Photos by Ralph Freso / Slideshow / Livestream
Whether it is a relationship, finances or health, there is bound to be a crisis at some point.
And that is when it is essential to maintain faith.
Tim Birdwell, pastor at Phoenix Bible Church, emphasized the importance of maintaining faith and spoke about various facets of faith to Grand Canyon University students during Chapel on Monday at Global Credit Union Arena.
“I want to challenge you to think about faith like this: It’s not just confidence. It’s clinging,” Birdwell said. “Some of you have experienced trials. Some of you are in a trial right now. You’re facing life’s obstacles.”
Everything might have made sense, especially growing up in church. “But then you hit trouble and you broke your faith a little bit,” Birdwell said. “It weakened your faith. And maybe you’re even wondering, “Do I even have faith?’
“Those are the moments where real faith comes in. And maybe you haven’t needed it yet, but I promise you will experience it at some point.”
Birdwell veered away from the Chapel theme of Hall of Faith, instead using Mark 9:14-29 to convey the importance of faith, no matter how tense the argument or crisis.
In this verse, disciples engage in an argument with scribes. A father tells Jesus that his son is seized by a demon that made him deaf. The demon threw his son to the ground, causing him to foam at the mouth, grind his teeth and become rigid.
Jesus learns from the father that the demon has convulsed the boy since childhood, even casting the boy into the fire and water to destroy him. The father asks Jesus to show compassion and help him.
“If you can?” Jesus replied. “Everything is possible for the one who believes.”
The father responds, “I believe. Help me overcome my unbelief.”
A crowd runs to the scene, and Jesus tells the demon, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter again.”
The demon convulsed the boy and came out of him. The boy looked like a corpse, leading most of the crowd to believe he was dead. But Jesus raised the boy’s hand, and the boy stood up.
Afterward, the disciples asked why they couldn’t cast the demon out of the boy. “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer,” Jesus replied.
“Why is faith worth fighting for?” Birdwell asks.
He points to the Mount of Transfiguration with disciples Peter, James and John, all of whom have seen the glory of God, only for them to return from the mountain and crash back to earth, going from awe of Jesus to arguing with scribes over their inability to cast out the demon with the father's pleas for help.
Birdwell points out in Mark 6 that the disciples were previously able to cast out demons, thus fueling their frustration in not helping the boy.
“It’s a desperate moment in need of desperate faith,” Birdwell said. “… The reality is people are struggling in our world right now.”
The COVID pandemic ended, but now there’s an immigration and mental health crisis, as well as a war, Birdwell adds.
"Everyone seems connected online, but nobody is actually seen and known,” Birdwell said. “… What breaks my heart is not the people online, raging about these things and taking sides, not debating topics but destroying people in these things. I expect that from people who don’t know Jesus Christ.
“What breaks my heart as a pastor is people in the church, people in the chapel who are doing the very same thing. And you got people struggling right there. And you got religious people not praying, not worshiping, not proclaiming, not serving or healing. They are arguing.”
Birdwell told students that “your generation can help our generation in this, stating that worshipping and healing – not arguing – helps.
“You can teach us how to responsd to crisis in your life and in our world by coming to some altars, by worshiping Jesus Christ, by crying out to Him with desperate faith.”
“Listen, faith is all we have.”
Jesus tells his disciples they could not cast out the demon because they were arguing instead of praying, and you cannot do both.
“At some point you stop relying upon faith and rely on your résumé and strategies,” said Birdwell, suspecting this is what the disciples were thinking. “All you have is faith. Why aren’t you using it?”
How do you fight for faith?
Birdwell referenced faith theologian Martin Luther, who gave two descriptions of faith. One is that faith is a living, bold trust in God’s grace. It is when a person is so certain of God’s grace that the believer would risk death 1,000 times trusting in it.
Luther’s other description of faith: “It is certain that man must utterly despair of his own ability before he is prepared to receive the grace of Christ.”
What you see in the Bible is a mixture of boldness and utter despair, said Birdwell, pointing to Mark 9:17-18. In those verses, the father brought his son to Jesus after asking the disciples to cast out the demons, with the father later crying out in Mark 9:24, “I do believe.”
“What if this type of boldness, weakness, desperate faith wasn’t your last resort but your first priority?” Birdwell asked the students. “… Where do you need to step out in faith? With boldness and weakness.”
With Easter less than two weeks away, Birdwell spoke of baptism. There's no need to pray about it, he said, because God commands it and Jesus did it. He suggested to the Chapel audience to invite a neighbor to an Easter service.
“We go to pragmatism instead of faith, and all we have is faith,” Birdwell said. “That’s enough because Jesus is enough. He already won the fight. You see, God fights for you in this fight of faith.”
Next Chapel speaker: Chad Moore of Sun Valley Community Church, 11 a.m. March 30, Global Credit Union Arena
GCU News senior writer Mark Gonzales can be reached at [email protected]
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