376: FAITH | Tim Henderson

Praise to you, Lord Christ. Please be seated. Thank you, Bob. Hey, guys. How are you? Enjoying the spring? I put on this sweater this morning when I walked my dog and it was colder and it feels stupider as the morning wears on, so maybe I'll take it off eventually.

So several months ago, I was minding my own business, reading my Bible, and I came across a passage that I'd read a hundred times, but I'd never particularly taken any note of. But this time when I read it, it just jumped out at me. I imagine you may have had that experience where for whatever reason, on a particular day, the stars align and something grabs your attention.

For me, at this moment, it was Romans 4:20-21:

Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God has the power to do what he has promised. — Romans 4:20-21

That is a description of Abraham, but what was arresting to me when I read it was how much it is not a description of me. If I were to drop dead today and somebody were to carve an epitaph into my headstone—that passage—or if someone were to say it at my funeral, it would be a complete lie. It would not be reality.

But this particular time that I read it, I began to daydream: what would it be if that passage were true of me? Because as long as I can remember, when things are going well, I feel like victory is sure, we're going to win. And when things are going badly, I feel like we're doomed. There's just been a thousand times that I'm losing in the third inning and I feel like the game is as good as over.

My wife, Kelly, on the other hand, she is generally unfazed by bad news. In her sweet naivete, she thinks things are going to be fine, and God bless her. The thing is, she is so often right, which is completely bizarre to me because I'm sure we are doomed. And then everything turns out just fine.

Many of you guys know—we told you about this a couple of months ago—Kelly and I were hanging out with Joel and Aunt Claire Shepherd at their farm because we loved them. We had a lovely visit and then we get in the car and Kelly checked her text and she gasped because she got this text from a friend of Max's expressing his condolences for the motorcycle accident that Max had just been in and the fact that he was in the hospital. At the time, we had no idea that Max had been in a motorcycle accident and was at the hospital.

And so the text was really alarming. There were all sorts of ways that I could imagine to fill in the huge gaps in our knowledge. Kelly, very quickly, caught her breath and went into "it's probably fine" mode. No point worrying until we know more. And I'm in worst-case scenario mode thinking about the source of this experience. I'm calling hospitals, I'm trying to find the right one that he's in. I think I was on hold for twenty-two minutes at one particular hospital, which was just a very long twenty-two minutes waiting to find out: Is he dead? Is he alive? Is he paralyzed? Is he brain damaged?

And meanwhile, Kelly, she's just like, "You know, it's probably fine. Let's just wait a few minutes." I'm like, "I just don't even understand what that is."

But as it turned out, he was hurt pretty badly—did a lot of damage to his leg—but it wasn't life threatening. His internal organs are fine, his brain is intact, his spine is intact, and he's doing pretty well. He had pretty serious injuries, but it was not life threatening. It wasn't anywhere near as bad as I had feared, and he's back at Tech and he's doing well.

But in that first hour, hour and a half, we just had scarce information. My anxiety was sky high. Kelly was concerned, appropriately, but she was also hopeful.

I'm guessing that some of you are like Kelly and some of you are like me. That the way you're wired, you're given to more worry? Some of you identify with each character in the story. I work constantly and I worry almost as much. I don't mind the work—I love working, I love being diligent, I love doing things—but I completely hate living my life in a state of worry.

I think constantly about, and I feel deeply, the responsibility for anything that I'm responsible for. If I run the Blue Ridge Fellows, I think all the time about inviting top-notch men and women to move to Roanoke and spend a year with us, finding them jobs, finding them homes. Once they're here, making sure they're doing well. That never stops. It just never turns off. It's just always on me all the time.

Likewise with my family, I think endlessly about my children, my wife, and their physical well-being, their spiritual well-being, their relational well-being, vocational—how are they doing? It just churns all the time. And I know that I have almost no control over anything, which means that what little modicum of control I have must be spent as well as I possibly can. And I live in this state of much more fear than faith. Anybody? Is this landing with any of you guys? Okay, couple of you psychos like me.

Here's the thing: everything I just said is not a boast, it's a confession, because all of that is not the way we're supposed to live. God loves faith. It's like his favorite thing. It's the virtue that he treasures and prizes. Think about God's relationship to our faith. He does not want us to live in a state of fear. He wants us to live in a state of dependence and trust. He loves faith.

He has made salvation itself contingent upon faith. Everything else—everything hangs on this single virtue of: do we trust him? The Bible teaches that the righteous live by faith, that by grace we have been saved through faith, that we're justified by faith, that faith credits us as righteous. It's by faith that we receive the Spirit, and without faith it's impossible to please God. He loves it when we trust him. The list goes on and on and on.

