I heard the voice from below my feet. My legs were wobbling, my heart racing, the layers of skin rubbed raw on my fingers. I felt a bead of sweat roll down my face and took a deep breath. The voice again, “Tod, do you trust me?” It was my Dad holding on to the belay rope that was yo-yoing through the protection and attached to my harness. Seventeen years old, I was climbing a face at Big Rock by Lake Perris in California. I was on a very thin hold and close to peeling off. I could feel myself beginning to panic. More than anything, I needed to move. I need to leap off the little ledge and try to hold myself on something that looked as solid as the edge of a quarter. I needed to jump and grab and pull and push my weight out on the small nubbin of rock that would propel me further up the face.
But I just couldn’t. Fatigue and fear now messed with my mind and sapped my strength. I was convinced that I was going to fall. And I feared that the rope or my Dad would fail and then…The voice again, “TOD, DO YOU TRUST ME!” Dad was yelling now. “Of COURSE I DO.” I yelled back mostly to get him to shut up so I could focus on my panic.
“Then MOVE, son. I will not let you fall, I’ve got you. If you trust me you have to act now! There is no other way.”
And so I did. In one motion I gave a final push on my trembling legs and lunged for the handhold. I felt the rope stiffen to secure my safety and my fingers hook on the micro ledge that was, for the moment anyway, my new perch. But that was all it took. Once I got moving I kept moving until finally I pulled myself over the top and yelled. “Belay off!”
I looked down and saw my Dad’s smiling face. I knew what he was thinking. “All you had to do is trust me.”
If you have been following along in this series of posts in the Sermon on the Mount, then you know that when we get to the close of Chapter 7, we are in same place. But instead of being on the face of a climb we are about to descend down from the safe place at the foot of Jesus where we have been taking in his teaching. And the question is, “Do we trust him?”
In Matthew 5-7 we have learned what Jesus meant when he announced, “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven has come near.” The invitation, the promise, the revealed “Good News”, the gospel, is announced to all who would receive it: God’s Kingdom, his reign and rule that will restore this broken world to the way it was intended to be is now present in Jesus. Through Jesus we are offered the grace of invitation to live in God’s Kingdom, to be one of Jesus’ disciples, to find life, real life, true life as God intended it if we will only have faith, if we will only believe it, if we will only trust him.
And in Matthew 7:13-29, Jesus takes his hearers to their moment of decision. What will they do about the announcement that God’s Kingdom is available in Jesus? What will you and I do about it today?
As we prepare these final posts in this series, and face what it means to follow Jesus, keep this thought rolling around in your soul: Jesus’ word is his grace, our actions are our faith. Jesus’ word, his teaching, his revealing to us the truth of the Kingdom in our midst is grace to us. We don’t deserve his attention, we haven’t earned our spot at his feet, we don’t merit the revelation that we are receiving, but Jesus has given it to us. It is grace.
Faith is not just given intellectual assent or emotional preference to something, faith is leaning on it, faith is trusting it enough to do something about it. Jesus’ word is his grace, our actions are our faith.
In rockclimbing or in Christian living, the maxim we have learned from Dallas Willard is the same: To believe something is to act as if it true. And specifically, “Believers are those who act as if the gospel is true.”
Just as I did on that rock so long ago, over the next few days you and I will have a chance to test our faith, to check our beliefs, to face a moment of truth. Jesus is saying, “Do you trust me? You have to act. There is no other way.”
Next post, we'll look at the problem of this very narrow way.
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