Selfless Faith

Jesus asks us some simple questions that we have a very difficult time answering. One of the questions He asks is found in Matthew 20:29-34. It reads:

As they were leaving Jericho, a large crowd followed Him. And two blind men sitting by the road, hearing that Jesus was passing by, cried out, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!” The crowd sternly told them to be quiet, but they cried out all the more, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!” And Jesus stopped and called them, and said, “What do you want Me to do for you?” They said to Him, “Lord, we want our eyes to be opened.” Moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes; and immediately they regained their sight and followed Him.

Jesus asks everyone what they want Him to do for them. That is one of the most difficult questions to answer. We all see the results of Solomon’s answer of asking God to give him wisdom. What appeared to be a very wise answer, in the end was one of the most foolish choices he could have made. Some people choose to not answer the question at all. They hear it being asked everyday but they act as if they are deaf. Many people answer that question based on fleshly desires. How many times do we hear methods to increase church growth, church budgets, and things of that nature? Some people answer the question with desires for big houses, fancy cars, nice jewelry, and other worthless materialistic things that lead to separation from God. When we start to acquire these things, we want more. That is our flesh working at its worst. It is never satisfied. We always want more! When we hear of people who are supposed to be in positions of spiritual leadership involved in all sorts of scandals, it goes back to how they originally answered the question Jesus asked them.

As we see in Matthew 20, the blind men wanted what was most important to them. They wanted their eyes to be opened. Imagine the first thing you see for the first time is Jesus Christ! All the materialistic things they could have asked for had absolutely no value to them. They wanted to see!

Jesus asked a similar question in John 1:37-38. It states the two disciples (of John) heard him (John) speak, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and asked to them, “What do you seek?” They said to Him, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” The two disciples of John were seeking Jesus. They didn’t say they were seeking riches, or big houses, or any other thing that they would lose. They wanted to know where He was staying to have fellowship with Him.

We have to carefully consider what we actually want Jesus to do for us. In most cases, we can actually get what we want. However, the consequences of asking for the wrong things can be extremely severe. Remember the incident in Acts 19:13-17 when the Jewish exorcist attempted to use the name of Jesus to cast out an evil spirit and that evil spirit actually responded to them. The evil spirit said to them, “I recognize Jesus, I know Paul, but who are you?” Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them, beat them up, and stripped them of their clothes. The Jewish exorcist ran out of the house naked and wounded. How embarrassing! It is just as embarrassing to see people who are overpowered by their desires of the flesh that they accumulate in the name of Jesus. We all face this battle but through Jesus, we have the power to overcome it. James 4:1 asks, “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members?” People try to take advantage of God but little do they know, “whatsoever a man sows, he shall also reap.”

I would hope we can all fix our hearts to ask, as the blind men, that our eyes would be continuously opened to see the love of God working in and through our lives. As the disciples of John said, let us know where Jesus is staying so we can have fellowship with Him. His desire is to have communion with us. Let it be our heart’s desires to want fellowship with Him as well. He wants to be the first thing that we see when our eyes are opened and He wants to open the door so we can come and dine with Him.

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Our unbelief causes us not to live in the inheritance of God resulting in us continually living in the slums. If we remember the story of the prodigal son, after asking his father to give him his inheritance, he left home and blew the money on materialistic nonsense. He was at the point of eating pig food (if only the pigs were willing to share with him.) As the Bible so clearly points out, when he (the prodigal son) came to his senses, he returned home. The reception he received from his father was great. The prodigal son though his inheritance was in the material possessions and wealth his father would leave behind when he died, quickly found out the true inheritance was in the love, mercy, compassion, peace, and grace the father had for him. The son did not deserve to be accepted back but by the grace of his father, the father humbled himself to put his son first and his pride last. He embraced and kissed his son; something that was never done in that era. We must understand that as long as the son stayed with the father, he was already living in his inheritance. However, as soon as he left the wing of the father, that inheritance quickly withered away.

