Help My Unbelief (Session 2) - Women's Retreat 2024
Below is the audio recording of Teaching Session 2 from our 2024 Women’s Retreat, taught by Andrea Hoglund.
My older brother walked away from the faith many years ago, and when I and others have asked him why, he said it’s because Christians don’t live like Christians. In his words, He knows unbelievers who are better people than believers.
Now there are a lot of different ways to respond to this objection to Christianity. I usually tell myself that he has rubbed shoulders with a very poor sampling of Christians, (and since he’s my brother and we grew up together, I even know who some of them are!). But there is still a grain of truth in what he says. There aren’t many things more ugly than a Christian with an un-Christlike character, a bad reputation. But there aren’t many things more beautiful than a Christian who is like Christ, all the way down to the bottom.
What does a Christian living like Christ have to do with belief or unbelief? A lot, actually. A Christian who lives like Christ is a Christian who lives what she believes. And this is actually the way the whole New Testament teaches us discipleship. Discipleship is growing to be who we already are – growth in living as those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and are saved.
This is what Paul means every time he says,
“Walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called.”
In other words, be who you are!
This is what Euguene Peterson is talking about when he says,
“The Christian Life is the lifelong practice of attending to the details of congruence” (Kingfishers, xviii).
This morning we’re going to look at:
The Beauty of Congruence: Living What We Believe
The Fruit of Congruence: Living Like Abraham
The Beauty of Congruence: Living What We Believe
At the beginning of Paul’s letter to Titus, in the very first verse, Paul lays out the goal of his apostolic ministry in just a few words. He says,
”Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life.”
He’s an apostle for the “faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth” – everything he does is so that God’s people would know the truth and believe it. The truth he’s talking about is God’s eternal plan of redemption in Christ, “the hope of eternal life.” And Paul knows that when God’s people really believe God, godliness will show up in their daily lives. The truth “accords” with godliness. “Accords” means to be in harmony with something, or fitting with the true nature of something. We could say that faith in the truth is congruent with godliness. They go together; they match; they fit.
Congruence is “the sense of rightness, of wholeness” that comes when what something is and what it does match seamlessly, like a mountain spring running with clear water, or tulips blooming in spring, or a creature who worships the Creator. Congruence happens when mortal things “body forth who and what they are” (Kingfishers, xix).
We’ve been a little frustrated with our cat lately, because he’s a house cat, and we expect him to behave like a house cat – to sit on our lap and curl up on the beds. But he acts more like a small tiger, and wants to spend his days (and nights!) creeping through the bushes and hunting small animals, which he then leaves in the middle of our neighbor’s yard. There’s a disconnect between what our house cat is and what he does. (Kind of. You know what I mean.)
But in a life of congruence, there is no discord between what a thing is and what it does, between what it says and how it lives.
What mountain springs and tulips do without effort, Peterson says, “requires effort on our part, a formation into who we truly are, a becoming in which the means by which we live are congruent with the ends for which we live” (xix). In other words, congruence won’t happen if we sit around and do nothing. It takes attention and effort for us to live in a way that matches who we are and what we were made for.
It takes effort and attention just to know who we are! Who are we? Do we even know how to answer that question? Here are some answers God gives us in his Word:
We are the church – the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven (Heb. 12:23).
We are children of light (Eph. 4:8),
a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17),
citizens of heaven (Phil. 4:20),
children of God, heirs of God, and fellow heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:17).
We are the bride of Christ, clothed in his righteousness and cherished beyond all hope, or expectation or deserving (Eph. 5:32, 2 Cor. 5:21).
We are the saints, together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours (1 Cor. 1:2).
Enrolled in heaven! Children of light! Citizens, heirs, saints, bride!
Chances are, when we wake up in the morning, this is not our first idea of who we are. It’s not what comes to our mind when we look at ourselves in the mirror while brushing our teeth. Or when we’re in the middle of a conflict. Or when we’re stuck in traffic. Or in bed with a fever. Or changing a diaper. But this is who we are, whether we feel like it or not. We are who God, in Christ, has declared us to be. It is God’s word, not our feelings, that determines reality. We need to know who we are.
