Silver and Gold Have I None

For the past several weeks, our Pastor has been speaking on faith, the glory of God, the word of God, the presence of God, and all of the amazing things that go with it. I am not trifling when I say that his sermons have challenged and inspired me in all kinds of ways.

I have been thinking about his messages a lot, and I should warn everyone by saying that I don't think I will truly do justice to them in this short space. (And I have a feeling that this won't actually be short, but it will be shorter than five weeks of sermons.) He has said so many inspiring things that even with my sermon notes sitting in front of me, I feel I'll fall short. But I will assert this: that in the past year, Pastor Baker has risen in my mind to be regarded as one of the most intelligent, honest and anointed speakers of the Word I have ever had the privilege of listening to. So when I try to recreate what he has said and fail, just trust me...these were life changing messages.

You see, I had always had this hangup about "faith." It's one of those Christian words we throw around ALL the time. It's in the Bible absolutely everywhere, and we spend our Christian lives both talking about it and trying to achieve it. But for me (and honestly, I think for many people), what Jesus simply calls faith, we blow up into FAITH - this great, unknowable force that we all need but that nobody quite knows how to get. We know that we must Have It, because without It, it is impossible to Please God. (That's how I see it in my mind - the all-important capital letters, a la A. A. Milne.) We also know that if we had just a tiny little bit of it, we could move a mountain. Did you ever ponder that verse as a teenager? You could move a mountain...a freaking mountain. That's huge. That faith stuff is pretty strong, right? And yet....how exactly do we get it?

I was always taught, and believed, that faith is equivalent to belief. I step out and proclaim something amazing, and then God backs me up, because I believe he will. I trust that he will. That's faith.

The story that comes to my mind, always, is in Acts 3 - the story of Peter and John healing the crippled man at the gate called Beautiful. They are passing by this man, and without any prompting that we know of, they heal him. He looks at them, expecting to get money, and they heal him. I first memorized it in the King James, and such it will always be in my mind: "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk."

The lack of fanfare always startled me. There was no prayer chain, no week of fasting to prepare for the big event. It was a simple command to be healed - casual, the way another man might have tossed a coin into the man's lap on the way by. That kind of faith? Unattainable. Peter and John were the stuff of legends, the greatest of the great in Jesus' inner circle. I could never, ever imagine myself walking up to a crippled person, demanding that they be healed and expecting God to back me up. Impossible.

And then Pastor said something that changed my entire perspective. He said...

Faith is the servant's response to the Master's command.

He talked about how in Hebrews 11 - the big names in the faith world - every person credited to have faith was responding to instructions given to him by God. Noah built the ark. Abraham left his homeland. Moses' mother hid him in the bullrushes. Moses lives with the Hebrews. Rahab hid the spies. Actions, actions, actions - not belief. They heard God's voice, and they obeyed. Instructions, then action. And it was credited to them as faith. They were all living in faith when they died - they were all living in obedience, and some of them not having yet seen the fulfillment of God's promises to them. This was how Jesus lived his entire life. God told him to move, and he moved. God told him to speak, and he spoke. He moved in sync with the Father.

There was much more to the sermon than this, and much better fleshed out and supported, but for the sake of time and space, again, I will just say that I was rendered fairly speechless for a while. I had never thought about these things in this way - and it made SO much sense.

I love when things make sense.

He spoke on being "glory carriers." He used the text in Colossians where it talks about the mystery that has been revealed - Christ in us, the hope of glory. God is everywhere present, but not everywhere manifest. His power and presence is always here, but we do not always see or feel it. This mystery of God's presence and glory has been revealed to us; and now that we have had it revealed, and have access to the power of God's presence, it is our responsibility to make his glory known to the lost. This is the hope that we have to offer them - the way that they will see the glory of God is through US, God's children, his disciples and followers who will stand in the gap. And I realized something else - it's not God's responsibility to make his glory known. It's OUR responsibility to make his glory known. We sing songs like "Let your glory fall" and "Show me your glory." But it's already THERE. When we become a new creature in Christ, it's in us. God is not withholding it from us; we are simply not choosing to access it the way we are allowed, the way God longs for us to do it. He doesn't just want to show us his glory, he wants us to live in it, walk in it, and then carry it to the lost all around us.

