In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last week we looked at some reasons why we wrestle with God and saw that in one form or another, we can expect to keep on wrestling with God, even after we decide to put our whole hope and trust in him through Christ. Today I want to look briefly at a variation of this theme of wrestling with God by looking at it in the context of faith, one of the three virtues Paul identifies as enduring even into the New Creation (cf. 1 Corinthians 13.8-13). If we are indeed justified by grace through faith as Paul reminds us in today’s Epistle lesson—and surely justification by grace through faith is one of the core Christian doctrines—we would be well advised to spend some time talking about and reflecting on our faith, wrestling with it if we have to, so that we understand what we can do to build it up and what has the potential to destroy it.

We can all identify with Peter in today’s Gospel lesson. Impetuous as they come, Peter wants to know if it really is Jesus that he and his fellow disciples are seeing walking on the rough seas to get to them. And so Peter wants Jesus to let him come to him on the water, no small feat if we think about it. After all, only Jesus is Lord of creation and therefore it is only reasonable for us to expect that he has the power to walk on water. In effect, Peter is asking Jesus to allow him to exercise his faith and things go fine as long as Peter keeps his eyes on Jesus. But Peter doesn’t do this. He starts looking at the waves and realizes just how impossible is his situation. In other words, Peter reverts back to the tried and failed model of self-help and he begins to sink.

Thankfully, however, Peter had the wherewithal to cry out to Jesus to help him before it was too late, before he actually sank and drowned, and Jesus responded immediately with both a word of rebuke and assurance to his impetuous and flawed disciple who wanted very much to love and follow him but didn’t quite know how, at least at first. This is precisely why we can relate to Peter because every one of us in this room have been through storms in our life that have caused our faith to waver. Some of us are in the midst of those raging storms right now.

But what exactly do we mean when we talk about faith? The writer of Hebrews tells us that faith is the confidence in what we hope for and the assurance about what we do not see (11.1). Paul tells us that faith itself is a gift from God (cf. Ephesians 2.7-9). Yet like with any of God’s gifts, we have to take it and do something with it. Consequently, faith is not blind nor is it unquestioning because faith always seeks understanding. It is based on knowledge and bolstered by our power to reason. We have to know God so that we have some reasonable basis to have faith in him and we see this illustrated in today’s Gospel lesson. Peter wanted to believe that it was Jesus who was coming to help them and so he asked for a demonstration of Jesus’ power. And had Peter kept his eyes on the Lord instead of letting his surroundings distract him, he would have had his faith rewarded in full. Yet, even when Peter became distracted and afraid so that his faith wavered, we must pay attention to the fact that Jesus rescued him anyway. Likewise for us. Jesus doesn’t let a wavering faith prevent him from rescuing us when we are drowning in the sea of life and cry out to him to save us.

And while we do not have Jesus here in the flesh, we do have his Spirit living in us and we do have the biblical record of his mighty deeds and acts. That is why it is important for us to understand that the Christian faith is rooted in history, that it is an historical faith. This allows us to see God at work, demonstrating his power to deliver his beleaguered and frightened people, and providing us with examples to form and bolster our faith.

So, for example, it is vital to our faith to believe that Jesus’ death and resurrection were actual historical events and thankfully it has been demonstrated consistently that we can have confidence in the historical accuracy of both the OT and NT. Believing that Jesus actually did die and that God raised him in a mighty act of restorative power gives us a real basis for faith in his ability to accomplish anything. If God really can create things out of nothing and really can raise us from the dead, is there anything he cannot do?

Consequently, when we know the biblical narrative of God’s rescue plan for his fallen creation we have a firm basis, with the help of the Spirit, to believe that even now, even in the darkest of circumstances, God is at work for our good, just as he has always done for his people. In other words, we can have confidence in what we hope for and the assurance about what we do not yet see. When we have historical and present knowledge of that love and power at work, we really can have a faith that sustains us through anything that life can throw at us.

So what can we do to strengthen God’s gift of faith to us? I will touch on three of the most important things we can do and if you have followed the logic of my argument you can predict what is coming. The first thing we must do is to acknowledge that we have to actively cooperate with God’s gift of faith. In other words, we have to do our part to allow him to strengthen and bolster it through the power of the Spirit living in us.