And we need to know what we’re made for. The Bible says that we were made to be happy in God. 1 Peter 3:18 says that Jesus died to bring us to God. What does it mean to be with God? Psalm 16:11 says that in God’s presence there is “fullness of joy” and that’s the God-honest truth. In his infinite glory, beauty, holiness, justice, truth, and goodness, God is happy all the time – he does not need us, and we do not add anything to his happiness and glory, but he made us to join the party. He made us to be eternally happy in Him. That’s what we’re made for.
Discipleship is the continuous work of living every day in increasing congruence with who we are, and what we were made for. To live as saints who are happy in God. A Christian who lives this way—who lives what she believes—is absolutely stunning. She is the woman we all imagine when we imagine a mature, godly woman. Think about that woman in your mind right now. Isn’t she beautiful? Everything she does, no matter what’s going on, is just godly.
We all want to be that woman, but it’s not so easy, is it? Incongruence is easy.
Andrew Peterson describes this well in one of his songs:
“It's so easy to cash in these chips on my shoulder,
So easy to loose this old tongue like a tiger.
It's easy to let all this bitterness smolder,
Just to hide it away like a cigarette lighter.
It's easy to curse and to hurt and to hinder.
It's easy to not have the heart to remember
That I am a priest and a prince in the kingdom of God. “
It’s easy to live incongruent to who we are. It takes no extra effort to sin, to respond in the flesh, to be selfish and petty. That’s easy. Like walking downhill.
But congruence is hard work. Like walking uphill. It takes attention and effort. And sometimes we start our work from the wrong end.
If congruence is living what we believe, then it starts with believing, not living. We need to believe what we believe before we can live what we believe. We need a belief that is not just knowledge, but faith – a trust that casts itself wholly and completely on the promises of God.
Starting with our belief problem makes a massive difference in our discipleship in at least two ways.
Here’s the first way: When we start with belief, we learn to get at the “sin beneath the sin.” Beneath our besetting sins – the ones we struggle with all the time – there is almost always a low-grade unbelief – something true that we don’t believe, and some lie that we believe instead. The way we live is always going to show what we really believe.
A few examples are going to be helpful here.
Think about what’s going on when we can’t forgive someone, and bitterness grows in our heart. At least part of the problem is that we don’t believe that we are just as sinful and worthy of condemnation as the person who sinned against us. If we’re honest, we kind of believe that we require less mercy from God than that person. Like it was easier for God to save us. There’s a gospel issue underneath our lack of forgiveness. She who is forgiven much, forgives much.
What’s going on in our jealousy and comparison? Comparison uses other people as the measure of our own worth, our own success, or our own failure. And we women do this all the time. We compare our hair, our weight, our home, our clothes, our kids, our decorations, our cooking skills. You name it, we compare it. Comparison doesn’t love others, it competes with them. All their successes become a threat to us and all their failures lead us to gloat. Why? Because we believe that our worth is determined by being better than other people. We don’t believe that Jesus is our real standard for comparison. And we don’t believe that our worth comes from God’s loving acceptance of us in Christ; it doesn’t come from our clothes or cars or cosmetics.
Here’s a really simple example. When we moved back to Minnesota and our kids started attending a new school, two things happened at the same time. We started commuting on highway 62, and I started complaining. I hated that drive and everyone knew it. You can ask my Community Group - I was a grumbler and complainer, and I was not even trying to stop it. But there was something I didn’t believe beneath my complaining – I didn’t believe that driving back and forth could be God’s will for me. And one day, the Holy Spirit convicted me. If by God’s providence, my kids were at this school, then it was his will for me to drive them there – sitting in traffic was exactly what I was supposed to be doing. Believing God’s providence finally did away with my complaining. My drives became a lot more peaceful.
