Faith In Action

In April of 1988 on the evening news there was a tragic story of a Skydiving Photographer. The story centered on a jump that had been planned with the Photographer and several of his friends. He was filming as they jumped out of the plane and preformed several skydiving maneuvers. The big finish was to be each of the skydivers opening their chutes in turn and landing near the runway where they took off. One by one they opened their chutes until the last one discovered an almost unbelievable mistake. This last skydiver had failed to put his chute on before leaving the plane.

This last Skydiver had placed his confidence in his parachute, but he had failed to put it on. Everything had gone well with the jump up till that point... the plane ride was good, jumping out of the plane was exhilarating, the acrobatics went as planned, and everybody else's chute opened without incident. In fact the last skydiver had packed his chute perfectly and had it sitting beside him in the plane his fatal flaw was that he hadn't put it on before he left the plane. The problem wasn't his chute, his trust, or even his ability... he just didn't do what he needed to do.

As followers of Jesus we know that we need to put our faith / trust in Him. In fact you will often hear followers of Jesus say that trust in Jesus is the only way to get to heaven. The question is what does “trusting in Jesus” mean? While the bible is full of teaching about the necessity of faith in Jesus, the book of James gives us a bit more practical explanation of the kind of faith God wants to see in those who are going to follow Him.

14 Dear brothers and sisters, what's the use of saying you have faith if you don't prove it by your actions? That kind of faith can't save anyone. 15 Suppose you see a brother or sister who needs food or clothing, 16 and you say, "Well, good-bye and God bless you; stay warm and eat well"-- but then you don't give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do? 17 So you see, it isn't enough just to have faith. Faith that doesn't show itself by good deeds is no faith at all-- it is dead and useless.

18 Now someone may argue, "Some people have faith; others have good deeds." I say, "I can't see your faith if you don't have good deeds, but I will show you my faith through my good deeds." 19 Do you still think it's enough just to believe that there is one God? Well, even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror! 20 Fool! When will you ever learn that faith that does not result in good deeds is useless? James 2: 14 - 20 (NLT)

It would seem that James is saying that if your faith doesn't change your life perhaps you should consider changing your faith. If what you have put your faith doesn't really affect anything in your life then one of two things would seem to be true: 1) What you put your trust in isn't really worth trusting. 2) Maybe you are just fooling yourself into thinking you've put your trust in something when you really haven't. In either case the result is the same, your faith will disappoint. My hope is that you have discovered or are discovering that Jesus is worth trusting, that following Him is in your best interest, and that when you do things Jesus' way your life and certainly your future will be the better for it.

Pressing On:

Dale