Two Kinds of Faith

So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. And he said, “It is the LORD. Let him do what seems good to him.” 1 Samuel 3:18

It’s not uncommon for the incarcerated to turn to God in their desperation. Their lives are a disaster and forces beyond their control threaten to dictate their future. Some will view this as a phony faith – You only want God when you’re in jail. And for some, that is certainly true. But God uses painful experiences to get our attention, and jail is certainly a painful experience.

This will be an oversimplification, but there are two types of inmates whom I meet in jail Bible study. The first, is the inmate who hopes God can get him out of his predicament. God, if you get me out, I’ll never use drugs again. When he prays, he prays only for miraculous deliverance from his impending prison sentence. I don’t have a lot of optimism for this inmate’s faith. If he gets what he wants, he’s quickly going to forget his promise to God. If God doesn’t deliver him, he’ll see God as useless. This inmate seeks God only if he thinks God can do something for him. The second type of inmate though, prays very differently. God, I’m guilty as sin. If you must use prison to change me, so be it. I desire your will, whatever that may be. I’ve got infinitely more confidence in this inmate who submits himself to God’s will than the inmate who’s still trying to manipulate it.

Not my will but yours be done. That isn’t an easy prayer, but it was Eli’s in today’s passage. Eli isn’t considered a hero of the Bible. He was a priest who tried to follow God, but failed to rein in his sons, allowing them to usurp his power to feed their own lusts. For his failure, God planned the downfall of Eli’s family. When this was communicated to Eli, he didn’t protest, and he didn’t beg God for deliverance. He simply submitted himself to God’s will.

It’s not the exact same scenario, but I’ve been in similar situations, exercising two different kinds of faiths. When first threatened with losing everything to my addiction, I promised God I’d become a missionary if he got me out of my mess. That was a phony faith. Later though, by the time I stood before the medical board, I had a different attitude. God, may your will be done. I’d done wrong and I recognized that I deserved the consequences. God then used those consequences to transform me. That was a far more authentic faith and though it didn’t deliver me immediately from that particular mess, it pointed me towards the new life of faith and recovery. Faith isn’t believing God will do what I want, but rather submitting myself to what God wants.