We start to do this by acknowledging that there are forces and events that are actively working to destroy our faith in us, not least our own pride and hubris. Yes, the storms of life can potentially destroy our faith. But surprisingly so too can success. We start to fool ourselves and think we alone are responsible for our successes, either through our cleverness or hard work (or both). But our pride can blind us to the fact that everything we have in this life is a gift from God.

This is essentially what happened to Joseph’s brothers in our OT lesson today. They were jealous of their younger brother Joseph and sought to take matters into their own hands. They didn’t ask God for guidance in this matter. Indeed they couldn’t because their intentions were evil! So they relied on their own cleverness to resolve a problem. You see, they didn’t have an adequate conception of God. They didn’t think God was big enough to call them on their wicked deed. But they were wrong. Their pride had blinded them and diminished their faith. Likewise for us. We must always be on guard against our pride overcoming or diminishing our faith.

Second, and related to the point above, we must seek to do the things that cultivate and nourish our faith. That means we must drink deeply of the narrative of God’s rescue plan contained in Scripture so that we have plenty of examples of God’s great love and power at work among his people. This knowledge will help us when we are smacked in the face by the storms of life because the biblical narrative can give us the Big Picture to help us endure and persevere in the midst of our raging storms.

Consider again the story of Joseph. We humans are finite and fallible. We are time and space bound and do not have the comprehensive and eternal picture that God has. This can lead us to some very wrong conclusions as the story of Joseph reminds us. If we were to just read the story from today’s lesson, we would think things didn’t turn out too well for Joseph and initially they did not. He was sold into slavery and ended up in Egypt where he was falsely accused by Pharaoh’s wife after he refused her sexual advances toward him. But if we turn to Genesis 50 we see a different story. When Joseph is reunited with his brothers and they realize who he is, Pharaoh’s right hand man, they are rightly terrified that he is going to take revenge on them.

But Joseph did not. He tells them that although they meant him harm, God turned it into good by making him Pharaoh’s chief adviser. Joseph believed this happened because God intended to use him to help rescue God’s people Israel from the worldwide famine that had afflicted them. But even Joseph didn’t have a big enough picture because he too was human. God ultimately called his people Israel to Egypt so that he could rescue them from their bondage and show the nations that he was God. Knowing these kinds of biblical stories and examples, combined with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, can allow God to help us weather our current storms when we don’t know how things will turn out or when they turn out badly. That is why it is so important for us to drink deeply of the biblical narrative on a regular basis.

Last, we must keep our eyes on Jesus just the way Peter initially did because Jesus has a proven track record of loving and rescuing his hurting people. But this too is easier said than done because we are a distracted people and it is easy to shift our gaze and attention elsewhere, just the way Peter did.. That is why it is so critical for us to live life together as Christ’s body so that we can help each other keep our eyes on Jesus and remind each other that he is big enough to meet our every need. To do this with any kind of effectiveness we must get to know each other as intimately as possible so that we can develop a trust for one another so that it is possible to share our burdens with each other. We’ve seen that start to happen right here in this place and that is surely a healthy sign that the Spirit is living among us as Paul reminded the Corinthians (cf. 1 Corinthians 3.16). We were created for relationship with God and each other and we ignore that gift at our own peril. God makes a difference for us so that we can make a difference to others.

Faith is God’s good gift to us and it is an integral part of Christian living. But it does not always come easily nor is it something we can just take for granted. Life is too hard and we are too profoundly broken for us to do that. As we have seen, we must do our part to cultivate and nurture God’s gift of faith to us, just as we must do with any of his gifts. But when we do our part, we realize that our faith is not in vain. God has overcome the evil in this world in the cross of Christ and promises one day to set things aright finally and completely. In the meantime, our faith in this claim gives us hope and purpose for living, a hope and purpose that is built on a strong and firm foundation of faith based on biblical knowledge and Jesus Christ himself. Living faithfully is hard work but it is the work of life and when we engage in it we do so with the firm hope and knowledge that we have Good News, now and for all eternity.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.