Whatever physical conditions we face in life, we must not allow it to have us live in the spiritual slums. One of my favorite verses is Philippians 4:11 when Paul writes, “I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.” Can we say we have learned to live that way? I believe once we learn to live in that state of mind physically, that is when we truly experience what it means to walk in the Spirit. In the same sense, when we walk in the Spirit, we will truly know what it means to be content in whatever circumstances we face. When we look past our earthly circumstances, we see our heavenly inheritance which is what truly matters. When we compare earth’s inheritance to our kingdom inheritance, they don’t even come close to each other.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:20-21, “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” In the same Spirit, Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 8:9, “You (we) know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your (our) sake He became poor, so that you (we) through His poverty might become rich.” When Christ became poor, we became rich. He emptied His bank account in order to pour it into our bank account.

In closing, we must know who we are in the light of Jesus Christ. Job 28:28 says, “The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom and to depart from evil is understanding.” All these things God has written to us bring us into the light of Jesus Christ. In the light of Jesus Christ, there is no need for spiritual depression. In Jesus Christ, we become rich in love, grace, mercy, and peace from God above. That is the true inheritance that we are to seek. Once we have our hearts and our minds set on that inheritance, we reign with Christ who is seated high above the heavens of heavens.

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I had a dream the other night that I lived in a place that had tons of leaks through the ceiling, animals crawling in and out of the walls, and had an odor that is out of this world. The place was a total mess. In the dream, I realized I was living in the slums. It was a terrible feeling. I kept trying to figure out how I arrived there.

The sad part is many of us as believers are living spiritually in these conditions. We have a Father in Heaven who is rich with everything we could ever think of or imagine. Yet, we often let our conditions and circumstances define us instead of letting God who lives in us define who we truly are in Him. That is one of the biggest mistakes we can ever make. When we live this way, we torture ourselves, we give a bad witness to the world, and worse of all, we show a lack of appreciation to the One who formed us with His very own hand and loved us so much that He sacrificed His life for us.

Here in the United States, at the age of 18, a person is considered to be an adult. Some parents have different age limits before they accept their child as an adult, but legally it is at 18. However, I praise the Lord God Almighty that He never calls us the “adults” of God. We are always referred to as His children. When you think of the love a parent has for their children, they are willing to sacrifice everything for the well being of their children. That is exactly what God did when He let His only begotten Son Jesus Christ take the cross that was meant for us. If God can go to that extreme measure for us, we already know there is nothing He wouldn’t do for us. Everything we go through, although we would hate to admit is, is far less significant when compared to the cross of Jesus Christ. If God could go as far as the cross, how much more is He will to resolve our little day to day dilemmas we face here in this life? The children are the heir to all of parents’ possessions. Therefore, we are already rich in Christ. We have an incredible inheritance we have.

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Do we think for one second we can be more merciful than the cross of Christ? Even being led to the cross, Jesus turns back to the women weeping for Him and says in Luke 23:28, “Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.” Some of us claim Ephesians 2:8 to be our life verse which reads, “By grace you have been saved through faith.” God’s grace is the greatest act of love and mercy towards sinful man.

We should examine the things that we say and the thoughts that we have towards God. If God being merciful enough to send His Son to the cross while we were still sinners, how much more merciful will He be once we come into fellowship with Him as His children. Romans 8:32 betters asks the question as, “He (God) who did not spare His own Son (Jesus), but delivered Him (Jesus) over for us all (me, you, and the entire world), how will He not also with Him freely give (be merciful, compassionate, loving, and gracious) us all things?” When we were totally separated from God, living as we just won the sin lottery, God cared for us then plucked us out of the fire eternal damnation festivities. When did we ask God to be merciful upon us at that time? Now that we are children of the Most High God, we believe we have to make some kind of donation or effort in order to receive mercy from God. Some of us decide to fast day and night and others might have decided to be in ‘deep prayer’ for hours upon hours for God to hear us in return so He can speak to us and show us His mercy. I would hate to think it requires more effort to experience the mercy of God from a believer than from a non-believer. If God hears non-believers asking to be saved, how much more does He hear the prayers of His children?

