Trust Fall
By Grant Gaines
On June 30, 1859, Charles Blondin, who was also known as “The Great Blondin,” became the first man to successfully tightrope across Niagara Falls. Blondin would walk across Niagara many more times in the following years, each time adding a unique twist that increased the difficulty level exponentially. For example, one time Blondin walked across on stilts. Another time he walked across Niagara with a small propane stove on his back so that when he got half way across the Falls, he could sit down and scramble himself some eggs! These impressive feats would bring up to 25,000 amazed spectators who would erupt with loud cheers and applause when The Great Blondin would successfully reach the other side.
One day as Blondin was preparing to walk across Niagara while pushing a wheelbarrow with 350 pounds of cement in it he looked down to the eager crowd and asked them, “Do you believe I can make it across this tightrope without falling?” The crowd erupted in unison, “YES!!!”
Once again, Blondin asked the crowd if they believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was able to successfully make it across the tightrope. “Of course you can! You’ve always done it in the past! We believe in you!” the crowd responded.
Then with a smile on his face, Blondin looked down at one of the young men in the crowd who had been cheering rather loudly and said, “Sir, if you truly believe that I can make it across safely, then get in.”
The man refused.
This is the heartbeat behind James 2:17 (NIV) which states that, “In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”
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You could claim to believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, but unless you have an “active faith,” you believe in vain. Not only that, but when you only have an intellectual understanding of who God is but never truly “get in the wheel barrow” by living out the commands found in His Word, James 1:22 says you actually deceive yourself. Essentially you believe in the historical person of Jesus just like you would believe in the historical person of Abraham Lincoln rather than actually having your life changed by believing in Jesus Christ as the true Son of God.
You could go to church every week, have a morning quiet time with the Lord that would put us all to shame, and hide the entire New Testament in your heart, but unless your faith goes beyond the inward disciplines and affects your outward behaviors and relationships with others, you are simply living as a lukewarm Pharisee who looks great on the outside but inwardly is dead (Matthew 23).The only faith that matters is an active faith.
In 2 Corinthians 13:5 (NIV) Paul tells us, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you–unless, of course, you fail the test?”
If you don’t like tests, today is your lucky day because Paul gave us the “cheat sheet” to this test in Galatians 5:6 (NIV) when he boldly proclaimed that, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” In God’s eyes, an active faith is spelled L-O-V-E.
This love is first and foremost an incomparable love for God which is expressed through our loving actions towards others. In fact, in Matthew 22:37-40, Jesus says that a love for God and a love for others sums up (or fulfills) the entire Old Testament Law which is comprised of 613 commands! That’s a pretty sweet deal right there if you ask me-rather than having to get every single question right on a 613 question test, Jesus tells us we only need to focus on two main areas-loving God and loving others. Everything else will fall into place if we take care of those two.
Paul chipped in on this idea when he penned, “If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3, NLT).
Just as The Great Blondin illustrated as he prepared to walk across Niagara, if your proclamation of faith doesn’t match your actions, your faith is dead. Or to put it another way, if the tongue on your shoes doesn’t match the tongue in your mouth, you don’t truly believe God is who He says He is.
Take a moment today to answer this question: how active is your faith? Or maybe a better question to answer is this: how often is your love for God displayed in your loving actions towards others?
“Above all love one another for love covers over a multitude of sins.”
-1 Peter 4:8 (NIV)
Comments? Questions? Suggestions?
