2 in 1 Tuesday: Faith...Are YOU Feeling It...Are YOU Workin' It?

So far, it has been a pretty good beginning of the week for the King family. I had a bit of a lazy weekend. Not much was accomplished except for catching up on sleep, grocery shopping, ministry preparations and our Kingdom Encounters radio program. Those things make for a pretty full weekend themselves, but with it being a long weekend, due to the holiday, I was hoping to accomplish more. However, I know that I needed the down time. After all, everybody needs a little Sabbath rest.

Anyhow, I started a couple of blog posts this weekend, but every time I sat down to finish them, I started to fall asleep! So, I decided that catching up on sleep was a little more important than updating the blog, and I put off posting until today. That means that this will probably be a very long-winded post and that you will have plenty of reading material today! This post is a combination of the Sunday Sermon Review and Ministry Monday, and thus I dub this: 2 in 1 Tuesday... and at the rate we are going, we are sure to have a 3 in 1 Thursday sometime in the near future!

So...let the posting begin:

Ministry Monday & The Sunday Sermon Review: Faith and Works

As I may have mentioned in a previous post, the church that I work for is a small inner city church. All over America, there are churches, just like ours, who are struggling to make it. As people move out of the inner city into suburbs (with newer and bigger houses and more land), the inner city is left with neighborhoods full of the lower-middle class and poverty stricken. This phenomenon, called Suburban Sprawl and Urban Decay, is greatly effecting the ministries of the long-standing inner city churches. Many of these churches do not want to stay in the inner city any longer. They prefer to build new large facilities in the suburbs, where there are more people and more tithe money to support their ministries, Meanwhile, the churches that decide to stay in the inner city begin to slowly deteriorate and die as people leave for the suburbs and the suburban churches. The money starts to grow thin as the membership declines and the churches try to keep up with the maintenance demands of an older building, and the remaining church members and leaders often have a hard time accepting that changes needed in order to reach out effectively to the changing community around them. They also seem to forget that they are supposed to be reaching out to the community, and instead they try to aim their ministry towards building up a membership comprised of suburban dwellers with deep pockets. Finally, when things don't work out their way, the people get defeated and the church either sales it's facilities or closes it's doors and becomes another abandoned building in the middle of a community that is crumbling and decaying.

 I shared all of that information, so that you might be able to better understand the context of our ministry and our pastor's sermon on Sunday. You see, our church is one of those churches that are fighting to survive in the inner city. We don't have it as bad as many inner city churches around this country, but it is a struggle and a fight to rebuild our congregation, our ministries, and our church building. Many of our members have grown tired, some want to give up, and some have developed a hard heart towards the community around our church. However, the one thing that really drew our hearts towards serving in this church, was the attitude of those remaining members who want to make a difference in our community and are willing to do whatever it takes to keep our church doors open and our lights shining out into the neighborhood.

The pastor's sermon on Sunday was meant to inspire all of our church members to keep on going, with faith, believing that God has called us to be salt and light to the community in which the church was built so many years ago! He shared a message on faith and good works from James 2:18-20, and emplored the church to have a living faith by continuing to do good works out of the faith in their hearts. However, before I talk about the sermon, I want to share with you a couple of videos that really touched my heart and inspired me to keep on doing what the Lord has called me and to do in my church and my ministry in general. In these videos, you will see examples of struggling inner city churches, and you will hear why it is so important for them to continue their ministries. You will also see the kind of faith and works that it takes to make a difference in the inner city.

Wow! I hope you were as inspired by those videos as I was!

