Unfinished Faith

Miracles, what's your relationship with miracles?

Do you believe in them?

I think most people do.

God intervening supernaturally into the natural order and fixing, healing, changing, transforming, often our bodies, our relationships, our spiritual lives, our society.

I've seen miracles myself.

I don't find it that hard to believe in them because I've seen them.

I know the Bible teaches me to expect to see them.

And I've seen other people receive answered prayer and miraculous answers to prayer throughout my life.

And certainly as a pastor.

And yet the subject of miracles is not without complexity and significant mystery, is it?

Why does God answer some prayers?

And not others.

And the obvious answer, maybe not obvious, but it's the wise classic answer is, you've asked for something, but his timing is not your timing.

You know that answer?

That is a wise answer.

Why haven't you answered my prayer for the miracle I need, Lord God, or for my friend, or this other person, their need?

And the answer we say often is, his timing is not ours.

And we also might say, although we are invited to ask for anything, we are certainly invited to ask for anything, God doesn't guarantee that he will say yes to every request, because not every request is a good thing for us.

Miracles.

Why is it that some people get healed, and we've talked about this before, they get healed of relatively minor complaints, minor issues, not so minor to them, I know, but you might be sitting next to them, I won't ask for a show of hands of this, but I know many of us could agree, you have been praying for something waiting in line for decades, and it just feels odd, doesn't it?

And someone goes, yay, I just came in with my soul, whatever, and I just got healed.

Yeah, and you go, praise God, that's a queue jumper there.

Anyone know what I mean?

It's just sort of, of course, we're frozen God and so glad, but I find it's a challenge to me, often I'm up front, often I'm the one praying, not the only one, but if I'm honest and I reflect on the last 30 years of ministry or about that, it's odd how scarce crazy transformational miracles are.

It's just odd, because I still believe in them.

I believe the Bible teaches us to pray for breakthrough, but and the reason I know most people aren't experiencing just crazy miracles is they don't turn up and ask for prayer.

They don't turn up that much to break through prayer meetings.

We'd have prayer meetings full every single week that we have them, or every month, people saying, I've got a need, transaction, swap my card, get my miracle.

It's not as easy as that.

Now, so I was literally praying about this a couple of weeks ago in the auditorium midweek, and I felt like God spoke to me and gave me a situation.

I imagined there was a blind man in our church, fully blind, in his 30s, been blind all his life, and he came forward for prayer.

And we prayed for this blind man, and he was healed.

Just imagine that.

Imagine a blind man, fully never seen before, and he comes forward.

We may be anointing him with all stack on him, lay hands, and he, I can see.

And so I imagined, you know, the next two weeks, we are just riding on cloud nine, just that we saw someone healed by God's power.

It's the most amazing miracle.

And then I imagine as his pastor, this blind man coming to me, saying, Jono, can I catch up?

And saying, I'm really struggling.

Ever since I can see, I'm struggling with lust, and a real perverted lust, and it's killing me.

And I was like, oh, now I don't want to say that to belittle what would have been the most amazing life-changing miracle.

But do you understand what I'm saying?

Whatever you think God needs to do that will change everything and solve all of your problems, it probably won't.

It probably won't.

What God said to me, I feel, and from the passage we're about to look at, is what matters is how you're going to live after you get the miracle.

If you get the miracle, you got to wake up the next day and live with faith, and find the grace that's apparently available, and it's all sufficient for all the needs you'll have for that day, amen?

But it's tough to find the grace sometimes.

It's by grace through faith that we live this life.

Tonight, the message is about Unfinished Faith, Unfinished Hope, and Unfinished Love.

It's called Unfinished, and our text is Romans 5, 1-5, Unfinished Faith.

Before we get to the text, if you know Romans at all, the Apostle Paul has been masterfully unpacking the Gospel throughout the first four chapters, chapters one through four.

And basically, you'll see on here as a summary, he says, all are sinful.

No one is righteous.