Our most common sins–like grumbling in traffic– can help us dig deeper into our most common areas of unbelief – and that’s where the real battle is. But Satan doesn’t want us to get that deep.
Here’s the other way that focusing on belief makes a massive difference in our discipleship.
It puts God at the center! We get hungry for God! We get more attentive to what is true about God, and less attentive to what we imagine him to be at any given moment. We want to know God as he truly is.
Listen to what the London Baptist Confession of 1689 says about God:
“The Lord our God is…immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, Almighty, every way infinite, most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory, most loving, gracious, merciful, longsuffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, the rewarder of them that diligently seek him, withal most just, and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty…he is alone the fountain of all Being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things, and he hath most sovereign dominion over all creatures…he is most holy in all his Counsels, in all his Works, and in all his Commands…”
This is true about God whether we believe it or not. But do we believe it? If someone would look at our lives, would they say, “Yes, that is what she believes about God.”
This is how the Heidelberg Catechism connects our belief with our daily lives, from question 9:
Q: “What do you believe when you say, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth?”
A: That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who out of nothing created heaven and earth and everything in them, who still upholds and rules them by his eternal counsel and providence, is my God and Father for the sake of Christ his Son.
I trust him so much that I do not doubt he will provide whatever I need for body and soul, and will turn to my good whatever adversity he sends upon me in this vale of tears.
He is able to do this because he is almighty God; he desires to do this because he is a faithful Father.
I trust him so much that I do not doubt he will provide what I need. He will turn adversity to my good. I trust him so much that I do not doubt. This is the beauty of congruence. This is how women who believe Jesus live. Believing God changes everything. Believing what is true and living it in every detail of our days – this is the work of the Christian life. This is the point of discipleship. This is the beauty of Christian congruence.
And Romans 4 gives us an example of this kind of faith on the ground.
The Fruit of Congruence: Living Like Abraham
Studying for the retreat, I read a lot of different books and articles and sermons. And one day I was trying to remember something I read – I read something about belief that was so clear, and so succinct, and so convicting, and I was wracking my brain trying to remember which author, which book had said it so clearly. Have you ever had that happen to you?
I laughed out loud when I finally remembered what book it was – the book of Romans! It was like the greatest joke on me that the book that said it best was the Bible. Turn with me to Romans 4.
In Romans so far, Paul has been arguing that everyone is far from God and no one can come near on their own merit, but God himself brings us near through the grace of redemption in Christ, by his blood, which is pure gift – and one that we receive by nothing more or less than faith.
Right away we think, what kind of faith? What does faith mean?
Paul is one step ahead of us. He says: you need the kind of faith that Abraham had (Rom 4:16). So what kind of faith is that? Well, Paul explains, it’s pretty simple. Abraham believed God’s promise no matter what.
Verse 17 tells us that Abraham believed in the God who “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” Abraham’s God is beyond human limits, and so he hopes when there are no human grounds for hope (v18). God said he would be a father, and a grandfather, and great grandfather, until his descendants were uncountable, like the stars – and he believed that if God promised, it would happen, no matter what. The fact that he was a hundred years old and Sarah was barren did not matter at all.
This is what Paul says about him, starting in verse 20 [look at verse 20 with me – everyone see it?]:
“No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.”
Can it be said of you and of me, “No unbelief made her waver concerning the promise of God, but she grew strong in her faith as she gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what He had promised”?
Has God, in Christ, by grace alone, through faith alone, secured our eternal joy in him? If that is true, then can anything in our life keep us from this promise? If nothing can ever hinder God’s promise, then do we live like Abraham?
Three things we can learn from the faith of Abraham:
True faith believes God’s promise no matter what.
One of the most common times for us to stop believing God is in our suffering. Abraham suffered – he was a sojourner without a homeland, and a father of nations with no son, for a hundred years. Abraham suffered, but he didn’t stop believing God.
God gave Abraham some big promises. But he never promised Abraham, or us, a life without pain.
