Positive Faith in Scripture: A God Who Comforts

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. There will be no mourning, crying, or pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Revelation 21:4, CEB

God’s goal, his plan, in fact, is to move creation to a place where there will be no death, no pain. There will be no more need for sadness because creation itself will perfectly embody his compassion, patience, mercy, and love.

And, even so, he will wipe away the tears from the sadness that has come before. Because he is a comforter.

There will one day be a time where no future comfort is needed- but we all have pasts- and he is here for us, to heal us.

Positive Faith in Scripture: God Protects

Don’t fear, because I am with you;

don’t be afraid, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you,

I will surely help you;

I will hold you

with my righteous strong hand.

Isaiah 41:10, CEB

Yesterday we started unpacking some of God’s positive attributes (compassion, mercy, patience, love)- knowing these things is really going to inform and shape our ability to have a “positive faith.”

Another of these traits is God’s protection and his desire to help. In a culture that has talked way too much about the bad things God wants to do to you (not true, by the way), it’s hard to imagine that God’s desire, truly, is to be helpful.

Time and again scripture speaks to God’s desire to strengthen his people, to work through them when they’re too exhausted to do the work themselves, to hold them up when they can’t stand.

He is not a God who desires to harm- nor is he distant. His desire is to give his people everything they need to keep moving in the direction of compassion, mercy, patience, and love.

Positive Faith in Scripture: God’s Dominant Characteristics

“But you, my Lord,

are a God of compassion and mercy;

you are very patient and full of faithful love.”

Psalm 86:15, CEB

Thinking about faith in positive terms is not just about how we view ourselves- it also has quite a lot to do with how we view God.

Many struggle to believe in God as scripture presents him and as God speaks of himself in scripture. This is because preachers for the last 100 years or so have treated God’s “rare” qualities as if they are “dominant” qualities in order to motivate people into joining churches, or making decisions, or whatever the case may be. Regardless of the specifics, this has largely been done to make the preacher look good and has little to do with God or the person on the receiving end of the message.

Psalm 86 echoes the most-often repeated claim about God in the Bible- that he is compassionate and merciful, and patient and loving. These are his dominant traits. They are the ones most prominently on display “most” of the time (it generally takes hundreds of years to get God angry).

God spends more of his time lamenting the fact that his own people can’t seem to embody these same traits- compassion, mercy, patience, and love- than he does being angry at them over it.

Because of your past, it is likely quite hard to believe that God is the things Psalm 86 says. But, if you did believe them…what would that change for you?

Positive Faith in Scripture: Strength for the Weak

Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God,

the creator of the ends of the earth.

He doesn’t grow tired or weary.

His understanding is beyond human reach,

giving power to the tired and reviving the exhausted.

Isaiah 40:28-29, CEB

I blame everything on culture and I’m going to try to stop doing that because it’s lazy. But maybe I’ll start tomorrow. Our culture teaches us that we shouldn’t show weakness, that strength is a virtue, and that strength and weakness are opposites. We’re also taught that some people are strong and some people are weak, as opposed to something like: everyone has strengths and weaknesses.

The latter seems more accurate to me. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Everyone’s strengths should be celebrated and nobody’s weaknesses are a problem.

This seems to me to be closer to the biblical view of strength and weakness anyway. In scripture, weakness is inevitable. Everyone will experience it. And, it’s not a problem. God can work with it and he can work with it. He has enough strength to spread around such that his plans will never be held back by our weakness (or our perceived weakness, or our perceived lack of strengths).

God doesn’t hoard his strength either. It’s not something to boast about or lord over humanity. It’s something to be given and shared so that we will have all that we need when we need it.

Weaknesses are not shortcomings- they’re little signs and reminders that we both need God and community.

Together, we have all the strength(s) we would ever need.

Positive Faith in Scripture: Upbuildings

“God didn’t set us up for an angry rejection but for salvation by our Master, Jesus Christ. He died for us, a death that triggered life. Whether we’re awake with the living or asleep with the dead, we’re alive with him! So speak encouraging words to one another. Build up hope so you’ll all be together in this, no one left out, no one left behind. I know you’re already doing this; just keep on doing it.”

1 Thessalonians 5:9-11, Message

Here we see similar language to yesterday: a life of faith is actually about “life.” Insanity! It’s hard to imagine, in our culture, that God actually wants us to live a full life. More often we’re left with the idea that we need to hide who we really are because, if we’re found out, we’ll be excluded from the group. So, instead, we spend so much time managing appearances so we can appear as good (if not better) than the next person in line.

But this is no way to live! It’s not life- it’s prison. Imagine a faith community where people are encouraged, affirmed, built up, together. Brothers and sisters in arms. It’s hard to imagine- we don’t see enough of this.

This isn’t some hippy modern idea either- as the passage above shows, it’s quite literally 1st century stuff. Positive faith isn’t new- it’s biblical.

Maybe we do need to go back to the good old days- the days where we recognized and acknowledged the good in each other and attempted to build it up.