Proclaimer Blog
When a few words of faith are not enough
Watching the FA cup final on Saturday (US readers, that's a sports game called association football that is the world's favourite game, but I understand if you've not heard ot it), I was delighted to see Fabrice Muamba in the crowd. He was also interviewed in this weekend's press. It's truly remarkable. The man should be dead. His heart stopped on the pitch for 78 minutes. Twice doctors threw in the towel on resuscitation. Yet here he is. He's forgetful. He'll never play again, I suspect. But he's alive. Like I said, I'm truly thankful.
His situation raises some interesting questions, not least the Christian veneer with which everything has been coated – headline in The Times, for example: "If God is with me, who can be against me? There is nothing to fear" Quite an amazing statement for the national press. His recovery, we read, is down to prayer. Sounds good, huh? Romans 8:28 and intercession all wrapped up together.
But the interview made me uncomfortable. Here is a man who lives with his girlfriend, with whom they have a child. He, according to the interview anyway, swears like a trooper. These are hardly the normal marks of a believer. Who am I to say? Well, quite. But isn't it interesting how quick the Christian population are to pick up on a few words of faith in order to be able to claim someone as our own?
I don't want to draw lessons about Fabrice. I am truly, truly glad he's alive and (if he has not already) I hope that he will soon come to a real and living faith in Christ. Rather, it makes me think of the local church. How quick we are to latch on to the words of someone in church and immediately claim them as a convert. I can think of several cases in my own ministry where that has proved to be patently unjustified. We are, of course, desperate for people to be saved. So a word here or a gesture there – well, of course, it gets our pulses racing. But perhaps we also need to be honest and say, a few words of 'faith' are not enough.
The problem is that we stop evangelising such people. They're 'in' aren't they! Job done. And then, something happens, time passes, and suddenly you realise they're gone and lost. Hebrews 6 is sobering here.
I sat through Mark Dever talking about the danger of unconverted members in our churches when I was in the US recently. At the time, I was thinking to myself, perhaps this is a particularly American problem. Now, I'm thinking again…. Our church life needs to move people along constantly in their walk with Christ. I hesitate to say 'journey' because it just sounds so, well, emerging. Nevertheless, a few words of faith are often not enough and we have to help people to start well, race well, and finish well – finish with real, lasting and effective faith.