Living What We Believe

Is your Christian faith what really defines you and the way you look at life? To ask it another way, are your professed Christian beliefs (the doctrines you've been taught and that you would say you've embraced) -- are these the beliefs/ideas that really shape and control you (your outlook, your values, your priorities)?

If you're like me, you have a variety of reasons for affirming 'belief' in the doctrines and teachings of Christianity -- reasons related to fitting in with family and friends, fitting in at church, etc. But I have found that it's possible to kind of slide into a nomimal, polite, half-pretending way of believing, with the result that what I say I believe as a Christian isn't really what's defining and directing me. Instead, another set of basic beliefs are what is really calling the shots in my life.

Here's one example: I know that the Gospel says that we're accepted and welcomed by God because of grace alone received through faith alone, and that my works (my performance) adds nothing to my being right with God. And I know that Christianity teaches that God set in motion the plan of salvation (includng making me right with him) because he loved me, not in order that he could love me.

So the Gospel and Christianity teach this great and gracious and generous and free and sovereign saving love of God, through Christ, that comes to me as sheer gift -- and it's all of grace from first to last, forever. That's what the Gospel says. That's what Biblical Christianity teaches. So that's what I believe...sort of...sometimes...well, kind of...but not very often.

Why do I say that? Because much of the time what I really believe, and how I really look at things, is substantially different than what I just described. For deep down I have another set of beliefs (that I picked up from the world, the flesh and the devil) -- and according to those beliefs how I'm performing and how well I'm doing very definitely determine what God thinks of me, and how he regards me, and whether I have reason to expect his blessing.

According to this 'faith' (belief system), salvation might have been "all of grace" to start with, but from there on out, it was largely about me 'maintaining' God's good favor, staying on his good side, by how well I obeyed, and how little I disobeyed, and how much I served, and....and....

See what I mean? During those times I have, for all intents and purposes, stopped believing the Gospel, the good news of grace, and my whole identity and outlook end up being shaped by the lies that the devil has found a way to make me believe...deep down.

So no wonder it's called a fight of faith -- a struggle to keep believing -- really and truly, from the heart believing, a believing that begins with what's at the heart and core of Biblical Christianity: the Gospel of grace itself.

Ultimately, we all end up living what we really, truly believe. So may God help us (by his Word, his Spirit, prayer, and the fellowship of his people) to really and truly believe the Truth.