Monday, June 14, 2010

Is My Faith Strong Enough?

Starbucks is a wonderful place. This week I have had another "by chance" meetings at Starbucks. I'm preparing music for worship at Starbucks and had to made a phone call for National Youth Gathering stuff. Well, when I hang up, the person at the table next to me stated, "I heard you say the word, God." I responded with "yes, I did". Then the conversation continued with "how do you know if my faith is strong enough to receive salvation?" I'm floored by this question...why, I wasn't expecting this question nor was I planning on a spiritual conversation at another Starbucks. So we got on a conversation about salvation.

Is my faith strong enough for salvation? When you doubt that your faith is strong enough for you to be a child of God, it's a clear indication that you misunderstand the nature of faith. Faith in God doesn't involve certainty, nor does it imply the absence of doubts. What a torment, what a terrible burden, to believe that faith must be perfect before God will respond to our need! If we believe that our faith must be perfect, we have established an unattainable goal and enslaved ourselves to a new form of works-salvation. Rather than basing our faith on God's goodness and Christ's completed work of love on our behalf, we base it on our own achievement-our own perfection. People who think that their faith must be perfect before it will be acceptable to God ignore dozens of scriptural examples of people whose trust in God was imperfect, yet their faith was still accepted by Him. Moses, Abraham, David, Jacob, Elijah , Peter and Thomas are some of those people in scripture. In fact, all the disciples had moments like this. These examples show that it isn't the perfection of our trust that matters, but the perfection of God's love and forgiveness. As sinful people, we will at times doubt the strength of our faith. We will sometimes doubt our salvation, but because of the Grace of our Lord, we shouldn't worry. His love, His death, His resurrection, His forgiveness and mercy gives us that assurance that we can and will receive salvation in His name. To God be the glory!