Eugene Peterson says,
“The promise…is not that we shall never stub our toes but that no injury, no illness, no accident, no distress will have evil power over us, that is, will be able to separate us from God’s purposes in us” (A Long Obedience, 36).
Our promise is Romans 8:39, that nothing will ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
God has promised to bring us safely home, no matter what. And true faith believes God’s promise, no matter what. More than what our eyes can see.
True faith believes that God is for us.
Abraham is called the friend of God. That means that God was not Abraham’s enemy and Abraham never thought of him that way.
Again, Eugene Peterson says,
“There are many things to be afraid of in this world and many persons who endanger our security, but God is not one of them…[Abraham] did not live a charmed life. He was called the friend of God because he experienced God accurately and truly. He lived as God’s friend. He responded as God’s friend. He believed that God was on his side, and he lived like it” (Kingfishers, 17).
In the Lego Batman movie, Batman and Joker are arguing about who is Batman’s greatest enemy. Batman says, “Superman,” and Joker says, “Superman’s not a bad guy!” In the movie, it’s funny, because Superman is on Batman’s side. And guess what – God is on your side. God is not a bad-guy!
If we’re honest, we sometimes think he is though, don’t we? When one thing after another goes wrong in your life, have you ever thought that God is out to get you – like an enemy? Setting you up for another disappointment? If so, that God you are imagining is not the real God. God is not your enemy, even if you treat him like he is. The true God is more committed to your good than you are! You are more loved than you can even comprehend. And if you’re doubting that today, don’t look at your circumstances. Look at Jesus. Love lustres at calvary! That’s how the Puritans said it. True faith lives in the reality of the friendship of God.
True faith believes God is at work no matter how long.
What do I mean by that? Abraham waited for decades for the child that God promised him. And even when he was a hundred years old, his faith didn’t waver. And what was happening in all of Abraham’s waiting? Romans 4:20 says: he grew strong in faith.
I think one of our biggest stumbling blocks in discipleship is what I like to call “the curse of the hack.” (You know what I mean by “hack,” that one simple trick that will get rid of every laundry stain, or cut your grocery budget in half, or double your energy.)
In an instant society, where food is fast, and cars are fast, and the pace of life is fast – who has time to wait around for God to move? Everyone is always looking for a hack, something that is easy and fast, with instant results. Like a microwavable version of godliness – just pop it in for 60 seconds and out comes a Proverbs 31 woman. We think, “God is so slow, surely I can speed this up somehow.”
But Abraham grew strong in faith – he grew. He grew slowly, with intentionality, over time. He was a hundred years old when he finally saw the promise of God, and even then it was the promise of God in infant form – both literally and metaphorically. The infant he held in his arms was the infant beginning of God’s promise of the people of God. Abraham received one child. He didn’t get nations all at once. They weren’t delivered via Amazon prime to his doorstep within two days. Abraham believed. And waited. He lived hope. And he died in hope.
A life of faith is a long obedience in the same direction. There is no hack. We grow in Christ by placing one foot in front of the other, day after day, year after year. That’s what it means to grow strong in faith.
Theologian Alexander Schmeman says,
“There is no shortcut to holiness. For every step we must pay the full price” (Great Lent, 99).
Taking the long view of discipleship actually gives today so much more significance. We have no day other than today to believe God and to do his will. We have no other circumstances in which to live out what we believe. But we have THIS day and THESE circumstances. This day and these trials are not obstacles in our way. They are opportunities to respond in unwavering trust and obedient faith. If we’re going to trust Jesus, it has to be today.
Today when we believe what we say we believe, and then live what we say, our lives become increasingly congruent, and increasingly beautiful. And that gives glory to God. Instead of saying, “The only problem with Christianity is Christians,” people will say, “What kind of God produces that kind of woman? No unbelief makes her waver concerning the promise of God, but she has grown strong in faith as she gives glory to God.”
And the women of Cities Church believed God more than what their eyes could see.
Lord, we believe! Help our unbelief!