True Faith is Sacrificial
True faith is sacrificial. Following Jesus should cost you something. I want to share with you briefly the story of a missionary named Mary Slessor.
Mary Slessor was born in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1848. Financial hardship due to her father’s alcoholism and resultant unemployment forced the family to move to the industrialized town of Dundee, where, from the age of eleven, Mary worked long days with her parents and older brother in the textile mills. The family of nine lived in a one-room tenement house. Like other working children at that time, Mary received a limited education at the mill’s half-time school, studying after her shift ended. A passionate reader, she would prop open books at her weaving station and devour them while she worked.
Mary’s devout mother faithfully attended the United Free Presbyterian Wishart Church with her children. Mary accepted Jesus Christ as her Savior as a young teen and was soon fascinated and inspired by stories about people like the famous missionary explorer David Livingstone. With her sense of humor, genuine empathy, and down-to-earth, approachable nature, Mary became a popular Sunday School teacher. She took it upon herself to evangelize underprivileged children near and far off in outlying areas of her city.
In 1876, Mary Slessor applied and was accepted to the Scottish Presbyterian Foreign Missions Board. After only three months of training in Edinburgh, 28-year-old Mary set sail for Duke Town in Calabar, near the southeastern coast of current-day Nigeria.
She ministered to the Efik people; a community that believed in traditional West African religions and had a superstition of twins, who were often killed or abandoned. Mary adopted every child she found abandoned, and sent out twins’ missioners to find, protect and care for them at the Mission House.
Slessor saved hundreds of children during her time in Nigeria; even adopting one young girl as her own daughter. She also traveled to dangerous regions where previous male missionaries had been killed, and was known for her pragmatism and sense of humor. She championed women’s rights, and set up a mission hospital for the local people. Nothing stopped her from sharing the gospel.
Slessor suffered from serious bouts of malaria and other tropical diseases, and was forced on more than one occasion to return to Scotland to recover. For the last four decades of her life, Slessor suffered intermittent fevers from the malaria she contracted during her first station to Calabar. However, she downplayed the personal costs, and never gave up her mission work.
The fevers eventually weakened Slessor to the point she could no longer walk long distances in the rainforest but had to be pushed along in a handcart. In early January 1915 she died in Calabar of a severe fever at age 67. The Efik-speaking people whom Mary lived among thrived to become one of Africa’s most evangelical Christian groups. She was buried in Duke Town and, according to one source, was mourned by “the grandest procession that West Africa had ever seen”.
Mary Slessor was sacrificial. She constantly put others before herself, and the gospel was her most important work in life. She sacrificed everything for Jesus, her true faith of sacrifice was evident in the incredible life that she lived. True faith is sacrificial. It will think about others, be filled with action, and will confirm what is true by the life that we live.
Sacrificial Faith Cares
True sacrificial faith cares about others in their condition. It looks beyond ourselves and our things and is deeply concerned about others and their things. When others hurt, we hurt with them. When others need help we rise to the occasion. When others are in need, we are compelled to aid them.
One great opportunity for us as a church is to get behind some of the churches right here in Georgia and their families. We have provided a link on our Facebook and an opportunity for you to give to and support those that are rebuilding their lives. We are compelled in this moment because of our genuine faith.
Another opportunity is the city we live in. I am all for wisdom when homeless folks approach our cars and talk to us in parking lots, but if our hearts are beginning to stray towards not caring for them and just having anger towards them or annoyance, we are in the wrong. I’m not saying to put ourselves in precarious positions, but I am saying to listen to the Holy Spirit. The Bible is very clear from the Old Testament to the New, from the early church to the commands in the epistles, we as Christians should have a heart for the poor.
We can support ministries that work specifically in these areas. We can have food or hygiene items ready to hand out instead of cash. We can ask to pray with them, share the good news of Jesus through our testimony, or just spend time hearing their story and having a heart for them. Whatever it looks like, our hearts need to become like Christ’s heart who says, as we discussed last week, “when you do it for the least of these, you do it for me.”
Now, there is a whole other poor we haven’t talked about: those that are spiritually bankrupt. How are we caring for them? For me, I make it my mission to do prayer walks around my neighborhood and at the college across the street. I make time for conversation instead of holding onto my time and my day with a tight grip. I get to know and love on everyone that God brings into my path.
