Lies Christians Believe

Week 1: If You Just Have Enough Faith...
Pastor Svea Merry              August 9-10, 2025

The phrase, “If you just have enough faith…” might be one of the more damaging things ever said to me. Many years ago, a Christian friend said this to me with good intentions. She was trying to encourage me that if I just had enough faith and didn’t doubt, God would answer my prayers how I wanted him to. She believed it and wanted me to believe it too, and though I didn’t realize it at the time, was leading me into one of the lies Christians believe.

Good morning! I’m Svea Merry, the spiritual formation pastor here. It’s exciting to get to begin a new message series with you today. In this series that we’re calling “Lies Christians Believe,” we’re exploring phrases that are commonly heard in Christian culture, but that can lead to some kinda messed up theology.

Today, we’ll talk about this idea that “If you just have enough faith…” God will do what you want him to do, and next week, I’ll address the even more popular phrase “Everything happens for a reason.” We’ll have a “Love is the Agenda” focused on some of the lies we tell ourselves about serving, and then tackle the phrases “forgiving means forgetting” and “God cares more about your holiness than your happiness.”

The problem with Christian-ese phrases like these is that though they are well-meaning, and truth-adjacent, they’re not totally consistent with what the Bible actually teaches. It’s theology we get from Christian artwork rather than Scripture. And when we toss these ideas out without being grounded in truth, we can mislead others or ourselves into thinking something that God never intended for us to think.

Our series thesis is “Half-truths lead to whole messes, but the truth will set you free.” With each of the phrases in this series, we want to find the truth in this statement and set ourselves free from the baggage that clings to them.

And baggage they have. When my well-meaning friend dropped “If you just have enough faith...” on me, the weight of it nearly crushed me. Here’s the context of that conversation: she came to sit with me in the hospital while my first husband was dying of cancer 21 years ago, long before God called me into ministry. She wanted to give me hope in reminding me that our God is a God of miracles and that nothing is beyond his ability. And that is truth. He can do anything he chooses to do, and if he had wanted Jon to walk out of that hospital room healthy, it would have happened.

But in saying that God would do that “if I just had enough faith” nearly wrecked me because after she left and I was alone with my thoughts, all I could think was, “I don’t know if I do believe that God’s going to do a miracle here. So does that mean that if my husband dies, it’s all my fault because I didn’t have enough faith to expect more from God?”

Have you ever gotten sucked into this vortex of wondering if you have enough faith for God to show his favor to you? Has anyone ever suggested to you that if you just had enough faith, you wouldn’t be battling depression, or if you just had enough faith, God would give you the spouse you long for, or if you just had enough faith, God will reward you with that career move you need for advancement or financial security?

These swirling thoughts contributed to my sleepless night, and I don’t know what long-term damage it would have had on my faith if one of the pastors at the church I attended in those years hadn’t dropped by for a visit the next day. Through tears of overwhelm and exhaustion, I asked if it was true that God might not answer my prayers if I doubted that he would or if my faith wasn’t strong enough in this storm.

I am so grateful for his wise counsel in that moment. he looked me gently, but directly, and said, “Svea, the outcome here is not on your shoulders. The strength of our faith is not what determines how God answers prayers.”

Here’s the problem with this thinking. If it worked that way, it would put you in the position of being God, not God. Everything would hinge on you and your actions, not on him. You see, the lie in the thinking of “If you just have enough faith” is the lie of what I like to call “vending machine theology.” This is the fallacy of thinking that if you deposit enough faith in God, you can get what you want out of God. It’s a subtle expression of the health and wealth, or prosperity, gospel, and it’s highly toxic.

Maybe you need to process this a bit more — I know I did in that conversation with my pastor. he could see I needed more reassurance, and so he showed me a story about Jesus, and I invite you to grab a Bible, and I’ll share with you what he shared with me. Turn to Matthew chapter 26, the first book in the New Testament, and we’re going to see Jesus in a moment of deep desperation. Matthew chapter 26, starting at verse 36.

³⁶ Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” ³⁷ he took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. ³⁸ Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

Before we go on, let me catch you up on the context if this is unfamiliar to you. This is happening the night before Jesus was killed, and being both fully man and fully God, knew what was about to happen. he was aware of the suffering and death ahead for him. he knew he was hours away from being betrayed by his friend and follower, Judas. he knew he was going to be arrested, falsely accused, tortured, and ultimately crucified. But his agony wasn’t because he was anticipating the physical torture. Afterall, many a martyr has faced death with bolder courage than that. What made Jesus’s agony profoundly unique was the spiritual agony of what he was about to face as he willingly took God’s wrath towards sin upon himself.

