Faith in Christ

For years, Ben Affleck wrestled with alcohol addiction. A consequence, he says, of having an alcoholic father. But the actor shared that he was in a much better place now and doesn't think he will ever return to that way of life.

It is no secret that substance abuse is a pervasive problem in Hollywood. Tragic stories are common. So, how did Affleck escape this fate?

In an interview he credited his Christian faith. Affleck says his Christian faith in later life has allowed him to accept his flaws and imperfections as a man. He said:

The concept that God, through Jesus, embraces and pardons all of us - from those we admire to those we might judge or resent - is powerful. If God can show such boundless love, urging us to love, avoid judgement and offer forgiveness, it serves as a profound model of how we should strive to be.

What I truly appreciate, even as I still grapple with my faith and beliefs, as I think all people do at times, is the profound idea that we all have imperfections . . . It's our journey to seek redemption, embrace divine love, better ourselves, cherish others, refrain from judgement, and extend forgiveness.

In her book Atheists Finding God: Unlikely Stories of Conversions to Christianity in the Contemporary West, Jana Harmon explored why atheists came to faith in Christ. One big factor included the kindness of Christians. Harmon writes:

Nearly two-thirds of the former atheists I spoke with thought they would never leave their atheistic identity and perspective. They were not looking for God or interested in spiritual conversations. So, what breached their walls of resistance? ... Something [disrupted their] status quo.

She shares one story about how some Christians became the catalyst that disrupted the atheistic worldview by Christlike kindness:

Jeffrey became an atheist following a childhood tragedy where he lost two brothers in a house fire. His deep pain fueled a vitriolic hatred against God and instability in his own life. During the next 20 years, he developed strong arguments to support his emotional resistance to belief. When his wife unexpectedly became a Christian, his anger against God only grew.

One evening his wife called and asked him to pick her up at the home of the Christians who had led her to Christ. Jeffrey was expecting a heated exchange, but instead received warm hospitality. Feeling valued, he was drawn back again and again toward meaningful conversation. Over time, his walls of resistance began to melt, friendship and trust developed, and intellectual questions were answered. Eventually, he lost his resistance to God and found the peace and joy that had long eluded him.

In August 2019, Marnus Labuschagne was drafted into the Australian Cricket Team unexpectedly as the first-ever concussion substitute in the history of international test cricket, replacing the injured Steve Smith. Labuschagne soon showed that he was no stop-gap sportsman as he quickly established his batting skills in international cricket. To date, he has scored 3767 test runs from 42 matches at the exceptional average of 54.59, placing him at number 20 on the all-time test average rankings. At present, he is the number five batsman in test cricket.

In spite of the unprecedented success, Labuschagne has earned a reputation for being a man who takes faith in Christ and prayer seriously. He has a sticker of an eagle on his bat, to highlight his favorite Bible verse, Isaiah 40:31.

In an interview for Season 2 of the documentary “The Test,” Marnus said, "Everyone knows cricket is a major part of my life, but the value of me as a person isn't in cricket - it's in my faith. I grew up with Christianity going back to when I was a kid, laying in my bed, praying every night."

He is also quoted as saying, "When I pray, I don't pray to win, just that I could perform at my best, and that all the glory will go to God, for whatever happens … win or lose." He further adds, "In the big scheme of things, what you're worth ... isn't out there on the pitch; It's internal and in Christ … Cricket is always going to be up and down. If you have (Jesus Christ as) a constant in your life, it makes life a lot easier."

Possible Preaching Angle:

Testimony; Witness - Marnus Labuschagne has clearly built his life and career on the words of Jesus - "But seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well (Matt. 6:33).

Saving faith is not mere knowledge of Scripture or of Christ. Treating it like that is like treating a prescription as a medicine, or a signpost as a destination. It fails to see the difference between two types of knowledge: A detached “outward” knowledge and a personally involved “inward” knowledge.

C.S. Lewis found this distinction indispensable and illustrated it in his essay titled “Meditation in a Toolshed.” In this excerpt he wrote:

I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.

Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.

Possible Preaching Angle:

What we see depends upon where we are standing. Any person can learn something about Christianity from the outside, e.g., by reading the Bible, studying what Christians believe, and examining the life of Christ. These are good things. It is important to remember, however, that a Christian is someone who has been born again, and knows God personally as Savior and Lord “from the inside.”

Although she served faithfully in the youth ministry of her church, Taya Smith's singing talent was largely unknown among her church congregation. Having been forced to take time off from her job during the holiday season, she delayed too long to buy a plane ticket to visit her family. Since flights had become too expensive by then, Taya was stuck in Sydney for the holiday week. After attending a church recording that Sunday night, she sang her heart out with the youth band on stage and was noticed by the producers for Hillsong music.