Not only that, but even if he didn't particularly value faith, the reality is that living by fear instead of by faith is just plain wearying. It's just a tiresome thing. And so that particular day, I read Romans 4. It was November, I think, and for whatever reason, when I read through it, I had this sense of like, okay, enough's enough. No more. I'm tired of living like this. I'm tired of being so weak in faith and so strong in fear, and I would like it if someday came that someone could say in truth about Tim Henderson:

He does not grow weary, he does not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but he's strengthened in faith, he gives glory to God, he is fully persuaded that God has the power to do what he has promised.

And so I decided on that particular day to make Romans 4:20-21 the focus of a concerted effort of prayer, that I would, to whatever extent I had the power, yield myself to the Spirit and ask him to make this be true of me.

How to Make Scripture Transform Your Life

So what I'm going to do this morning is tell you what I did. Nothing that I'm going to tell you is rocket science. This is very rudimentary, basic stuff, but I hope that it might be helpful to you if I kind of give a little bit of insight into it, because it might be that this particular issue that was going on in my life continues to be happening in my life might land for you. But even if not, I think the principles that I want to talk about could be applicable to any one of a million different things that might be useful to you.

So here's what I did. I got out an index card and I just jotted down on it Romans 4:20-21:

He did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but with strengthened his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God has the power to do what he has promised.

And I read it to myself one short clause at a time until I memorized it. The way that you memorize things is you don't read the whole thing—brains don't work that way. So I read: "Yet he did not waver through unbelief, yet he did not waver through unbelief," and then you make it a little longer: "Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God," and you just add clauses onto it. After a couple of days, I had it locked down in my brain. The index card, I don't know, I lost it or something. It didn't really matter because I had it in my head.

That's step one: you take Scripture that speaks to whatever you want to see true in your life and you memorize it, because we are changed by the word. We let our minds be renewed through the word of God. That's Romans 12, if you know what that says. But that's only step one.

Step two then is you have to recite it. You have to rehearse it. You have to say it back to yourself. Memorization is amazing because it loads it into the hard drive of your mind, but rehearsing it brings it out into the RAM. If you don't speak computer, then memorizing it puts it in the file cabinet of your brain, but rehearsing it leaves it open on your desk. So as the day would go on, I would just at odd times repeat to myself: "He did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God." And I'm thinking about it.

And whenever anything would happen, when bad things would happen or good things wouldn't happen or when I remembered something I was dreading or whatever, I would shut up, stop. And I had a counselor that told me, "You need to talk to yourself more than you listen to yourself." Does that make sense? So I'm like, okay, talk to yourself. And so I'm gonna remind myself that God is fully—I wanna be fully persuaded that God has the power to do what he has promised.

Over the last several months, I've recited that to myself. I mean, I don't even know—a thousand times, like a hundred million times, something. Over and over and over again, I've been living in Romans 4:20 and 21 because I want it to be true of me. And the reality is we'll become like the things we admire; we'll become like the things that we gaze at. So I've been doing that.

I'm gonna walk through it clause by clause with you this morning, and I want to suggest these are some of the things that as I have been mulling over it for the last several months, these are things that have captured me or that have challenged me or have in some way become helpful and meaningful to me. And again, maybe they'll be helpful to you.

He Did Not Waver Through Unbelief

That first line says, "He did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God." I think one of the questions that raises in my mind is, well, what did God promise? And that follows up with, am I placing my hope in the things you have promised or in something else? Maybe I'm trusting him for things that he doesn't really have any intention to do. So I want to know what he's promised.

There's a ton of things—a long list of things that he's promised. I don't want to fix my eyes on those things. So he has promised:

Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.

I wanna hang my hat on that. Jesus said:

I will come back and take you to be with me, that where I am, you also may be.

Jesus also promised that he would speak to the Father in our defense. I'm gonna hang on that. He said that he would give us his Spirit by faith as we trust him and yield to him. Those things are specific; they are detailed. I want to trust those things; I want to hang my hope in that.

But he also made a whole bunch of far vaguer, more general promises that I don't think we should ignore. So he said things like, he will establish the work of our hands. Because that's very, very broad and we all have different work that we're called to do, but I think there's a promise that the work that we do won't be fruitless. He promised that he would bless our children, even our grandchildren, for generations—that there are blessings. He even promised things like he'd give us anything we ask in his name. That's so broad, it's really hard to get our head around. But I want to believe Jesus for the very specific things that he has promised, and I also want to trust him for these vaguer, squishier things that are nevertheless a reflection of his character and his broad promise to love us and to be involved in the things that concern us.