No one that is apart from Jesus.

Paul has stated that it is Christ, Jesus who lived the perfect life, so that he could offer the blood that flowed in that perfect life as a sufficient sacrifice for the sin of the world.

And Romans chapters 1 to 4 teaches that that blood is enough to forgive.

But we need to do something.

There is a human response for the all-sufficient sacrifice to be appropriated into our lives, and I'm giving you some truth here that I know is a revision.

But Paul says the human response to this is faith.

Faith like chapter 4 of Romans, Abraham.

He was given a promise by God, and he didn't have to work for it.

He just believed in it was credited to him as righteousness.

And he's accepted not by any works he had done to earn God's favour simply through faith.

So when we come to Romans 5, 1 to 5, Paul begins with the word therefore, and we always ask, why is it there for, the therefor?

And it's really the culmination, excuse me, of what he's been teaching over the first four chapters, which is basically the gospel.

He says, therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.

Christians, Paul says, followers of Jesus, have been justified through faith, justified is a legal term, it means declared not guilty.

Because of our faith in Christ, His all-sufficient sacrifice, death and resurrection, God the Father has said, you are not guilty.

You get what He deserved.

And then Paul says it in this very theologically dense couple of verses, we receive peace with God.

That's reconciliation.

Relationship absolutely restored.

And in this peace-filled relationship with God, there is grace aplenty in which we stand in God's presence.

It's all amazing truth that many of us are familiar with.

And this is a faith in the finished work of Christ.

No more work needs to be done.

It is faith in the finished work of Christ.

When the Lord Jesus was on the cross, He said, it is finished.

But the key is this, our faith is unfinished.

We have faith in the finished work of Christ.

But the faith required of us as human beings, as Christians, is unfinished.

It's not set and forget.

Faith is required of us daily.

Often we come to this passage, Galatians 2.20, where Paul writes, I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

The life I live now in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

And the key is, he says, the life I live.

Life is lived daily, day after day after day.

Life, life by faith.

It's what Jesus says in Luke 9, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.

It's an unfinished faith.

It's required of us daily.

One of the pillars of reformed theology is the perseverance of the saints.

It means, basically, you need to persevere with your faith.

It's not just a set and forget.

It's to wake up the next day and put our trust in the gospel.

I'm not suggesting you just sort of lose your salvation easily in any way at all, but you have to persevere to the end with this faith that is a faith that justifies.

So, each day we believe because of Christ, I am justified at peace with God and standing in His grace.

So, Paul teaches in Romans 5, we are called, and this is a little bit jarring in a way to hear it, to unfinished faith for salvation.

Is that OK to say that?

Unfinished faith, it's required as an ongoing thing.

Unfinished faith for salvation.

I think we're called to an unfinished faith for peace with God.

You want peace with God?

You want peace?

I think we all do.

We need faith each day, day after day after day.

We're called to an unfinished faith to access the grace in which we stand.

Never works always by faith.

But it's a daily faith and thus an unfinished faith.

The old evangelical question used to be, if you were to die tonight, do you know where you would go?

If you were to die tonight, do you know what you would say to God?

And that was a good question.

And the answer is, my righteousness is found in Christ.

I believe in Jesus.

But there's another question that's really important.

If you don't die tonight, do you know how you're gonna live tomorrow?

If you don't die tonight, do you know how to access the grace that apparently is all sufficient for all of your needs tomorrow to follow Jesus?

That will require active faith tomorrow.

If we all wake up tomorrow, how are we gonna live?

It has to be by grace through faith, amen?

That's how it works.

You live each day through the gospel.

The gospel is accessed and appropriated by grace through faith.

So we wake up tomorrow, we need to have faith, and we need to find the grace that God has for us to do all that we need to for that day.

Unfinished faith leads to unfinished hope.

Paul writes, And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope.

With surgical clarity, Paul describes what unfinished faith produces.

Unfinished hope.

The journey of following Christ has a blueprint, and it goes something like this.

