israelites, “They are not just idle words for you—they are your life” (Deuteronomy 32:47a NIV). He wants us to remember that we’ve struggled in our faith so that we can rejoice that God forgives us when our faith isn’t perfect- which is always!

But there’s a second takeaway here. Despite their unfaithfulness, despite their disobedience, despite the countless times they turned away from God, the writer of Hebrews remembers them like this: “By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the army had marched around them for seven days” (Hebrews 11:29-30 NIV). These are their mustard seeds: believing God would carry them through the Red Sea and that He would bring down the walls of Jericho. Despite the mess that the Israelites were throughout their journey to the Promised Land and beyond, their mustard seed faith was credited to them.

When we see this first picture of faith in the context of the entire word of God, it shifts from being utterly discouraging to instilling hope that we may follow in the Israelites footsteps. Though our faith is imperfect, and though it is small, if we can cling to our belief in the face of struggles, it will be credited to us, too.