So in all those spaces, I'm going to trust him for both. And I'm guessing that maybe some of those very detailed specific promises are particularly meaningful to you right now, and you might do well to look them up and maybe even to memorize those promises. And then there's probably some squishier things that you can't chapter and verse, but they fit into this broad nature of his love and concern for you that you might make a concerted effort to trust. "Lord, I want to trust you in this. You are more powerful than I am and I'm gonna hang my hope on you."

But Was Strengthened in His Faith

"He did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God"—here's the next clause—"but was strengthened in his faith." Now, strengthened in faith is exactly what I am looking for, but if you know how strength conditioning works, that might sound a little ominous and it should sound ominous.

Bill Bright, the founder of Cru, he used to say that faith is like a muscle and it grows when we exercise it. So if you're hoping to be stronger in anything, you're going to have to exercise that muscle. If you're hoping to be stronger in faith, you're going to have to exercise the muscle of faith.

Just think, if you're an athlete, what would your coach do if your goal was to become stronger? He would make you lift heavy weights to the point of failure so that your muscles would break down and be rebuilt up stronger than they were before you lifted the weights. What do you think God would do if you asked him to give you more faith? Don't you think it's very likely that he's going to put you into some situation where the muscle of faith has to be exercised and exhausted?

Because that muscle, like all muscles, won't grow until it's exhausted, right? It's going to be spiritual hypertrophy. David had faith that he could kill Goliath because he had the terrifying experience of fighting a lion and a bear. The lion and the bear were the gym where he got jacked enough to go take on Goliath. And if you're asking God to give you faith, but you don't expect it to be difficult, then it'd be like asking for ripped abs and thinking you're gonna be laying on a couch, right?

God develops faith by parking us at the Red Sea with the Egyptian army behind us. God develops faith by allowing us to be cast into the furnace and then meeting us in the fire after we're already in it. God develops faith by bringing us to the breaking point and then walking with us through the breaking point. He does it over and over and over again, which is to say, maybe don't pray for Him to strengthen your faith unless you're interested in going on a roller coaster ride.

I asked God to make me stronger in faith and then my son was in a terrible motorcycle accident. I asked God to make me stronger in faith and then we've had the most difficult year we've ever had recruiting fellows out of these COVID ravaged campus ministries. In hindsight, it might have been a stupid request, right? Because I think, you guys, faith only develops when you're desperate.

But the last six months have not only been difficult, they have also been so filled in such extraordinary ways with these unexpected blessings from God. It's been completely ridiculous. Our son, Silas, who we just love and adore, he just got this fantastic job working with Masterpiece Alliance and Kelly and I are just so happy for him. He's so well suited to it, he's doing such an incredible job, he's going to be such a blessing to them and we are just so delighted at God's provision, right? I told you, one of the things I worry about constantly is my children's well-being and God's kindness to Silas and to the world through Silas is just extraordinary.

Also, we just hired somebody to join Kelly and I on staff with Blue Ridge Fellows. His name is Cody, he and his wife, Megan, are in Richmond raising support, they'll be moving here hopefully this summer to join the team and I am so thrilled at what Cody is going to add to our work, the great help that he will be to Kelly and I. We just—it's a much longer story about how we found him. I'll just simply say that Andrew Dunlap is like the linchpin in a shocking way as this whole thing came together and I could not have produced the result we were getting, right. God is just so generous.

Not only that, but you guys, a friend here—he's actually in the room but I didn't have a chance to ask him if I could say his name—but a friend of ours is giving Blue Ridge Fellows a house, like an actual house that people can live in, which is such an outlandish, extraordinary, lavish gift, right? It's just absolutely incredible. Once it's renovated, hopefully we'll get the renovations done this summer. Maybe it may take into the fall, but then probably half of our fellows will be able to live in this house, and that is so outrageously incredible. I cannot even believe it. It is the most generous gift I've ever received in my entire life.

And you guys, over and over, in the last six months since I began this journey, God has taken things that I have attempted and completely knocked them over, like nothing I'm doing is working, like it's just all a complete failure, right? And it just reminds me of how powerless I am and how much, if anything's gonna be done, it's gonna be done because I exercise the muscle of faith. And in other places, he has produced results that are so disproportionate to anything that I have done at all that it just makes it incredibly obvious that it wasn't me.