Day after day, the life of faith involves suffering.

That's what he says.

The life of faith involves suffering.

If it hasn't come to you, it will.

It's life in the fallen world that we live in, involves suffering.

And that's going to require of us perseverance, and that perseverance will produce character and hope.

So the blueprint is this.

Suffering, perseverance, character, hope.

I think another way of looking at that word suffering is actually stress, stress.

We know a lot about stress these days, so stress is bad, isn't it?

Stress can raise your blood pressure, and stress can affect you so negatively, raise anxiety levels, and get our chemicals in our bodies out of balance.

But if you just think about it, stress is actually not all bad.

Without stress, we simply don't grow as people, do we?

You do not grow without stress.

Muscles grow through repetitive stress and progressive overload.

That's a fact.

Our brains actually develop in education through the stress of academic rigor, don't they?

Of dialogue and memorization, of the accumulation of information, which must be processed, and if you've been a student recently, that processing of said information can be stressful.

But what comes out of it is a growing education.

Our emotional intelligence develops as we're challenged with new insights, and we're taken to the edge of our comfort zones, and they're rattled, and we're encouraged to respond to stress with the appropriate adaptation.

Life involves stress, doesn't it?

Life does.

Some bad, I'd say, majority of it good.

Suffering or stress requires a level of endurance and perseverance, because have you thought this, about this?

Stress typically is experienced over time.

You can feel fear, you know, in the moment, but often the really tough thing about stress is it's just, it's a building, it's a building over time.

And there is a need, I think, that Paul is right on the money here, there needs to be a persevering approach.

There needs to be endurance to suffering, to stress.

And apparently, Christians who do this, will see character develop.

Character, we often say, is the sum of our habits.

The Greek word for character is this word here, and it means proof.

Which as I read it and looked that up, I thought this is really interesting, because it is the truth.

It's easy to be a fair-weather Christian.

It's easy when the abundant blessing of God is pouring out on your life day after day after day to go, hey, I love the Lord and I love me my miracles.

Like this, this is a wonderful journey.

Boom.

Who wants a miracle?

You know, that's probably fair-weather Christianity.

But Paul is saying, yeah, that won't be as powerful a proof of authenticity of your knowing God through Christ.

What will be a wonderful proof is your character, which continues to praise God no matter what the circumstances.

Amen?

Suffering produces perseverance, and that perseverance will produce character, which is a testimony to all around you that God is real in your life.

And what does that produce?

Something for you.

Hope.

Hope.

Unfinished hope.

And that's a beautiful thing, isn't it?

We all have experienced stuff in life that is tough.

We all have.

The last thing you want is hopelessness, isn't it?

When you give up on tomorrow and the day after, you give up on the next month.

So I can't find hope.

That's a challenge.

That's a challenge that we all face in the Bible.

Often it's called, do not lose heart.

I think losing heart is akin to losing hope.

Unfinished hope.

Who read a good book over the summer?

Anyone have a bit of a break and get to read?

There's more readers in the night service.

That's good.

In the morning, hardly anyone.

They're all watching TV.

We're the readers, the night service.

I read this book.

It's a fantastic book.

If you're interested in a good book, it's called The Art of Resilience by Ross Edgley.

He's an endurance athlete and also an adventure athlete.

It's a book that he wrote to Chronicle, a crazy world record thing that he did.

He swam all the way non-stop around Britain.

That was 157.

Steph just vomited inside her mouth.

He swam for 157 days non-stop, 2,500 kilometers, which amounts to 87 crossings of the English Channel, one after the other.

Crazy, crazy thing that he did.

And he was supported by a crew of about four or five people on a 57-foot catamaran, which is the next shot there.

It's a really interesting story.

He swam 12 hours per day on average.

Six hours on, six hours off, six hours on, six hours off.

The guy that was the captain was like an old sea dog.

He just knew the sea so well.

And so many times in the reed, it's like this part is one of the most dangerous stretches of water in the world.

