Faith Factor
You may have noticed in your bulletin that today’s’ message is entitled “Faith Factor”. I took this title from a TV show that many of us probably have enjoyed in the past known as “Fear Factor”. As Fear and faith are opposites. You will remember that Fear Factor was a show where they challenged the participants with some pretty incredible events.
Generally, there were 3 different challenges, such as riding on the hood of a car up on to a moving platform, the second may be eating sheep eyeballs or being covered with African bees, or they may put the participants inside a drawer with 10,000 giant hissing roaches that were still alive.
Often the challenges were so scary or so disgusting that you would have to turn the channel during these parts of the show.
The prize that they would compete for was $50,000, and for this $50,000 the contestants would seldom just say that’s too much and go home defeated. They would taunt each other during the show, talking about what good shape that they were in and how the other teams were just a bunch of wimps.
Well for us in Faith Factor – we often have some pretty difficult challenges in life. God allows things on occasion that scare us to death, on occasion we are faced with some situations that are distasteful, situations that challenge us to the point that we wonder if we are going to be able to endure it. And it is during these times that we learn of our faith factor.
And this is right for we are known as people of faith-I think that we will all agree that it is easy to believe when everything is going well, yet let trials and hardships arise in our lives and it is then we find out about our faith factor.
You may recall that last week in our text taken from Luke 9 we talked about the wonderful experience Peter James and John had on the mount of transfiguration, it was there that they got to a little glimpse of what heaven was like and how the return of our Lord would be with power and glory.
It was there that they got to see the great leaders of the faith, Moses and Elijah.
It was truly a monumental experience- a day of unprecedented rejoicing- remember what Peter said which was definitely an understatement- Luke 9:33 it is good for us to be here. He also went on to say, let’s build 3 tents one for each of you so we can just stay here on this mountain top.
We all love mountaintop experiences, where God is blessing, things are going well, we all love the good ole days- where there is great hope on the horizon, there is a unity and peace in our lives, we are moving forward.
But we know there will also be times when we too have to come down from the mountain and face the valleys in our lives, times of hardships, times of trials, and even times of defeat. Many within our church are facing these times now, and we as a church are struggling with them.
That is what we find as we continue our story today in the book of Luke, as we consider a story -like many others in the Bible in which an event is taking place which seems to be the focus- yet Jesus is teaching a great truth within that event.
1. It is through the experience of this story that we learn about the required Faith factor we begin with Luke 9:37-40