Scripture: Luke 9:18-27
Dear Church,
Perhaps you are also going through a season where the world seems extra heavy. Perhaps, like me, someone has tried to lift you up by encouraging you to ‘have faith.’
But what if we’ve been thinking about faith all wrong? What if faith isn’t a noun? What if faith isn’t something we have, isn’t a thing we carry around in our hearts, or think in our brains, or feel in our feelings?
What if faith is a verb? What if faith is the choices we make, the course of actions we commit to, a way of life we repeat over and over again? What if faith is not what we have, but what we do?
That’s how Jesus seemed to think about it. When Peter boldly declared that Jesus was the Messiah, the son of God, Jesus’ response wasn’t, ‘Welp, my work here is finished. Good job, everybody! Time to wrap it up!’
He said (and this is, admittedly, a loose translation), ‘Great, now you need to know that I’m going to head to Jerusalem and defeat evil, sin and death on the cross. If you want to follow me, you’ll need to deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me.’
In Jesus’ opinion, a declaration of faith isn’t the culmination of our life with him, but the very beginning of it. Once we know who Jesus is, then we get to decide if we’re going to follow him. The call isn’t to have faith, it’s to do faith, to walk it out, to live it out, to follow the one we believe is our Lord and savior.
That’s why the new worship series we’re launching this week isn’t called ‘how to have faith’ but ‘how to faith.’ The Spirit is inviting us into a freer, fuller life with Jesus, one that isn’t limited by our feelings or our thinking. It’s a life of grace–a way of living Jesus both calls us to and completes in us.
I hope you’ll join us as we learn together how to faith Jesus.
Peace,
Pastor Kate
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