As we continue our walk on planet earth, I encourage us all the next time we want to beg for mercy or do some type of physical act so God can show His mercy towards us, let us instead thank God for His mercy thus far because things could be a lot worse and rejoice! When we are faced in a difficult situation, let us lift up our hands, shout with the Psalmist as he does in Psalm 136:1, “Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever.” Remember Paul and Silas in the jail at Philippi, who at midnight were praying and singing praises to God and God delivered them. They weren’t begging and pleading for God to have mercy on them or that they didn’t deserve to be in prison for speaking in Jesus name. They already believed Romans 8:28 that “all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” After all, Paul is the one who wrote it. They knew if they were in jail at Philippi, there was a purpose for it. It was the will of God. They were not singing praises for God because they were in jail but because they were being led by God and they were in the center of the will of God. It seems we start complaining as the will of God begins to move and we stay in the same place. As the will of God starts to shift, we must shift along with it to always stay right there in the center of it. Many of us don’t like change but change can be the best thing if it is from God. Through Paul and Silas’ faithfulness and obedience, God’s mercy was demonstrated on the jail keeper. Our begging and pleading can easily become what prevents others from the tender mercies of God. Let us walk in the truth and mercy of God knowing that He is love and seeks to rain His grace and compassion upon anyone whose heart is open to accept it. Praise the Lord!

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How many times do we pray for God to have mercy on someone’s soul? Many times being in a tough position, we will cry out, “Lord! Have mercy!” This phrase came to mind the other day and I thought of Jonah’s description of God. In Jonah 4:2, Jonah is angry at God for being merciful to Nineveh (the place which he despised), and described God as “a gracious and compassionate (or merciful) God, slow to anger and abundant in loving-kindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.” What a beautiful description of God!

Why do we think we have to beg God to be compassionate or merciful to someone? There have been some who pray day and night that God would be merciful to someone. It seems like a much better prayer that the person’s heart would be softened enough, or broken enough, to see how merciful God has been, is being, and will be to them. When calamity happens, many people tend to blame God with the attitude of, “God, how could you let this happen to me!?!?!” While God may throw roadblocks in the path of wickedness, He will not deliberately interfere with our free-will. After all, we have the power to make our own decisions. If someone is going to commit a crime, and the Holy Spirit is pestering the person not to, and they do it anyways, God did His best to reach that person and the person refused. I guess sometimes we believe we are more compassionate than God. Isn’t that a shame?

We should ask ourselves what does “mercy” really mean. Mercy is defined as compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm. Another definition of mercy is an event to be grateful for, especially because its occurrence prevents something unpleasant or provides relief from suffering. Wow! Does mercy sound like a person who walked this earth?

Jesus Christ left His position on the throne in Heaven to come down and live as feeble man. In His humanity, He lived a way we could only dream about living ourselves. He was a man who had power. When we think of power, we think of authority and ruling over others. While Jesus does have that power, that isn’t the true type of power we desire. Jesus had inner power. He had power over His emotions, His thoughts, His actions, His feelings, over sin and over temptation. He truly had the power to resist the devil. How many times do we say the wrong thing or think the wrong thoughts? Many people have that desire to rule over others but they cannot rule over themselves. They are prisoners to their thoughts, their emotions, their actions, their feelings, to sin and to temptation. They have these loud public outbursts and then are very embarrassed after the fact.

Jesus came down from Heaven as a perfect example of the life God wanted for man and we dream that can be our demeanor when dealing with others. However, God being so gracious and merciful knew it would be impossible for us to accomplish this on our own, He says to us, “Why do you want to ‘just’ be like Jesus? I will put His Holy Spirit in all of you who call upon My name and you will have the same power He has.” What a glorious thing! To think we were speeding our way to hell but God stepped in the way to say “Hey, life in the Son is available,” that is extremely merciful!

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