Faith Unpersuaded

Faith Unpersuaded

It is true, O LORD, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste all these peoples and their lands.

Isaiah 37:18

IN WORD God had promised to deliver Hezekiah from Sennacherib, the vicious king of Assyria. Hezekiah had believed the promise and prayed for it to come to pass. According to popular theology, that should be the end of the story. It’s a rock-solid formula: promise plus faith equals the powerful intervention of God.

But our God is not a formula God, and popular theology isn’t always true. We can’t live the Christian life assuming that faith in a promise is a simple formula. It’s true that God makes promises, and it’s just as true that we receive their fulfillment by faith, but there’s a lot that happens between the faith and the fulfillment. Threats grow larger and promises get tested. And God allows it; that’s how faith is stretched to be more God-sized than we’ve ever known it to be.

Hezekiah knew the dynamic well. While his faith was being severely tested, he acknowledged how devastating Assyria’s army had been. The invading kingdom’s territory was massive; Jerusalem was a lonely holdout in a vast empire. The odds were enormous that Sennacherib would complete his conquests by sacking the city of God’s people. That’s why his taunts were so boastful (vv. 10-13). But Hezekiah knew that God doesn’t give in to the odds. He understood that the enormity of a threat is always minuscule compared to the enormity of God. He insisted on believing.

IN DEED That’s the posture of a Christian life: insisting on believing. We can’t afford to live by formulas. The Holy Spirit is always on the move, stretching our faith this way and that way. It’s never predictable and always challenging. Those who live by faith have to expect the unexpected. And we have to persist through all obstacles to stake a claim on what we know is true: that God always comes through.

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.

—C. S. LEWIS