And so he's swimming through that.

And it wasn't balmy, as you could imagine.

It wasn't a balmy swim.

It was freezing, especially around the top of Scotland, just before winter.

So he is swimming through the night, whenever the tides worked, freezing water, facing sharks, stinging jellyfish.

He, one time, he came in and he said, oh, I've just, I've had a terribly sore eye.

It closed up about four hours ago.

And the guy said, there is a full jellyfish all over your face.

And so he was just stung relentlessly by jellyfish.

But another time, about five days in, he started getting a terrible wetsuit rash around here, and it was red raw.

And so he came up with all these different things.

One of the funny stories was he said, he was eating, the crew, there was a small crew that cooked for him, and had this vegetable soup or something.

And he said, he's literally eating, and he's like, what was the meat in the soup?

He said, oh, there's no meat.

He's like, oh, okay, that was my tongue.

And his tongue was literally coming off in chunks with salt tongue.

So, tough, tough thing.

It's not advisable.

What did he learn?

Ross is a sports scientist, and a would-be philosopher.

He's very interested in the management of fatigue.

A bit of a requirement.

He never had one day off.

He never broke down.

That's incredible, isn't it?

157 days, 12 hours swimming each day, how to do it.

And he said that swimming in that way is completely unpredictable.

It's not like you're in a pool.

So, you can't just have your eyes set to the finish line.

He thought it would be less than 100 days, but they had to deal with the tail end of a hurricane, they had to shelter, they had gale force winds, they had whirlpools, they just so many challenges.

And so basically he said, you couldn't swim with a finish line in sight, like a marathon.

He said you had to learn a different way to be motivated.

And the motivation he got to was he said, no one else is making me do this swim.

I chose to do this swim.

So I'm going to enjoy it.

So he said most days, not every day, not every night.

Some of the nights around Scotland, this didn't happen.

But he swam with a smile.

That was one of his keys.

To swim with a smile.

To just enjoy the challenge, but to also enjoy what he was surrounded in.

And seals would come up, and even a minky whale or something came up.

And the interaction with the wildlife was amazing.

And a crazy, unfathomable amount of challenge and suffering.

It wasn't just a smile that he had to look after.

He had to manage fatigue.

And so that was 15,000 calories per day.

You had to get the right nutrients in.

It had to be palatable.

You had to be hydrated.

You had to get the oxygen you needed.

You had to get the sleep you needed.

You had to have the team.

One of the big things was you had to pace yourself.

Sometimes you had to go really fast to get through a stretch of water before a hurricane was coming.

But most of the time, it was just pacing.

And he wasn't completely out of breath.

I hope you're doing some crossing over about how this might apply to us as we manage the endurance race that is our life.

Because I would put it to you that Christianity is not a sprint, that's a gimme.

But sometimes we think, oh, it's a marathon.

I don't think it's a marathon at all, because every marathon runner knows, I'm 12k's in, I've got 30 to go.

That's not the Christian life.

That's not life in general.

It's far more like this swim.

We have to find a way of waking up the next day, knowing that it's not finished until I reach the finish line.

And that's death.

There is a finish line, but none of us know where it is or when it's going to come.

But what do we have to do?

We have to manage faith fatigue.

We have to manage emotional fatigue, all sorts of mental fatigue, physical fatigue, relational fatigue.

And it can be done.

I've been on a bit of a health kick, like some of you guys, as they come to the end of winter last year and coming out of COVID, and we all get excited.

And that's been good.

I've lost a bit of weight in the last six months, and blood pressure has come back down a little bit, and a few other health scores are good.

In fact, I'm as low weight as I've been for 30 years, since I was married.

It's interesting.

And look, please, no, I'm not talking about weight issues in any sort of silly, cheeky way, because they're complex, so don't hear me foisting anything on you about your life.

Just my story.

I've lost a bit of weight.

And so along with habit changes, it's been good to do endurance exercise, which I've never done much of.

