This past Sunday, Elyse Eichelberger publicly confessed her faith and affirmed her baptismal promises. And together in worship, we all confessed with our lips that Jesus Christ is Lord through the words of the Apostle’s Creed.
But how does the faith we confess on Sunday morning impact the rest of our lives?
Some might say that the faith we confess on Sunday mornings sends us forth to live in service to God and to our neighbor throughout the week. True, very true. And others might say that the faith we confess on Sunday mornings is what we hold onto when life gets rough. Also true, very true. Both are examples of how the faith we confess on Sunday mornings impacts the rest of our lives.
But this past week, as I prepared for Sunday worship, I realized that our faith really can only impact the rest of our lives if we are willing to put our faith in God, rather than within ourselves.
Take for example the story of Peter walking on the water. For a while, Peter was able to walk on the water. Was it because he was focused on Jesus? Or, was it because he trusted his Lord? We don’t know. But what we do know is that at some point, he faltered. And I got to wonder if one of the reasons Peter faltered was because he began to rely on his own abilities rather than on Jesus. And yet, once Peter cried out to Jesus, “Lord, save me”—a cry of trust and a cry of faith in Jesus and what Jesus could do—Peter was lifted from the waters.
In many ways, we’ve been groomed to rely on what we can do and rely on our abilities to do what needs to be done. But part of living our faith is recognizing that we can’t do it all on our own. That might sound trite, and like messages that come from a self-help book. But that message of a living reliance on God is actually quite counter-cultural to the society in which we live.
So if you were to take stock of your life of faith, would you say that you put your faith in God? Or, that you put your faith in yourself and your own power to muster your way through life? Or, somewhere in the middle? Each of us may find ourselves in a different spot. But out of love, our God desires for us to place our trust in Christ, more and more, so that we might experience for ourselves the faithfulness and mercy of our Lord.