The key is this: never stop living on mission for Jesus. Your walk with him, your mission and your ministry, never stops. We say yes to Jesus every day, not just on Sunday or the day we gave our life to him. People shouldn’t ever inconvenience us. True faith is sacrificial, true faith is about others, true faith is focused on the kingdom.
Sacrificial Faith Works
Even the demons believe, belief is an important step but we cannot stop there. We must follow through on our belief with action. Our faith must have feet, our fruit is determined by an active root. “Show me your faith without deeds” is James implying that faith cannot be demonstrated apart from action.
Belief is the start, but action is the completion. Professing your faith proves nothing as to its reality. This is why James declares, “I will show you my faith by what I do.”
Religious superiority and mere talk about our belief is anti-gospel and anti-people. Those people were the ones that Jesus called a whitewashed tomb. The religious leaders in Jesus’ day were fulfilled by religious accolades and cared little for actual people. Jesus came for people, not to climb the religious ladder. How horrible would it have been if Jesus came and didn’t die on the cross but instead just implied, “well, nobody will be saved until someone lives a perfect life and dies up there…” worthless! Jesus was a doer, we must be doers.
You become a disciple when you begin to do. James is challenging us here, he is calling us foolish if we just talk and don’t walk. James 1:22, just a few weeks ago: be doers of the word, not hearers and so deceive yourselves. If you don’t do, then you are deceived. (Repeat) You are farther from the kingdom than you think.
Sacrificial Faith Confirms
Why does James choose the examples of Abraham and Rahab to illustrate his point about faith and works? I think it is because they represent polar opposites: the patriarch and the prostitute, the revered founder of the Israelite nation and the pagan, immoral woman. No matter what side of that spectrum you are on, if your faith was sacrificial and all encompassing as theirs was, your faith is genuine and true.
I get this all the time, “Pastor, I just don’t feel like I am saved.” And I ask the same questions: how is your prayer life? Are you reading God’s word? Are you following the commands of Jesus or living a life you deem to be right? 100 times out of 100 the person isn’t doing all of those things or just some of them.
Well no wonder you don’t feel like you’re married, your spouse has called and you don’t pick up, they’ve sent you letters that you don’t read, and you are cheating on them with someone else! Of course you don’t feel married, because you’re not! Our actions confirm what is true and it can affect what we believe.
Have you ever struggled to know if you are saved or not? When we act, we remind ourselves of what is true. Over and over and over again as we act, we become. We confirm the truth we claim to believe by the way that we live.
You don’t become a gym rat by just showing up the first week. You become one as you go again and again and again for years. It helps us to mentally believe what is true. It confirms what is inside of us. How annoying is it for that person who just started working out who thinks they are a “fitness influencer”? Or a trainer? They aren’t qualified! You don’t look at all what I want to be like.
When people see what you do, they either want to follow or want to forget. Remember, you might be the only Bible someone will ever read. And when we live and act the way we claim that we are, we confirm the gospel and what is true. When we represent Christ, are we doing it in a way that others want to follow? Or are we representing a false gospel that isn’t even true?
Confirm for yourself AND others. Act so you can believe, act so others can believe, and walk out what you claim to be true. Nothing is true until it is tested. Marriages aren’t real on the honeymoon, everyone is happy then. It is in the difficulty of the first year. The challenges of disagreement. The temptations when feelings begin to stray. It is when we choose our spouse despite what we feel. It is when we act like we are in this, that we know and believe and others believe. We are what we say we are.
Conclusion
How about you? Is your faith sacrificial? Or is it just a get out of jail free card? Do you use Jesus as fire insurance to get out of hell? Or has he changed your life and your actions to confirm what is really true?
Your faith in Jesus should cost you something. To go back to a quote from last week from Martin Luther: “A religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, is worth nothing.” Jesus says pick up your cross and follow me. If that doesn’t sound like it’ll be a sacrifice, may I remind you what a cross was designed for?
If your faith is true, it will cost you something. If it is costing you nothing, you might be, as James describes, deceiving yourself.