Faux Real: Fear Or Faith, You Choose.Sample

Faith or Foolishness.

In the epistles, we find Paul’s responses to real questions, concerns, and specific circumstances facing the early church. Throughout the Bible, we can see the obstacles they faced are actually similar to the pressures the church still faces today, which is very helpful to know. That means the very tools they needed to successfully navigate life 2,000 years ago are still the same tools we need today. 

For instance, we find the apostle confronting a group of influencers who he considered to be false apostles. These people were opposing and undoing the good work he had begun. So, in a unique approach to pastoring, we find Paul gets ... well, foolish. 

In other words, these haters were working hard to make Paul look bad, so he requests that the church bear with him in “being a fool” so that he can save them from being fooled. 

This seemingly fearless apostle was afraid that they would be easily deceived into following these false teachers and that the foundation he had laid would somehow become corrupted, as he knew that conflicted thinking can too easily develop into corrupted believing. 

This is exactly how the enemy works in your life, knowing he cannot defeat you simply because you are already victorious as a result of what Christ has done. So, instead of defeating you, he tries to distract you and ultimately render you ineffective for the kingdom. 

The purpose of the Christian life is influence and effectiveness. This is the very reason Jesus commissioned the disciples and us to take the gospel into all the world. So, the enemy’s number one aim is to bring confusion around your calling. If he can do that, he can divert your focus off Christ and off your mission. 

The enemy always works with facades and with a faux or counterfeit reality. As the king of lies, he cannot possess or dispense truth. However, he will play off the truth to lure us into deception. 

Paul feared this would take place within the church. He expresses his concern that somehow their pure and undivided devotion to Christ will be corrupted. In our lives, much like the Corinthian church, a divided devotion is the fruit. The root, however, is always misplaced faith. 

This looks like constantly assessing our inability instead of putting stock in God’s ability to navigate us through each season and often sounds like “I can’t do this!”

It’s subtle but exactly what Paul considers ‘misplaced faith.’

Without God, he would still be stuck in his sin. The doctrine Paul preached was not one of man coming to God, but God coming to man. So that statement “I can’t do this” is a matter of misplaced faith, because our faith was never meant to be in ourselves. It has always been designed to be in God.