Having a Sports Fan's Kind of Faith

Suggested Reading: Matthew 4:1-11

As a Texas Rangers fan, I've been a little disappointed the last few years. After two years of being spoiled by World Series appearances, they haven't won a single significant game in October for a while now. But I grew up cheering for and believing in a Rangers team that never went to the postseason. Every year, I started out thinking, this could be the year they win it all. Every game I believed they could win. I didn't care if they were down by 12 runs going into the bottom of the ninth inning. I didn't care if they were so far behind half-way through the season they would have to win almost all of their games to make the playoffs. I believed in my team, even when the odds were stacked against them and it seemed impossible. After all, a true fan always believes in his team, no matter how bleak the outlook.

That kind of stubborn faith, that believes in spite of circumstances, is similar to the faith we should have in our God. In Matthew chapter 4, Jesus had been led by the Spirit into the wilderness where Jesus went without food or drink for 40 days and nights until the Devil showed up to tempt him. The Devil's first temptation should have been very difficult to resist for a man who had been hungry for more than a month. After 40 days of hunger Satan tempted Jesus to abuse his power to create some bread and alleviate his hunger. Jesus' response?  He answered, “It is written: Man must not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God”

(Matthew 4:4, HCSB).

You see, we talk about believing that God can sustain us even when we don't have what we need, but Jesus lived it. Jesus turned down food after 40 days of hunger because he trusted God to sustain him. After all, Jesus had survived more than a month without food when the human body was only designed to survive for a couple of days without water and a little longer without food. Jesus' continued survival was a demonstration of God's ability to sustain. Even when God hadn't provided the food, God had sustained the life.

Do you really believe you can survive on the word of God, on God's promises and on God's unseen power? Or do you talk like you believe and then worry when no-one is watching? Can you turn down something you need because getting it requires moral compromise or do you have to do the "practical thing." Simply put, do you really believe God can sustain your life without providing the need or do you just talk a good game? Do you live by bread alone or are your sustained by the word of God?

When Villains Embrace Biblical Strategies

Suggested Reading: John 17:20-26 (A prayer of Jesus)

One of the things I knew about the original Avengers movie going in was that getting the heroes to the point where they could work together was supposed to take a good bit of time. Not only was it difficult for so many powerful people with such legendary egos to work together, but one of the central pillars of the enemy's plan was to get the team of heroes fighting with each other so that they would be too busy to fight the bad guys. Loki understood the principle that Jesus espoused in Mark 3:25, "If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand" (HCSB).

As followers of Christ we, too, have an enemy who seeks to divide us. Our Enemy pits us against one another, encouraging our egos and trying to focus us on our differences. And we seem to help him. We fight over things like which strategies will best reach the lost while never actually employing any of them. We argue and strut over whose biblical interpretation is the most accurate instead of living out the Word of God in our lives. We fight over which sins are the most unforgivable and forget that we will only be forgiven if we forgive others (Matthew 28:21-35). In short, we spend so much time bickering and fighting with each other that we have little time left for the task of reaching the world with the Gospel.

Jesus foresaw our tendency toward infighting and shortsightedness in the Garden of Gethsemane and prayed for us:

I pray not only for these, but also for those who believe in Me through their message. May they all be one, as You, Father, are in Me and I am in You. May they also be one in Us, so the world may believe You sent Me. I have given them the glory You have given Me. May they be one as We are one. I am in them and You are in Me. May they be made completely one, so the world may know You have sent Me and have loved them as You have loved Me.
(John 17:20-23, HCSB)

We may be able to do some good on our own but, like the Avengers, we are stronger when we work together. Let's put our petty differences aside and try to live and work together like Jesus prayed we would. A house divided will never stand.

Becoming MacGyver Christians

Suggested Reading: Luke 4:1-13

One of my favorite television shows when I was growing up was the original MacGyver. If you aren't familiar with the show, it centered around a man known as MacGyver who was continuously sent on covert and sensitive missions and used common, every day items to create what he needed or to solve problems. Once he used chocolate bars to seal up an acid spill and another time he used a paper clip and a stick of bubble gum to disarm a nuclear weapon. MacGyver never had to worry about the supplies he didn't have. Whatever MacGyver had was enough to save the day. And he had a pretty catchy opening theme song too.

Christians have a lot to learn from MacGyver about how to look at what we have versus worrying about what we don't have. As Satan was tempting a very hungry Jesus , he suggested that Jesus should turn a nearby stone into bread in order to deal with his hunger and thus prove that he was the Son of God. The temptation was multi-faceted and a masterful stroke, not only did he attempt to goad Jesus' ego by saying, "If you are the Son of God…" but he played on Jesus' hunger and tried to focus Jesus on the fact that he had no food. Jesus' response to Satan was "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone'"(Luke 4:3-4, NIV).  Rather than allowing himself to focus on his lack of bread and be drawn in, Jesus reminded both himself and Satan that he had other things at his disposal that could sustain him, referencing Deuteronomy 8:3 which tells us that we can also survive on "every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord."

So my question to you today is: what do you have? So often we focus on the things we don't have. We don't have enough money. We don't have enough time. We don't have enough help. We don't have enough experience. We don't have enough space. We don't have enough opportunities. It is very easy to focus on the things we don't have. But as people who claim to trust in a sovereign God who provides for all of our needs, we spend a lot of time focusing on what we don't have rather than, like MacGyver,  looking around at what we do have and finding that we have exactly what we need.

Sometimes, our focus on what we don't have is a result of simply being narrow-minded - we are so convinced that only this thing will meet the need that we don't even consider other options. But ultimately, focusing on what we don't have demonstrates a lack of trust in God. If we really believe that God provides for all of our needs, our reaction to coming up short ought not to be to moan and groan about not having enough but to look around at what God has given us and believe that, whatever we have at our disposal, God has given us exactly what we need to deal with the situation while we place our trust in God.

If you keep thinking about what you don't have, find an old episode of MacGyver, get some inspiration, and then look around to see what God has given you. You never know when the little you have will be exactly what is needed for God to save the day.