Two mornings later Taya received a message from producer, Mike Chislett, requesting her to come over to the studio to do some backing vocals for a new music project. Since she didn’t have a driver's license, she traveled on multiple buses and trains over two days, and then rode her skateboard from the train station to the recording studio (about one and a half hours each way).

While at the studio, she was asked to record a song titled “Oceans.” It was the fulfillment of a prayer she had prayed two weeks earlier, asking God for help to step out into the unknown.

When released, the song “Oceans (Where feet may fail),” spent 61 weeks at number 1 on the Billboard Hot Christian Songs Chart. Billboard termed it the #1 Christian song of the 2010's. The song talks about stepping out into the unknown and was based on the moment the Apostle Peter walked on water.

In Searching for God Knows What, Donald Miller tells of a lecture delivered to students at a Christian college. He began by telling them that he was going to present the gospel, but leave out one very important element.

He described the rampant sin that plagued our culture: "homosexuality, abortion, drug use, song lyrics on the radio, newspaper headlines, and so on." He said that the wages of sin is death, talked about teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and all the supporting statistics. He described how the way sin separates us from God. He spoke of "the beauty of morality," telling stories, citing examples of how righteous living was better. He detailed greatness of heaven. He spoke of repentance and how their lives could be God-honoring and God-centered."

Describing what happened when he finished the lecture, Miller writes:

I rested my case and asked the class if they could tell me what it was I had left out of this gospel presentation. Not a single hand raised … I presented a gospel to Christian Bible college students and left out … Jesus. Nobody noticed.

To a culture that believes they “go to heaven” based on whether or not they are morally pure, or that they understand some theological ideas, or that they are very spiritual, Jesus is completely unnecessary. At best, He is an afterthought, a technicality by which we become morally pure, or a subject of which we know, or a founding father of our woo-woo spirituality.

In C.S. Lewis’ book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a young girl Lucy, her brother Edmund, and their cousin Eustace are taken to Narnia where the Christ-figure is a lion named Aslan. The three of them go on a voyage and come to the island Where Dreams Come True. This is where nightmares come true. The ship’s crew is overcome by fear and begin to wildly row in the darkness. Each sailor hears a different terrifying noise: huge scissors, enemies crawling up the side of the ship, and gongs.

So what does Lucy do? She prays: “Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all, send us help now.” The darkness did not grow any less, but she began to feel a little—a very, very little—better. “After all, nothing has really happened to us yet,” she thought.

A ray of light falls on the ship and Lucy sees something in it like a cross. It is an albatross. The albatross circles them three times, lands on their mast, and then flies ahead of them leading their ship out of the darkness. But no one except Lucy knew that as [the albatross] circled the mast it had whispered to her, “Courage, dear heart,” and the voice was Aslan’s.

In a few moments the darkness turned into a greyness ahead. Then, almost before they dared to begin hoping, they had shot out into the sunlight and were in the warm, blue world again. And all at once everybody realized that there was nothing to be afraid of and never had been.

Possible Preaching Angles: May we never lose heart. May we hope that God will answer our prayers even when we’re tired and afraid. We pray so that we never lose heart and we never lose heart because we pray.

In December of 2016, a ride at Knott's Berry Farm in California became stuck 148 feet in the air. There were 20 people on board, including seven children. Firefighters tried to reach the stranded passengers by using a massive ladder, but it was too short. Fire crews had no choice. They would have to lower each passenger from 148 feet in the air, harnessed to a single rope.

Fire Captain Larry Kurtz said, "It sounds scary, but … we have very, very strong ropes that have 9,000 pounds of breaking strength on them." He was building the faith of those who were trapped. He was giving them information that if believed would dissipate their fears. It was up to each person to believe what he said and place their trust in the firefighter.

Let's zero in on one of the youngsters, and say his name was Luke. He's seven years old—old enough to feel terror as he looks at the ground 148 feet below. The fire­fighter looks Luke in his eyes, and with a steadying voice says, "Trust me, Luke. I won't let you go. Your life is very precious to me, and I will have you down before you know it."

Luke listens to him and thinks about the "very, very strong rope." He believes the firefighter's reassuring words and trusts him completely. This is his only hope of getting to safety. If he doesn’t have faith, then he doesn't believe that the firefighter cares for him. He would then lose his only hope of reaching the ground. Faith, hope, and love are bound together.

Luke and all 20 passengers were lowered safely to the ground just before 10 p.m. that night.

Much of the world looks upon the adrenaline junkies who jump out of "perfectly good airplanes" as crazy, but jumping from 25,000 feet without a parachute or wingsuit? That would just be suicide, right? Not anymore. Luke Aikins plummeted from an airplane at 25,000 feet without any kind of parachute, landing neatly in a square 100-foot by 100-foot net set up to catch him. He landed at a terminal velocity of 120 mph. Utterly crazy and even stupid, right? The guy has a wife and a four-year-old son.