Jesus attracted people everywhere he went. Crowds thronged to him to the point where he had to get in a boat and move out into the water just to keep them from advancing any further. It wasn't because he planned interesting sermon series, gave away prizes, held contests or delivered amazing motivational speeches. It was because he made manifest the glory of God. And that was exactly what people needed.

Jesus had this constant, uninterrupted access to the glory of God because he had constant, uninterrupted meditation of the Word of God. He spoke to God; he listened to God when God spoke back.

One of my favorite radio talk show hosts, Dennis Prager, is an advocate for at least one parent staying home with a couple's children if it is even remotely possible. He finds fault with the mentality that some parents have, when they say, "I don't spend as much time with my kids as I'd like, but the time we do spend together is quality time." He asserts that you cannot have quality time without quantity time, because it takes the quantity to get to the quality. Never missing a kid's baseball game or piano recital is great, and they will remember that - but it's not going to make them confide in you when they're feeling pressure from their friends or having a hard time at school. A long history of time together, conversation and genuine interest in their lives is what will ultimately help a child to know that he can trust his parents enough to tell them difficult things, or answer their questions honestly. And that doesn't come through clapping at the end of a piano recital - it comes through time. Lots of it.

And it's really like that, in our relationship with God. We use a lot of words. I am guilty of that all the time. We speak and speak and speak, but don't listen. Or, alternately, we take 10 minutes now and then to get in some "quality" time with the Lord, then slam the lines of communication shut when we've said what we need to say. But the words and voice of God must take a permanent position in the forefront of our minds, all day, all the time. And that kind of quality relationship only comes with time. We will only get out of it what we put into it. We CAN have the kind of constant communication with the Lord that Jesus had, but it has to be of our own choice. We have to take the time to do it. And when we do....

We experience the presence of God. Everything else is second to that. Even good, edifying things like reading Scripture and fellowship with other believers are not a substitute for daily intimacy in the presence of God. Prayer is the most powerful privilege we have as believers. It is the point of contact where we can access the glory of God.

Elisha walked daily with God. He had reason to focus on all kinds of earthly concerns, what with the king of Aram trying to kill him and all. But when he was surrounded on every side by earthly armies, he looked out and saw the greater army of God. His servant couldn't see it; Elisha was seeing into the unseen, because he walked daily with God.

When Jacob rested in the wilderness and had a dream of the angels ascending and descending the stairway to heaven, he woke in an unsettled state and concluded two things - that this place was the house of God, and that it was the gateway to heaven. It was not only the place where the glory of God resided, but it was the opening between the realm of the seen and the realm of the unseen. It was the portal between the spiritual and physical worlds. The house and the gateway are the same thing. Since the death of Christ on the cross, our bodies become the temple of the Lord - the dwelling place of God's glory. They are also the gateway by which we have the ability to hear the Lord speak, then pull from the realm of glory into the visible world.

And this is faith. We walk with him; we know his voice, as the sheep know the voice of the shepherd. We stand always in the gap, one eye and ear and hand and foot in the heavenly realm, the other here in the earthly realm. And when God's voice prompts us to move, we move. We speak the words that will make the frail physical body become healthy - it is the substance of things hoped for, the physical manifestation of what was previously unseen. We carry the glory of God to those around us. Faith has ceased to be my own direction with God behind me to make it happen; it is now become God's prompting, and my obedience.

So now, like Peter and John, could I....

...is it even possible?

Could I actually do what Peter and John did? Could I move that mountain after all?

I don't want fame. I mean, I really don't want fame, or notoriety, or a TV ministry or bragging rights. But I want to do what Peter and John did. I want to touch people around me. I want to heal with my words and my actions, and bring about the reconciliation between God and his beloved. We are, after all, in the business of reconciliation. And now it's even more of a responsibility, because it's not on God's shoulders, it's on mine. I can't pray for faith any more. I have to do it myself - through time, and energy, and relationship. Which, let's be honest, is way harder than just asking God to give it to you.

So I am on a journey. A faith journey. And where it leads me, I will follow...so that someday I may speak those words that I have been drawn to these many years...

Silver and gold have I none...