May 11, 2003

A couple young guys are out hiking in the woods one morning, when suddenly they encounter a big black bear. The bear takes one look at the hikers and he gets this look in his eye that can only mean “my lunch has been delivered.” The bear starts to growl menacingly, and the one young hiker very slowly starts to slip off his backpack, and slowly ease off his hiking boots and put on his running shoes. And his companion looks at this and says, “Are you crazy? You can’t outrun a bear.” And the first hiker replies, “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you.”

Sometimes fear is a big motivator, isn’t it? Psychologists say there are four great impelling motives that drive people to action: love, hope, faith, and fear. Note the placement of the last two. What we’re doing in this sermon series, which will run throughout May, is looking at how fear can be converted to faith as a motivating agent. To put it another way, how the fear that may be keeping us rooted in one spot can be conquered by the faith that will help us get going in life.

Today I want to look at two Biblical characters who stand out among all the thousands who populate scripture because of their initial doubts and fears, and later for their faith, Abraham and Thomas.

Now Abraham walked with God in a unique way, but maybe not so unique after all. In many ways his story is our story. Let me ask you a question: How many of us think we could do a better job of walking closely with God? How many of us think our lives could stand some improvement that way?

Let’s look at the way God’s call came to Abram, which was his name at the time. He was 75 years old when his Biblical story begins, and he was a man of wealth. Very comfortable where he is, which happens to be in an area we know as Iraq. But God comes to him and says “It is time to move. Leave your native land, your relatives and your father’s house and go to a country I am going to show you. I will bless you and make your name famous, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you. And through you I will bless all the nations.”

How many of you would like to pack up and move to another country at age 75? But if Abram protested or got cold feet, the Bible doesn’t record it. He just set off with his wife Sarai and his servants into the desert, which leads to the title of today’s sermon: If you want to step up and walk closer to God, you’ve got to step out in faith.

And that brings me to the first point I want to make today about converting our fears to faith: How far we go with God will be determined by how much we’re willing to leave behind. Abram even in his old age was willing to abandon his security system—his family, and families were very, very important in a world where marauders were constantly roaming and raiding, carrying off your sheep or your women. But he was willing to trust God’s promises, which were at this point two-fold—I will give you a new home, and my blessings will be with you.

What about us? Have we ever heard God’s call to try something new or reach out to someone in need, but we couldn’t do it because our fears got in the way? Because we weren’t willing to move out of our comfort zone? Sometimes people say, “God, I really want to get closer to you. I really want to do something that will show you how much I love you.” And God says, “Fine, here’s your chance.”

And then we want to start hedging our bets. We start getting out the weasel words, “Well, I didn’t mean like that.” How close you walk with God depends on how much you’re willing to leave behind. Abram had to let go not just of the security of his father’s household, he had to let go of people. Jesus himself echoed that kind of thinking when he said “If you want to be my follower, you must love me more than your mother or father, more than your wife or children, more than any of your family. I have to be number one in your family.”

And that leads me straight into the second point for this morning: Great things start with simple things. God told Abram, “Through you, all the world will be blessed.” And that’s a reference to Jesus, who would be Abram’s descendant. That’s a tremendous destiny for Abram, but it can’t happen until Abram takes that first step in faith. You’ve probably heard the Chinese proverb, “The journey of 10,000 miles begins with a single step.” That’s so true. Often people get on an emotional high and they’re really looking to do great things for God, but here’s the truth: God can’t trust you with great things, until he knows you can handle the little things.

Late last year a story appeared on the news wires from Italy, where a homeless man was found on the street, obviously mentally handicapped. He was taken to a hospital where his filthy clothes were taken off. You know what they found in his pockets? Thirty thousand dollars in cash. This poor man had the answer to his problems in his pocket, and he didn’t even know it. Some people get so fixated on the big things in life that we forget the simple things. Our destiny, where we will end up, depends on the choices we make—including the decision to take the first step when God calls.

