Real world faith

"Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ." - Romans 10:17

Almost all parents, at one time or another, tell their children something like, "When you get out there in the real world..." emphasizing that the world in which they are nurtured, the environment of a loving home, is a marked contrast to the real world. What is the real world?

The real world is a pretty tough one, a dog-eat-dog world of cut-throat competition where the golden rule is "He who has the gold rules" and the motto of the street is "Do it to the other guy before he does it to you."

The real world is a hard one. It’s the world where you have the fastest time in the tryouts, but another boy gets appointed to the team because you are from a poor family and his family has pull. The real world is the one in which the immoral, drinking, carousing man gets the promotion, while you, with better skills, get passed over because your sense of morality makes others think you are such a goody-goody. The real world is the one in which a mother of three young children loses her fight with cancer, while the neighbor who sleeps with various men seems to enjoy good health.

I’ve been thinking about our faith in relation to the real world. Often when we think about the real world, we tend to feel that we have to be tough to make it out there and that our faith, which does well in the nurtured, protected environment of a home or even a church on Sunday, just can’t stand the heat in the real world.

African violets or delicate orchids grow beautifully in the protected environment of a greenhouse, but put them under the scorching heat of a desert sun and they quickly wither and die. Sometimes our faith is the same way. Thinking that it can’t stand the heat of the real world, we tend to leave it at the door of the church, or at least in the parking lot adjacent to the real world. Perhaps we feel good about God and heaven at home, but at the conference table or out in the marketplace where there is intense competition and only the strongest, most cunning seem to survive, we aren’t sure that our faith can stand the heat.

Is there such a thing as "real-world faith?" One which wears overalls and helps you maintain your cool when you are on a bicycle and a driver runs you off the road? One in which your competition delights in destroying your market?

The dictionary defines the English word real as "genuine, authentic, without fraud, sincere". Real-world faith! Frankly, there is but one kind of faith, and it is real-world faith. It was into a real world that Jesus came long ago, and his was not a nurtured, protected kind of faith. He faced the assaults of an unbelieving, hostile world, and he didn’t turn and run.

Real-world faith begins with an encounter with the real Jesus, not a wimpy, namby-pamby sort of individual who carries a lacy handkerchief and hides in the cool recesses if a cathedral. When Jesus Christ really touches your life and you know who He is, your life begins to change, and that change can stand the heat of the real world.

Are you interested in strengthening your faith, taking it from the greenhouse to the real world? Then pay attention to this guideline that comes from the book of Romans. Paul wrote, "So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17, njkv). The better you know Jesus, the stronger will be your faith in Him. - Resource reading: Joshua 1

* * *

Guidelines for Finding Your Way is available in bookstores nationwide. For more information, write to Guidelines Philippines, Box 4000, 1284 Makati City or e-mail [email protected]. Visit our website www.guidelines.org.