Friday 8 April 2016

Low Sunday 3 Apr 2016 Sermon

Low Sunday 3.4.16 Faith

Before this was Mercy Sunday it was, unofficially at least, Faith Sunday. It is the Sunday that we hear about St Thomas’ progress in faith, from a high level of scepticism to a complete faith: My Lord and my God!

We have to arrive at the same point as St Thomas. Our Lord wants all His disciples to be fully operational, filled to the brim with faith in Him.

He will help us to reach such a point.

We use the word ‘faith’ in two senses – there is faith as in what we believe - the doctrines; as listed in our creeds.

And there is faith in a more personal sense, as to how much or little we trust in God to look after us on a day to day basis.

So to say: I have faith in God, means both that I believe He exists, and that I believe He will help me in my life.

We need both kinds of faith. The more personal one is harder to come by.

It is a strange thing how we attribute certainty to some things more than others.

We can find that we have more faith in the things that God has put in place than in God Himself.

For instance, we would have absolute certainty that tomorrow morning the sun will rise in the east. Yet we are probably not so certain that God would help us solve our current problems.

But the sun rises only where God ordains it so.

He wants us to trust in Him more than any detail or fact.

I believe He made the world, but will He help me find a lost set of keys? When put under pressure our faith can buckle very easily.

It is the personal nature of the thing that makes it harder. Can I really believe that God would care about my problems at this moment, as trivial as they must be on the world scale?

Yet if He understands the whole He must also understand all the parts that make up the whole. So every detail of our lives is known to Him.

That may sound scary, but it works for our benefit. It means He can control the flow of events and He does just that. All the more so if we pray for His help.

This kind of faith is possible only if we keep it constantly on the boil.

We have to take advantage of every opportunity to pray, to meditate on God's wonders, to recall past blessings, communal and personal. We intersperse our prayers of petition with praise to God for His goodness, and thanksgiving for past favours.

We come to know Him better, so well in fact that we believe in Him as much as the sun rising in the east, and other similar certainties.

It may be hard, but it gets easier.

Imagine having no fear, not even of death itself; because our sense of God is so strong.
I will not fear though the earth should rock, though the mountains fall into the sea; though ten thousand come against me (Psalms 45,3 and 3,6).

Not even St Thomas had reached this point as yet. He still needed the extra prayer in the Upper Room.

We all probably need lots more prayer to reach such a level of faith. But it is where we should be.

Faith takes away fear.

It is all the work of the one Lord and Saviour, who firstly does these remarkable things like dying and rising for us; and then imparts to us the confidence in Him that is necessary for us to follow Him through these events.

He is Our Lord and Our God!

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