Never let fear compromise your identity or destiny. Our places of fear are God’s platforms for change. God is always trying to get us to maximize our potential. He is never content to see us reach 30 percent or 50 percent or even 80 percent. He put our potential within us, and you better believe he wants the maximum return on his investment. The story of Abraham turns sour quite soon, even before the end of Chapter 12. A famine hits the land of Canaan, and Abram takes his family and heads south to Egypt to wait it out.

But before he even enters Egypt Abram turns to his wife Sarai and says “You’re so beautiful, the king himself will desire you, and will kill me to take you as his bride. So I want you to tell the king that I’m your brother, so he’ll take you and let me live.” In short, Abraham wants to take the coward’s way out. And it actually works out well for Abram, for a while. Sarai does get taken to the palace of the king, and Abram, who the king believes is Sarai’s brother, is paid off with flocks of sheep and goats and donkeys, cattle and camels. She must have been one righteous babe.

But the Lord sends terrible diseases on the king and everybody at the palace, because he has taken Sarai as his wife, so when the king figures out what was wrong, he called Abram back to the palace and said “What are you trying to do to me? Why didn’t you tell me Sarai was your wife? Take her and get out.” Just to make sure Abram got the message, the king had his soldiers escort him to the border. What happened here? Abram had denied his own identity, and his destiny. He might well have stayed in Egypt forever, since the king had doubled his wealth just for giving him his “sister.”

But Abram’s destiny lay elsewhere, and God may call us to a destiny that lies somewhere beyond where we’re comfortable. If we refuse to go, just because we’re afraid, we’re denying that destiny, as well as who we are—his beloved. Sometimes the journey takes faith to begin, but sometimes it also takes faith to endure. We might hit a period of famine, an emotional or spiritual famine where we feel like God has misled us about the nature of the journey, and we say, “Hey God, what’s up with that?” His reply might well be, “I didn’t promise you endless bliss on this journey, I only promised you that I’d be with you.”

Beware the contagion of fear. Do you know what’s wrong with our economy today? Fear. One person gets afraid to invest his money, and another, and another, and soon the stock market starts to plummet. Banks pull in their loans. Businesses cut back instead of expanding. Workers get laid off and soon even people with good secure jobs are unwilling to spend money. And it won’t get turned around until businesses start to hire, making people feel good about their prospects. It’s not really a rational process at all, but just part of the herd mentality.

Instead, remember the safety of numbers, especially in worshipping God. You might be wondering where Thomas fits into all this. What is the one adjective that has been applied to Thomas down through the ages? Doubt. He is the one who is remembered for his refusal to have faith in the Resurrection, for his statement that “Unless I touch his wounds, I will never believe.”

Thomas actually gets a bad rap on this supposed lack of faith. He only is mentioned in John’s Gospel, and only twice there, but besides the doubting Thomas story he makes one of the few courageous statements from the disciples before the crucifixion. Everybody else is telling Jesus, “Don’t go to Jerusalem, your enemies are waiting for you.” But Thomas turns to the others and says, ‘Let’s go to Jerusalem so that we can die with Jesus.’ “ In other words, we can take courage if we hang together.

Later on, what happens? Peter gets off by himself, and wimps out. He denies Jesus three times. Thomas goes off by himself, misses Jesus’ appearance to the disciples, and his faith is weak. Maybe the news was just too good to be true, but he has to see for himself. Thomas became a great apostle, the apostle who carried Christ as far as India, where there are statues in his honor to this day. But even after Thomas fell on his knees before Jesus and proclaims “My Lord and My God,” Jesus rebukes him, saying, “You believe because you see. Blessed are those who have not seen, and still believe.”

What we are is a whole culture of people from Missouri. Do you understand what I mean? Missouri is the Show Me state, and often when God calls we’re just like Thomas. Prove to me that you died for me Jesus. Let me put my fingers in the nail holes. Show me and I’ll believe.” And God says, “Believe me and I’ll show you.” Some of us have heard God saying “I want you to take that first step toward a place you’ve never been before,” and some of us reply, “Lord, show me, so I can believe,” and he says back to us, “Believe, so I can show you your future.”