And we are living right now in the midst of both of those things, alternately grateful for his lavish gifts, just extreme generosity, and then also crying out to him for problems that we cannot solve, right? This, I think, is what it just means to walk by faith. It's been a strange season, but I do think that it is largely attributable to this moment in prayer saying, Lord, let this be true of me:

Romans 4:20-21

So maybe it's a good idea after all. We'll see, okay? But of course it is because at the end of the day, it's not even about these things, these gifts, these accomplishments. The focus of our faith is him, right? What we get, whether we get a house or an employee or a job—what we get is him and he is the prize. As we trust him more and depend on him with more joy, alright?

I just think he is probably willing to use a rather arduous process to make me and probably therefore to make you the kind of person that he wants us to be, right—the kind that would not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but will be strengthened in faith and give glory to him.

Giving Glory to God

Speaking of that, let's talk about giving glory to God. Rightly understood, I think faith keeps us from stealing his glory because it gives us the eyes to see what's really happening here—the genuine cause and effect mechanisms. We can misunderstand that a lot. We can take credit for things that we didn't accomplish because we fail to recognize that he's the one that does it.

If I'm walking by faith, then it becomes more and more obvious that my power is a sham. It's an illusion. Even if I am some ingredient in the total work that God is producing, whatever capacities I have, that too is a gift. Right? He is the one who gives us the ability to do whatever we do, which means that actually, genuinely, in the real world that actually exists, apart from Jesus, I can do nothing.

I can do nothing. — John 15

Claiming otherwise, I think, would be to steal his glory, to take away the credit that he rightly deserves for the things that he is doing in the world, whether he is doing them through me or apart from me. He is the moving agent.

So he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God. And then there is this last clause. When I was memorizing it, it was easy to memorize because it's filled with P's, right? He was fully persuaded that God has the power to do what he has promised.

An Invitation to Exercise Faith

So let me just invite you to consider as we wrap this thing up: Are you persuaded? Are you persuaded that God has the power to do what he has promised?

I would guess some of you—probably the majority of you, honestly—have a more trusting disposition than I do. And if so, I'm happy for you and I envy you. I would just invite you to go do something ridiculous. Right? It would be a terrible thing if you've got a great jump shot, but you never played basketball. If God has given you in a large measure the gift of faith, exercise the muscle. Right? Do something audacious. Attempt great things for God. Believe great things from God. Stretch your faith and live on the edge.

And then when you encounter people that don't have as much faith as you, lend them yours. To encourage is to give courage, and this is what we're called to do—that we believe when others can't. Help us. We need your optimism. We need your hope. We need to see you live it out loud.

And if you are more on my side of the personality chart, then consider taking a risk. Maybe for you it's the same thing that's going on for me. Maybe it's Romans 4:20-21. Write it on an index card, memorize it, mull it over, live it out, right? Run it through your head twenty times a day. Or maybe it's not Romans 4:20-21 that's really the itch that you need to scratch. Maybe there's something else. But the whole same principle can work. Let God's word into your mind, memorize it, meditate on it, make it a centered focus of prayer and thought, and surrender to him.

But whatever it is, grit your teeth and then ask for faith if that's what you need. There's something else you're asking the Lord to do. But however it plays out, don't be surprised if you end up at the edge of the Red Sea with the Egyptian army bearing down on you, because that's simply the way the muscle gets exercised. But also don't be surprised if he shows up.

A Call to Prayer

Whatever that is for you, we just invite you right now to take a minute, come down front. You can kneel here at this curved rail all by yourself, and you can ask the Lord: Would you come and do in my life in the next month or six months or three years, whatever it takes? Would you bring a change to this thing that has bothered me for the last fifteen years, right?

If you want to talk to somebody about it, we'll have folks on the straight rails. We're going to sing a song together, and while many of us are singing, well, maybe all of us are singing, any of you that wish are welcome to come down and to seek his face. And I hope that you might find that same journey of letting God's word into your mind richly begin to produce changes in areas that maybe have just felt stuck for a long, long time.

Lord Jesus, you are the king. You are the one who has faith. Well, that passage is about Abraham, but it's more about you. You did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God. For the joy set before you, you endured the cross, scorning its shame. Or you were able to see through outrageously difficult circumstances that just dwarf to an absurd degree anything that I have ever suffered, and you are resolute.

Lord, you fill our hearts with an admiration of your faith and submission because we know that all that you suffered, you suffered for us. Flood us with love and admiration and worship that we might trust you more. We love you. Amen.

Let's stand and sing.