The great thing about our faith and ability to come to Jesus, is that it is our foundation of Christian belief, our elemental building block of why we believe what we believe.
The word Element has a good number of definitions, one of them, as a noun, says the following:
an essential element of the game component, constituent, part, section, portion, piece, segment, bit; aspect, factor, feature, facet, ingredient, strand, detail, point; member, unit, module, item.
In Chemistry, an element is defined as: each of more than one hundred substances that cannot be chemically interconverted or broken down into simpler substances and are primary constituents of matter.
So basically, an element is the foundation of the whole, but a significant piece if not the most significant piece of the whole. And when it comes to faith, we must be ELEMENTAL. Jesus tells us the importance of this. He says we must have faith like a child...to simply believe...
Here is how Jesus puts it from Matthew 18.2-4
For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, "I'm telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you're not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God's kingdom. What's more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it's the same as receiving me.
Constipated Faith
Erwin McManus puts the issue in a funny way. He says that we sometimes think that our faith is bottled up inside us. Its like we have a constipated faith and if we could just grunt and strain hard enough and get it out then we could live by faith through our actions.
Sometimes, we make faith to difficult, almost like there has to be some complicated formula to follow...Maybe I have spent a lot of time in the chemistry and physics lab, because at times I feel like I live in a lab of life where if I run the faith formula correctly then Jesus will answer accordingly...
On another level, I think we can even use faith as a coping mechanism instead of a way to trust. Faith develops from Following Christ, and if our faith starts to become a form of superstition or magic, then we are probably obtaining our faith in something other that Jesus.
The Size Of Our Faith
So what does elemental faith look like? Figuratively speaking, Jesus says in Matthew 17.20, that faith looks like a mustard seed. Jesus wants us to know that we don't have to have some giant sized faith before we can do anything or believe. He simply wants us to trust Him.
Holy Expectation
So why is having an elemental faith, a faith the size of a mustard seed so important? Because it leads to a life of Holy Expectation...we live each day to the fullest, knowing that God is in control and we watch Him work, and we expect Him to work...We take what He has given us and give our all, but at the same time we have a foundational trust, an elemental faith, a mustard seed belief, that God is in control. This allows us to live by faith instead of fear.
To summarize:
A coping mechanism faith is driven by fear. It says that we are in control and that God is our genie...it only leads to stress.
An Elemental Faith says that God is in control and that we are created in advance to do good works which He has already prepared for us to do...it leads to Holy Expectation and True victory! (Ephesians 2.10)
So what about you? Is your faith a way to cope or a way to trust?