Folks, what we always have to remember is that life is a journey, not a destination, yet the question we ask God is the same as the number one question children ask on a long trip. What’s that question, church? Are we there yet? We say to God, “How many lessons do I have to learn?” God says, “A lot.” We say to God, “How long will the journey take,” and God says, “a lifetime.” We say to God, “I want to arrive,” not understanding that we never arrive until we get to heaven. Many of us start out on the journey but we pull over at the first rest stop and refuse to go any further.

You need to catch this, folks—people who think they’ve arrived don’t understand the nature of the journey.

What John is suggesting to us in the story of Doubting Thomas is that Jesus is best seen within the community of believers that we call the church. We gather here Sunday after Sunday to hear the stories of what God has done for his beloved, and to see the face of his son Jesus in each of us, to be empowered and encouraged to keep the faith. And that’s exactly why our great enemy wants us to be separated from the pack—so that he can sow doubt and fear among us, and pick us off one by one. There really is safety in numbers, if the numbers are those who love and serve the Lord.

Don’t be afraid to love, even if it seems absurd. I have to make at least one comment about love on Mother’s day, and the one at the top of my mind is that often love seems absurd. Sometimes it really seems crazy that mothers will go through the pain of childbirth, and sometimes repeatedly, to bring children into the world, children who not infrequently disappoint them, let them down, even break their heart. It’s possible because a mother’s love defies this absurdity. Catch this—mothers love because they conquer their fear of a broken heart.

Abram answered his call out of love for God, even though it seemed absurd. And here’s another strange story, a true story that happened over in Allentown: a man named Tony Tito had a pizza shop and a wife with a roving eye. She got herself a boyfriend and decided it was time to trade up. So she tried to have Tony killed—five times she tried. She hired men to beat him and shoot him. She even rigged wire at the top of the stairs in hope that he would fall down and break his neck. Finally the cops caught her and arrested her, and she went to prison.

But Tony didn’t abandon his faithless wife—every week he would bring the children to visit her in prison, and when she got out, he was there waiting for her. When news people interviewed him, happy as a clam with his wife beside him, he said, “I can’t believe that marriages break up over silly little things like this.” They made a movie out of Tony’s story, “I Love You To Death.” Now you might say, “Pastor, that’s absurd.” And I would probably be inclined to agree with you. But I would remind you that someone else loves us without hesitation, even in the face of scorn, even in the face of rejection, even in the face of a world that succeeded at killing him. Any idea who I mean?

And the last point I want to make today: Even if fear blinds us to God, it doesn’t blind God to us. Some of us may have had a tough week. We’re weary, we’re stressed out, and fear is creeping back into our thinking. We might be wondering whether God really cares about us, whether he really knows whether we’re alive. If that’s you, let me just assure, you. God knows where you are. There was a really cute story about a cafeteria line at a Catholic school, like the schools I grew up in. There was a big pile of apples in the line, and one of the nuns had written a sign, “Take only one, God is watching you.” And farther down the line there was a plate of chocolate chip cookies, and some smart aleck kid had written, “Take all you want, God is watching the apples.”

How many of you think like me, and you’re glad God is watching the apples instead of the cookies? But that’s just a story. God’s big enough to watch the cookies and the apples—and everybody and everything. Furthermore, he’s such an amazing God that he cares about everyone and everything. Even if you have lost sight of him, he hasn’t lost sight of you. He hasn’t given up on you, and he’s constantly working to draw you back to him.

Have you wondered this week, “God, do you really have your eye on me?” I can assure you, his eye is on the sparrow, and I know he’s watching over you. When God calls, I promise that you can take the first step, and all the ones that follow, knowing he’ll be there to catch you if you fall.