Anti-Gospel
Recently I heard a pastor talk about times when we have weak faith and we feel far from God we can “fake it ’till we make it.” This is the anti-gospel. When we fake our faith until we have faith we say that we don’t need Jesus because we can pretend everything is fine and eventually it will be fine. However, experience tells us walking around with our fingers in our ears pretending that everything is fine just doesn’t work.
How often do we walk past people and ask “How are you?” Regardless of how a person is actually doing they say “fine.” Even when we aren’t fine we still say fine.
The problem with saying we are fine and pretending we are fine when we aren’t fine is that we are saying that we are fine without Jesus. On my own I am fine, this is self-righteousness.
Self-righteousness is the opposite of not-fine. Self-righteousness says I can do it on my own and I don’t need anyone or anything else to make me righteousness.
Jesus says “Blessed are those who aren’t righteous but every fiber in them wants to be.” (Matthew 5) Jesus says when you aren’t fine, when everything isn’t okay, when everything in your world has gone wrong THEN Jesus will come into your world and satisfy you.
So actually being fine only comes when we admit that we aren’t fine and that everything isn’t okay. When we can stop faking and stop pretending that we are fine then Jesus can actually make us fine. Then people won’t have ask us how we are doing because they can simply look at us and tell that we really are FINE.
However, if you are fine or if you are pretending you are fine hoping that by faking fine everything will eventually be fine then you don’t hunger and thirst for righteousness and Jesus won’t satisfy you because you don’t need him to because everything is fine, right?
The good news of Jesus is that when we aren’t fine, when injustice, addiction, divorce, hurting, brokenness and loneliness have left us not feeling fine and we desperately want is to be fine Jesus says I will satisfy your deepest desire and THEN you will be really fine.
So then the question is how are you?
![Recommend [wtgilligan]](http://s3.amazonaws.com/arkayne-media/img/badge/logo-recommend-badge-medium.png){kind=icon}
I think the pastor you heard was trying to say faith starts in your head and moves to your heart, as I’ve heard. At first, we just do it because we’ve been told it’s right. Eventually, we know deep inside that it IS right.
I agree with your point, though. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Psalms 51: 17) We aren’t to come to God boldly, which is why he doesn’t make life easy for us. He’s disciplining us and calling us to rise to the occasion.
Have a happy Thanksgiving!
Hebrews 4:16 “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
The choice of words (fake it) were most likely chosen to make the rhyme, and if that is the case i’d agree with the concept. Life isn’t about “feeling”, it’s about knowing. If you don’t “feel” like you have faith, but you still do what you know is the right thing to do, you’re demonstrating that you have faith. This is actually something that i’m dealing with right now in my personal life. Satan can influence my feelings to make me anxious about stuff in life, but that is combatted by knowing the truth and living by the truth even if it doesn’t feel true.
I’m not saying we don’t live by faith and that there isn’t a certain amount of going on blind fait but how far do you pretend to have it all together before you admit that you don’t have it all together so that Jesus can help you?
I’m certainly not advocating hypocrisy or pretending to have it all together, that doesn’t help anybody. I’m talking more about something like Jesus i don’t have it all together, i’m a mess and i feel like i’m a mess, but i’m going to live by the truths that i know to be truth whether or not i feel like they are. Lying to other people is stupid, lying to yourself stupider still, but lying to God is stupidest.