Authentic Faith

My pastor recently preached from the book of Zephaniah. This prophecy was given during a time of spiritual revival, and yet it is a book that highlights wickedness and the judgement for sin before getting to the blessed reminder in chapter 3 that God, our mighty Savior, sings over us. 

My pastor explained that Zephaniah’s words are a warning against a halfhearted return to faith. He mentioned how many people he has seen kneeling at the cross, living out of a fervor for God, when everything has gone wrong, when life was falling apart, and when they had nothing solid to grasp. But when life got better, their faith stopped being a priority. 

Plenty of people have a faith that is only present in the good times. Like in the parable, they receive the Word with gladness but fall away when trials come. But there’s a deeper faith that knows its need for God, and yet that need is so easily clouded when the distractions of a pleasant life and the facade of self-sufficiency return.  

In the place of our need, we fall to our knees in prayer and consume the Word of God with a hunger because we know we rely on food to live and we feel the emptiness. This creates a fervor of faith, but the fervor is not the point. 

When life is going well, it’s easy to make compromises and exceptions. It’s easier to miss a practice of devotion, and it’s easier for those misses to pile up until devotional time isn’t really a priority on our mind. And sometimes it’s not just the distractions; it’s the desire for authenticity. 

Many of us have grown up watching people who lived a holier than thou life because of their religious practices even though their fruit was dry. Many of us watched people who presented a faith that looked genuine until we saw the whole story. And we don’t want to perpetuate these stories. If we’re not feeling it, we don’t want to pretend that we are. If we’re struggling, living in the truth of Scripture feels like a lie. 

But that understanding is the real lie. It’s the lie of what authenticity means. Phil Manginelli speaks so beautifully into this topic. He shares how many of us are afraid to proclaim the truth we believe when we don’t feel it emotionally, but how rather than keeping us from being fake, that mentality actually leaves us enslaved to our emotions. We are left unable to live out of truth because our emotions aren’t resonating with it, and thereby, we miss the freedom of truth. Our faith grows distant because our heart is submitted to our emotions and to a life that looks consistent with them more than it is our God. 

My roommates and I were discussing this and how important spiritual discipline is in these moments. When we don’t feel an urgency for God’s Word, we adopt a regular rhythm of reading it anyway. When we don’t feel a hunger for prayer, we keep praying, letting prayer remind us of the dependence we no longer feel. When we don’t feel worship emotionally, we worship anyway because we know God is worthy, and He doesn't change based on our experience of Him. 

Living in the practice of faith when we don’t feel it isn’t being inauthentic because faith is not dependent on our experience moment from moment. No love is. We live in love for those around us on the days it overflows and when we’d rather do our own thing than show care for another, but that love is still real. That love is still our drive even when it’s not consuming us. 

But it’s important for us to understand what discipline is before we create the very stronghold we’re trying to avoid. Discipline is not what we do to be “good Christians.” It’s not what makes us “right” or righteous. It’s not a way of measuring up to the rules of our faith as though we’re schoolchildren afraid of getting in trouble with our teacher for breaking the rules or not turning in our assignments. 

A discipline of faith looks much more like wanting to get the perfect gift for your spouse. There’s a desire there to please your spouse, to bring joy. There’s a desire to draw in. And there’s also grace. Maybe you don’t get the perfect gift, but your heart is drawn to your spouse in the search and your spouse’s heart is better known as you seek its joy. Maybe you don’t end up with any gift to give at all, but rather than feeling the failure of falling short, you come to your spouse and share the whole story. You still connect. And that’s what discipline is about. It’s seeking God. It’s positioning ourselves to receive Him. It’s trusting Him to use the offering we give even when we don’t feel it. It’s connection with our Creator and our Savior. 

And that’s what we live out of when the fervor dies down and the need is dulled. We keep practicing devotion, we keep God at the forefront, we live in the truth that either we no longer feel or that we no longer feel like prioritizing, and we experience the freedom of it. Because no matter how much time goes by (could be a day, could be a season), God is using that time, and eventually we will see the fruit of it. Every time we position ourselves at His throne, He is drawing us in and strengthening our faith. He’s the One who does the work, but discipline in faith is a reminder to position ourselves to receive. And we don’t have to feel it to live out of the life that brings.