It takes a lot of faith, a lot of prayer and a lot of action (out of obedience to the Lord's still small voice), in order to build up the kind of ministry that is needed to reach out to those in the inner city. There are risks, BIG risks, but do we not know the God of all...the Creator of the universe??!! Does He not hold the whole world in His hands??!!! Does He not care for the poor, the lonely, the lost and the dying??!! We do know Him (In fact, we are His children), and He does care for the oppressed and hold us all in the palm of His hand!! So, we are called to act as His hands and feet, to do good works out of an overflow of faith and love in our hearts. It takes a lot of faith and trust in the Lord to do those works and take those risks. However, the ministry we are called to, requires us to let our faith in the Lord move us to action. In fact, TRUE faith is synonymous with good deeds. That is what our Pastor was trying to say on Sunday, and that is what James was saying in chapter two of his book to the scattered tribes of the Hebrew people.

James 2:14-26 :

 ¹⁴ What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? ¹⁵ Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, ¹⁶ and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?

 ¹⁷ So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.
 ¹⁸ Now someone may argue, “Some people have faith; others have good deeds.” But I say, “How can you show me your faith if you don’t have good deeds? I will show you my faith by my good deeds.”
 ¹⁹ You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Good for you! Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror. ²⁰ How foolish! Can’t you see that faith without good deeds is useless?
 ²¹ Don’t you remember that our ancestor Abraham was shown to be right with God by his actions when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? ²² You see, his faith and his actions worked together. His actions made his faith complete. ²³ And so it happened just as the Scriptures say: “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.” He was even called the friend of God, ²⁴ So you see, we are shown to be right with God by what we do, not by faith alone.
 ²⁵ Rahab the prostitute is another example. She was shown to be right with God by her actions when she hid those messengers and sent them safely away by a different road. ²⁶ Just as the body is dead without breath, so also faith is dead without good works.

This passage, as well as the whole 2nd Chapter of James, is so relevant to ministry in the inner city. There are too many churches in the inner city that gather on Sunday's and Wednesday's to practice their faith, but all they are actually doing is practicing religion through ritual and routine. It is a dead faith that they have, because they are not active in their community doing good deeds and spreading the Good News. The Good News was meant to be shared not boxed up and locked tight within a pretty stained glass package, kept by its silent, frozen faced owners, who don't look as if they realize how good the news actually is! In the same way, faith is not faith if we do not ACT as though we believe that the Lord can do what He has promised He would do both in and through us.

TRUE FAITH is ALIVE. It is a moving, breathing, active force that compels us to love and care for all the people around us. As the Pastor said on Sunday, faith must be exercised. He said that an unexercised faith is like preparing for a fishing trip by gathering all of your supplies and driving to the lake, but never casting your line into the water. You will never catch a fish that way. Similarly, reading our Bibles, attending worship, and praying in faith is no good if our actions do not correspond with those expressions of faith.

Our pastor ended his sermon by telling us that we must not allow our faith to waver. He said that the ones in our church who keep saying, "We can't do it! We can't do it!" need to go buy themselves a big roll of duct tape!!!! He said that we will never be able to rebuild our dying church and make an impact on the community if we don't have steadfast faith. He was talking about the TRUE ACTIVE FAITH that James discussed!

I want to leave you with these questions and thoughts ...do you have faith in the wrong things? Do you believe that God will do what He says He will do? Do you pray (with the right motives in line with God's will) and then act as though you believe He will do what you asked? Is your faith driving you to action? If you can't honestly answer yes to these questions, then I can safely say that you aren't "feelin' it" in your heart and soul.

Faith is like flying! Watch this clip from the movie Rio that relates to our faith, and then ask yourself...Am I feelin' it?

If you're not "feelin' it" then it is time to bring your faith back to life. Let's pray that God will move us to action, and that He will give us a living, breathing, unwavering faith to do what He has called us to do!!

I'm sorry if this post sounded a little preachy, but believe me when I say it hit me hard and gave me a fresh perspective on why nothing I try to do seems to work out...It's because I haven't been truly acting out my faith. Instead, I have been acting outside of my faith too much. I have adopted a defeated attitude when the risks seem too big. However, with God's help, I commit to putting my faith to work unwaveringly from this moment on, and I hope that you will do the same!