Last night I walked through the door, arriving home from work at the normal time.  My wife had made a big pot of red beans and rice filled with my favorite sausage.  The aroma was so inviting and it felt great to be home. Shortly after settling in, my wife informs me that there are a couple of math homework problems that I need to help my daughter finish.

No big deal… right?  This is where you need to know that math and I… don’t like each other.  So faced with a 3rd grader’s math homework I figure that it can’t be that difficult and we begin the after dinner process of completing homework.

In a rather confident move, I grab the homework and begin to explain the string of problems that lay before us, letting Olivia derive the answer out of my rather weak and disjointed explanation.  What should have only taken a few minutes dragged on for about half an hour.  The first set of problems… fractions… weren’t difficult, but required explanation as to how we got the answer.  I was so tempted to just write down the answers for her and tell her some diluted reason as to how the answer was derived.  But I realized that if I give her the answer and don’t let her understand why… then she’ll never really know how to work through the problem.

We all know that math…. is nothing but foundations of principles that start with the easiest concepts needed to perform the hardest calculations.  So we marched through the homework trying to apply explanations to answers.  For me, the problems were easy but for her, they were impossible.

Faith is like math.  Just knowing the answer is not enough.  I’ve quoted many times before the passage in James where he writes:

You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
James 2:19 (NIV)

Many Christians can say that the answer to eternal life is Christ Jesus who delivers us to the Father.  But do you know how to explain that?  If not, you’ll never be able face the harder problems that will come at you in life.  I am the first to admit that I carried a 3rd grade level of faith through a good portion of my early adult life.  Many problems came my way and I was trying to solve the quadratic equation with 1/4 + 1/2 = 3/4.

The result was that I could bluff my way through the problem with all the right lingo, but I had no real solution to the problem.  It’s the job of those who are mature in faith to take the time and sit down with those who are young in faith… and explain how the basic building blocks of faith are put together.  This called “discipling”.

If you are waiving a ticket around that says, “I’m saved”, but you have no idea what that means or how it happens – then you really need to go back to the basics and get to know God.

Figuring out how to explain God, Faith, and Spirituality… is complicated.  Many of us often just tell our new believers… “Jesus is the answer” and we don’t explain how we know this. So we walk through life telling others that we “know” Him but our work does not indicate that we understand.

I was terrible in higher math.  I just didn’t grab it quick enough and the courses kept getting tougher and tougher.  I understand how it all works and it makes sense to me when I see the answer… but I just can’t explain how I got there… therefore I struggled.

So I sit at the table with my daughter trying to help her with writing fractions in the simplest form.  I know the answer, but I just don’t know how to explain to a 3rd grader in words she can grasp how I got the answer.  I admit… I deferred.  I didn’t want to give her a complicated answer that she could not grasp.  Doing this could start the domino effect.

The only thing I could do was tell the teacher (who is educated in exactly how to do this the right way) that we reviewed the problems, but we needed her to explain how we get the answer instead of just writing down the numbers and bluffing our way through it.  I wanted Olivia to know that it is ok to ask for help.  Isnt’ that what learning is all about anyway?

We need to grab hold of the foundations of faith before we launch into the big problems of life.  Solutions are often found in the simplest forms.  How we get the answer… matters.  And know that it isn’t only OK to ask for help… it’s required.  Start with these things:

- Read God’s Holy word.  Get to know Him and how he interacts and responds to His people.

- Pray.  Don’t forget that your father in heaven is ready to help you with your work at home.

- Relate.  Share your solutions with other guys who are struggling.  Offer your problems and let them help you with the fundamentals.

May each of you realize that faith is a work in progress and that you spend time with the basics to help you with the life that is coming at you.

Peace,
Greg
Acts 4:31
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