Today, I listened to two sermons during my walks to and from the gym and while weightlifting. The first was Men Marked by the Presence of God by Paul Washer, and the second was When Disillusioned, Focus on God by Peter Tan-Chi. Interestingly, both touched on the topic of faith. What does real faith look like?
Here’s a direct quote from Washer’s sermon:
It is so hard for us to fathom. I talk to my Pentecostal friends sometimes, and they all say that the greatest demonstration of faith is being able to raise the dead. You raise the dead in a Pentecostal church, you are your upper epsilon. They were saying that one day, and I looked at them and I said, raise the dead? I said, raise the dead? That’s nothing for a Baptist.
Raise the dead? That doesn’t require faith. And they said, well, what requires? I mean, what do you guys consider the greatest exercise of faith? I said, for me to look in the mirror of God’s Word, see the dullness of my heart and the many times that I have offended the King of Glory, and then to actually believe that He loves me like He says He does.
For Paul Washer, it requires more faith to believe that God loves us the way He says He does than to raise the dead.
Peter Tan-Chi similarly referred to Romans 8:32:
He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
He reminded his listeners that if God gave us His best, His own Son, will He not also take care of us? He also pointed out that Satan does not want us to believe that God is for us.
In his sermon, Tan-Chi connected faith to trials. He gave the example of a butterfly struggling to break free from its cocoon. This struggle is necessary for its wings to develop, and skipping this process can be fatal because the butterfly needs it to become strong enough to survive. He emphasized that trusting in God’s faithfulness is what enables us to persevere. In his own words, faith is trusting God even when we don’t understand His ways because we trust His character. That way, we can worship God in the midst of trials because we believe He is good!
Interestingly, all of this also connects with Sunday’s sermon at Church of the City, which I attended in person. The preacher, Billy Sprague, shared that praise is costly, defiant, and public. In particular, his message on defiant praise challenged us to think: Do I praise God in the highs and the lows?
Habakkuk 3:17–18 says:
Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
All of this made me reflect on what faith looks like to me. I used to believe that nothing would ever tear down my faith, but I now realize how prideful I was in my own faith. God eventually brought me through a trial that shook me to the point of questioning His goodness and whether He truly loved me the way the Bible says He does.
I’ll share that story in my next post. For now, I am reminded that faith is not just about believing that God can do miraculous things. In fact, it even makes me wonder: if we measure faith by the miracles God can perform through us, don’t we risk believing that we need to reach a certain level of faith to perform them? And if we do, might we end up idolizing spiritual gifts, such as the gift of healing, or falling into legalism by believing that we need to do more to attain a higher spiritual standing, rather than focusing on God Himself?
If so, I would rather grow in my faith and in my trust that I serve a good, good God.