SIMPLE FAITH

Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart

and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways acknowledge him,

and he will make your paths straight.

                This past Sunday we had two young ladies speak at our worship service. Both of them are serving with CRU, formerly Campus Crusade for Christ. One is serving in an inner-city ministry and the other overseas. Both of these young ladies had grown up in our small town and had felt God calling them into service. I was struck by their profound, simple faith. They felt God calling and they responded.

                Jesus made is clear that we all need to come to Him through simple faith. Jesus used an incident with some children to emphasize His point. People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." Mark 10:13-15

                When Jesus said that a person had to receive the kingdom like a little child, He was calling for simple faith. Not simplistic or childish faith, but simple and child-like faith. Children are generally trusting, until we teach them otherwise. When they are told something, they tend to take it at face value. They do not analyze it before they accept it, they just accept it.

                When I was in my first year at seminary, the President of the seminary told us that the greatest danger that we faced in seminary was that we would become theologians and lose our faith. The danger that he was warning us about was that we would abandon the simple faith that Jesus calls for and substitute an academic faith, which often is dead. Over the years, I have felt that very struggle. There have been many times when I have desired to go back to the simple faith of my youth. All of my theological study has, at times, gotten in the way of simply trusted God.

                Simple faith is not a mindless faith. It is not putting our intellect on the shelf and blindly following. Simple faith is trusting that God knows what He is doing even when we do not. It is taking God at His word and then acting upon the knowledge that we have. Simple faith is the foundation of living a life pleasing to God. As it says in Hebrews 11:6, And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. There are two significant components to this kind of faith. It recognizes the reality of God and it embraces the grace of God. There are many people that have a vague idea that there is a God out there somewhere, but they do not believe that God cares about them. The essence of simple faith is that a person both acknowledges God’s existence and trusts God to be actively involved in their life.

                When I was boy, Proverbs 3:5-6 was my favorite passage of scripture. I memorized it in the KJV. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. To be honest, in my mind, the focus was on “and he will direct thy paths.” I really wanted God to show me what I was to do and where I was to go. I have come to realize that the focus of the passage is really on “trust.” Simple faith challenges us to examine our level of trust. Am I willing to take God at His word, or am I leaning on my own understanding of my life?

                The two young ladies that I mentioned above demonstrated genuine simple faith. Each, in their own way, were willing to answer God’s call, even though that meant stepping out of their comfort zone. Each of them trusted God to provide what they needed in order to do what God had called them to do. I was inspired and challenged by their testimonies.