And I'll tell you something about that in a second, but I didn't want to forget.

My son-in-law, Cal, who's an exercise physiologist, he was telling me a couple of days ago that 88% of people put all the weight and more back on that lose the weight.

And it struck me that, I guess, most of us humans lose a bit of weight.

And we go, that was miraculous.

But we don't think about much about the day after the miracle.

We don't think much about, how am I going to maintain this?

How am I going to live each day with a new pattern, a new way of bunching my habits of how I live my life?

One of the parts of this journey for me, which has been good, is I have that when I think cardio, I have little vomits and stuff.

But I've sort of got over that, and I've been really enjoying endurance exercise.

Not crazy endurance, but an hour here and there a couple of times a week with other sort of exercise.

But I'm struck by the fact that endurance has a lot more carryover to the Christian life.

Because I've sort of loved doing one rep maxes, and in weight lifting or something, and I think that doesn't carry over.

There's nothing really in the Christian life that's much about one rep maxes, but there's a lot about endurance.

There's a lot about perseverance.

There's a lot about like, I don't know if I can keep going for another row on the rower or another step on the jog, but that's more about what life is.

Finding a way to keep going on this journey.

So, just a question, how's your spiritual fitness going?

I think we're whole beings and I think our mental, physical, spiritual well-being is more linked than you might think.

And getting a bit of discipline and some habits that are working in one area, there definitely can be a keystone habit effect and it can spill over into other parts of our life.

Now, you might feel like this is all sounding a bit too athletic.

I want to again ask for a show of hands.

You might be, you've already checked out.

Ten minutes ago is like, I'm not even interested.

So, that's fair, because as I was reading this, I'm like, oh, this is cool.

And I felt like I had a revelation for my stage of life and stuff I'm going through.

So I'm like, okay, Lord, I got it.

Life is about suffering, perseverance, character development and hope.

It's all very Stoic, isn't it?

It's all, it's all, it's good, but it's like, and then I read the next verse.

And I was like, oh, thank you, Lord.

Because it's an amazing blueprint.

That's a little bit dry.

It's a little bit harsh.

But it finishes with love.

It's wrapped up in love.

Hope does not put us to shame.

And verse five, it's Unfinished Love.

Because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who's been given to us.

Isn't that a great way to wrap up this tough teaching?

The American Standard Version is my favourite.

It said, the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts.

This sense of it's just, yeah, suffering is not much fun for any of us.

Or however you spin it, stress, persevering, saying sorry to fix that relationship.

And all the things that we have to do.

But there's a context for the Christian.

There's a context, it's love.

It's the love of God shed abroad in our hearts.

The way of the Master that we talked about so much last year.

It involves stress and perseverance, but it's in the context of being loved to bits by the God who created us, hallelujah.

Like that's the context.

And I would put it to you, that's the Christian worldview that does change everything.

We're loved, known and loved is one of our core values.

But and that's a visceral thing that I keep on thinking, Lord, what is this stuff about feeling better and finding peace?

Is it just dopamine and serotonin?

But there's something spiritual as well as that.

Romans 8 says that the Holy Spirit testifies to my spirit, that I'm a child of God and something happens there spiritually that affects me, my mood.

Again, it's a bit of a mystery.

But a key to that peace and perseverance is love.

Love.

We need to know that God hasn't finished His love with us, amen?

He's demonstrated it once and for all in Christ.

That's what the great passage in verse 8 says.

God demonstrates His own love for us in this.

That's just after what we've been reading.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

As Ben says most weeks, we come to worship because of the gospel.

And we need to preach the gospel to ourselves daily.

Yep, I'm a sinner in need of grace, and there has been grace given to me because God the Father sent His Son to die for me.

Every morning, I can say, you know what?

His mercies are new to me every morning.

I don't deserve it, but He chose me.

I belong to Him.

He died on that cross 2,000 years ago, and that makes me this morning, tomorrow morning, a saint, and I'm loved, and I belong in God's family.