But there is another angle to this story. Aikins was clear that this stunt involved a ridiculous amount of training. For starters, the 42-year-old has over 18,000 jumps to his name. Then according to CNN, "He prepared for the stunt by doing dozens of jumps—each, naturally, wearing a parachute—aiming at a 100 square foot target, opening his chute at the last possible moment. In his practice jumps he would pull the cord at 1,000 feet, something he had to get special dispensation for. He said in the runup to the jump that he had consistently been hitting a much smaller target, giving him greater leeway with the full-sized net."

As Aikins said, "Whenever people attempt to push the limits of what's considered humanly possible, they're invariably described as crazy. I'm here to show you that if we approach it the right way and we test it and we prove that it's good to go, we can do things that we don't think are possible." Okay, so the guy still might be insane, but he does have a good point: Proper training will get you to places you never thought possible.

Possible Preaching Angles: Faith isn't just a blind leap into the dark. It is always a step that involves risk, but it is also based on good and sufficient reasons.

You have undoubtedly been on an elevator that bears his name. Otis elevators have been the industry standard for more than 150 years. While Elisha Otis did not invent the elevator, he did devise the braking system that ensured its safety. At the time, most elevators were little more than open platforms, and they'd come apart and people would be seriously injured if the cable broke. And without a trustworthy braking system, elevators were earthbound and building heights were limited to a mere six stories. With it, the sky was the limit. The braking system for elevators made modern skyscrapers possible.

But initially Elisha Otis had trouble selling his elevators, until 1854 when he concocted a creative sales pitch at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in Manhattan. Every hour at the exposition, the World's Fair of its day, Otis stepped into his machine. He gave the order to an assistant who cut the rope. The crowd held its breath. The brake kicked in, the elevator stopped and Otis announced: "All safe, gentlemen. All safe."

With this demonstration, Otis quickly sold his first three elevators for $300 apiece. Today, New York City alone has about 70,000 elevators, and it's estimated that the equivalent of the world's population travels on an Otis elevator, escalator, or moving walkway every three days.

Possible Preaching Angles: Faith; Trust; Belief—This story shows the critical difference between knowing about something or someone and putting your faith in something or someone.

Like many classic Spanish dishes, a basic dish of paella is a simple combination of just a few ingredients: rice, seafood, and a handful of vegetables. Other than these ingredients, the dish is flavored with a single spice—saffron.

Saffron itself is fascinating. Prized for its qualities as both a spice and a coloring agent, it has been traded for thousands of years. Saffron is not made; it is harvested from flowers. When a certain type of crocus flower is in bloom, delicate inner structures of the flower (stigmas and styles) are carefully plucked by hand. These deep-maroon, threadlike parts are then dried. Because of the difficulty related to cultivating and harvesting saffron, it is by far the most expensive of all spices—more expensive, pound for pound, than gold.

Fortunately, a little bit goes a long way. Just a small pinch of saffron crushed with a mortar and pestle will season a dish of paella large enough to feed a dozen people. It doesn't just infuse the dish with its telltale bright yellow color; it imparts a heady, earthy aroma and a flavor that leaves a deep impression on both your palate and your memory.

According to Jesus, faith is like that. Like a mustard seed, or perhaps a saffron thread, a little bit goes a long way and leaves a lasting impression.

We human being are so security-oriented. Whether it is conscious or not, we all need and want security in our lives. From the time we are born, we are clinging to something. That's okay, but we've got to be clinging to the right thing. When we are holding onto Jesus, that's when we are holding on to real hope.

It was Mother Teresa who said, "You will never know that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you've got."

Many years ago, King George VI of England addressed the British commonwealth on New Year's Eve at a moment in history when the whole world stood on the brink of uncertainty. Despondency and uncertainty filled the air. The king's own body was racked by cancer. Before that year was over, his life ended. Unaware of his own physical maladies, he uttered these memorable words:

"I said to the man at the gate of the year, 'Give me a light that I might walk safely into the unknown.' And he said to me, 'Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the hand of God. It shall be to you safer than the light and better than the known.' "

You know what a lot of religious people are like? They are like a lot of people sitting around a railroad station thinking they are on a train. Everybody is talking about travel, and you hear the names of the stations and you have got the tickets, and there is the smell of baggage around you and a great deal of stir, and if you sit there long enough you almost think you are on a train. But you are not. You only start to get converted at that point where you get on the train and get pulled out of the station. And you do get pulled out; you do not walk out.

Christmas demands faith, because Christmas is a mystery. Our reason cannot succeed in trying to understand how God could possibly have loved us to such a degree. The shepherds are given a sign. They will find him in a manger. There the infant Jesus has been placed ... a sign of extreme poverty and of God's supreme humility. Such a thing baffles the intellect. It teaches us that to welcome the message of Christ, the divine Redeemer, reason must be laid aside. Only humility, which melts into trust and adoration, can comprehend and welcome God's saving humility.