Steven Furtick — Functional Faith
I want to speak to you today, and possibly over the next few weeks, on the subject of "Functional Faith." Functional faith. Jesus is instigating a functional faith in a dysfunctional religious system. Mark 3 is about much more than a man's hand being healed. It is about the heart of a system that has become dysfunctional.
You tend to think sometimes that if you have doubts, you don't have faith. That the presence of doubt indicates the absence of faith. But one priest said the opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty. The opposite of faith is when you've figured everything out.
When you've put your life in such a position that you don't attempt anything that requires God. You don't stretch yourself into a territory that enables the faith that you need for the challenges The intention of the Sabbath was to be a blessing. But since they had objectified the Sabbath and depersonalized the nature of God, Jesus had to remind them that any occasion is a fitting occasion to be a blessing and to bring healing.
Verse 4: "Which is lawful on the Sabbath? To do good, or to do evil? To save life, or to kill? But they remained silent." You know that Jesus is picking a fight because He could have waited until the next day to perform this miracle. This was not a critical situation. A missing hand isn't a life-threatening event, and the man had been in this condition for a long time.
Jesus did it on this day (the day where they were supposed to do no work) because He wanted to show them that what they were doing wasn't working. Jesus is using this situation to confront a system. Jesus is using the isolated incident to show them a deeper issue of the heart.
Since we have such a situational view of God, most of our life is spent trying to fix situations. And that's how I used to lead our church. When something would go wrong, I would address the situation because you can do that when the church is small. If the sound guy makes an error and forgets to turn a microphone on at one location, and you only have one location, you can walk up to the sound guy and say hey, why didn't you change the battery?
From now on, you need to change the batteries. So you could just fix it at the level of the situation when it was one location. But then when it became two, and three, and four, I had to stop addressing situations and start addressing systems.
God is bringing you into the place in your life right now where He doesn't want you to just play whack-a-mole with situations anymore. Where by the time you can get this situation under control, here comes another one. And here comes another one. No. He wants to fix the dysfunction that is breaking the system that is creating the situation.
Jesus shows up on the Sabbath, and He said I'm going to work on the day where you're not supposed to work so the people can see that what they're doing isn't working. And I'm going to fix this man's hand that isn't working on the day that you're not supposed to do any work so we can fix the system.
A special occasion. This is not the day for healing. They had it figured out. They had their faith compartmentalized. Do you know what I mean? A compartmentalized faith. Well, my faith is a private matter. My faith is private. I'm not so sure it is. I think your faith affects everything about how you treat people. Even if you don't speak of it, your life is a reflection of it. I have faith. I grew up in church. Mm. I'm not so sure that faith is supposed to be an heirloom. Function. Functional faith.
What has your faith done for you lately? 'Cause like at our house, we have all kinds of silverware and all kinds of plates. And we have these special plates that go up in the cabinet, and they're expensive china that we got when we got married.
And we've been married almost 14 years, and I think I've seen those china plates four times in 14 years. They're pretty. They're in storage. And we break 'em out for special occasions. Is your faith like that?
Faith is not meant to function like fine china where you break it out And faith is not meant only to be accessed in a crisis. Faith isn't only for the time when you get a report from the doctor that we need to do more tests. I don't want that kind of faith. You know what kind of faith I want? I want a paper plate faith.
Do you know what I'm saying? I want a faith that has every-day use. I want a faith that makes it to Monday. I want a faith that can stand the test of Tuesday. I want a faith that goes to work with me on Wednesday. I want a faith that can get me through Thursday. I want a faith that can fight on Friday. I want a faith that can stand on Saturday. I want a durable faith.
I want a faith I can eat off of when nothing's going right. A faith I can use in traffic. I faith I can use in the every-day ups and downs of life. I want a faith that functions. I don't want faith to be my special occasion. I want faith to be my full-time job. It's my job to believe God. It's my job to trust Him. Faith that functions. A functional faith. A faith that you can access in the small things of life, and a faith that is not held hostage to the outcome.