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, I'm loved.

And it changes my world, and it changes your world.

I have peace with God, and I'm declared not guilty.

And then Romans 8 tells me, if you start to think, oh, but am I going to lose this love?

Well, it's not what the Bible says.

Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

That's the context.

That's good news, isn't it?

There's stress, yeah.

And it might feel more like suffering, and there's perseverance required.

But it's funny, what I've learned, getting a little bit fitter, is it's more fun when you're enduring it well.

It's more fun when you actually get used to God coming through with what you need.

And that faith muscle, to take the metaphor on a bit, it grows, and it pumps oxygen around your body more efficiently.

And I think that's exactly what happens with our faith.

As we step out and we see that God is faithful, and that he does love us, and he provides grace upon grace, all sufficient grace each day, and it's new every morning, we start to believe for those miracles, which is what we experience every day from the gospel.

It's all in the context of love.

What is the biggest challenge you face right now?

And what's the great miracle you're praying for?

Can I be a little bit cheeky and just pose the question, maybe that's not the main miracle you need.

Could be.

I know a miracle you do need.

I need it.

I need a robust, weathered and wintered, strong faith that's resilient tomorrow.

That's what I need.

In fact, I need that above everything else.

Because any miracle I get, even the blind man had to wake up the next day and work out how to live with eyes.

What we need is strong eyes, strong eyes to see the power of the gospel and the fact that we're loved.

And His grace is all sufficient and by faith I can find it.

And in that I can find peace and I'm justified and I stand in the grace.

This is all straight from the text.

And then what struck me is it's actually so that the love of God does something through me and you, isn't it?

It doesn't end with us.

We're not like the Dead Sea where all the nutrients stop and it just gets salty.

When we understand that we are loved, when we are aware that the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts and we know we belong, and no matter what, though He slay me, yet I will praise Him.

What does that do to your attitude?

It's like, I'm okay.

I'm gonna be okay.

How are you?

How are you?

How are you?

The love of God can then be taken and given away to others, amen?

Because that's what we're aiming for.

Because otherwise, a bit of suffering comes along and it's like, I didn't expect this.

It wasn't part of the deal.

It's stressful.

All I can think about is my own suffering.

This faith we are called to is unfinished.

This hope we are called to is unfinished.

This love is unfinished.

Miracles.

Let's believe for them.

Can we have both?

Can we have resilient faith?

Please don't think I'm never asking Jonathan to pray for me.

He doesn't even believe in miracles.

I do, totally.

I'm just maybe a bit of a pragmatist.

There's a greater miracle than that little one.

And knowing the love of God so deep that you can be available to others no matter what you're in.

And that's our prayer.

Anyone need prayer?

I'd love to pray for you.

If the band wants to come up.

I'm just going to ask the Lord to help us out with these miracles that we need.

Dear Lord God, thank you that you have made a way for us where often there seems like there isn't a way.

I pray for those who are finding it tough now in the season they're in.

And all the techniques of managing the fatigue of faith aren't working.

We hand it over to you, Lord.

We need you.

I ask you in the name of Jesus to mercifully do the miraculous.

May we know the love of God shed abroad in our hearts, through faith.

May you do a work that is genuinely supernatural, that flies in the face of what we are experiencing, what we have to handle.

We thank you so much that your word is true truth, and your word says that your grace is sufficient.

For my brothers and sisters here, I pray that they might have the faith to find your grace tonight, and tomorrow, and the day after, and Wednesday, and the day after.

And as Courtney prayed, could we lift our eyes out of the challenge of our own lives, and see the opportunities for gospel witness.

May our lives standing in your grace, standing in the strength of the hope, and the love, and the empowering that you give us.

May our lives testify to the world that you are real.

We'd love to hear the testimonies of more miracles, Lord God, you're the one who opens up red seas.

You still can do it, and we pray you would, in the name of Jesus, amen.

We're going to respond in worship.

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