Where the Bible depicts God’s wrath towards the sin and evil in this world, it can sometimes appear like he’s an angry, harsh God. That’s not quite so. Picture how a good and loving father would feel towards someone who hurt and murdered his little girl. We would expect to see hot, devastated, teary, wrath. This is a glimpse of the hot, devastated, teary wrath that God feels towards the sin and evil that robs us of the life God wanted for us. And while God is the picture of grace and forgiveness, justice demands a place for his valid wrath at what destroys life as it was meant to be. But rather than expressing that just wrath on each of us who are the ongoing victims, and perpetrators, of sin, Jesus voluntarily came to take what the Old Testament refers to as God’s cup of wrath on himself rather than it getting poured out on us. But if you can picture the wrath of a human father at his child’s murderer, can you imagine bearing our Father God’s cumulative wrath at every act of evil ever committed by everyone who has ever lived? The enormity of that is unfathomable.

What’s more, God the Father and Jesus his Son had only ever existed in perfect relationship, always connected, always harmonious with each other, and not only was Jesus about to bea the weight of all that wrath, upon his death, his harmonious connection with God the Father would be utterly severed and he would be cut off from everything good, everything of God entirely. This is why Jesus was not just an ordinary martyr.

The next verse tells us:

^39 “Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.”

There could not be a more extreme example of someone who knows what it is like to scream out in prayer, “God, help! I am in agony over what I’m facing. If there is any other way, if it is possible to change this, please…”

Do you see why my pastor shared this picture of Jesus with me as I was questioning if I had enough faith to control the outcome of what was playing out in that hospital room? Jesus was praying and asking God for an alternative pathway, but ultimately, he didn’t, and the plan was carried forward. Now, would we ever suggest that that happened because Jesus’s faith wasn’t strong enough? Nonsense. Would we ever suggest that God would have answered his prayers if he just believed hard enough? Would we ever suggest that Jesus went to the cross the next day because God was disappointed that he didn’t ask with enough confidence? Of course not.

The lie in “you just have to have enough faith” is thinking that we can bend God’s will to our own if we’ve been good enough, prayed hard enough, or believed without doubting.

And if we keep thinking this, we’ll eventually get crushed by it. Here’s what I’ve seen in my years in ministry. When people think that they’ve earned credit with God because of their faith, or their good living, when things fall apart, suffering is internalized as God’s cruel betrayal. Bad things happening to good people that was undeserved.

Or the equal but opposite devastation happens if things fall apart when someone’s faith is shaky or weak. For them, when suffering hits, they internalize it as punishment from God. This leads to them wondering if they deserve what’s happening because God decided they weren’t good enough and had it coming.

Neither are the gospel. The gospel tells us that we’re all imperfect people in need of Savior. None of us can ever be good enough on our own. But Jesus was good enough for us, and if we accept what he has done on our behalf, if we place our faith in him and his way, we are God’s beloved child and whatever happens is ultimately something he can work out for good.

So, if it’s not all about us having enough faith, I have two questions for us to process that I think are the natural sticking points that come next. If God’s going to do what he’s going to do, 1) What’s the point of prayer? And 2) What power does faith have?

The first is a question I asked the pastor who visited me in the hospital all those years ago. After he reassured me God would do what was in line with his will and whether my husband lived or died wasn’t dependent on my faith, my immediate reaction was, “So why bother praying? Why hold out hope if God is just going to do what he’s going to do?”

He had more to show me from the story of Jesus praying in the garden and reminded me that there is more to prayer than just telling God what we want. Let’s look at Jesus a little more closely. In this story, Jesus was consumed by desperation. He saw the agony barreling towards him, just as I saw grief and loss barreling towards me. Jesus surrounded himself with friends and then turned to his Father with complete transparency. he expressed himself vulnerably to God and admitted his angst over what was ahead. And that is pretty powerful when you stop to think about it.

If you’ve been a believer for a long time, it’s easy for us to become callous to this. But it should blow our minds and amaze us that Jesus could admit his angst to God over something as crucial as what he came here to do. If Jesus could sinlessly and transparently express himself that vulnerably to God about the most important thing he would ever do, how much more can we.

As Jesus says, “If it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.” he models one of the most beautiful things we can ever learn about prayer. One of its purposes is to give us an avenue to pour out our truest thoughts, our deepest emotions, and to be transparent with our Father God, even about thoughts we might think we can’t or would be afraid to admit to God.

That pastor reassured me: You can always tell God why you’re struggling, what is troubling you, what you hope he will do. You can always ask God for what you want. Jesus did. Indeed, in Jesus’s teachings on prayer, he encourages us to talk to God like a good dad, to seek from him what we need, and even to be persistent in asking for it. Praying is the most important pathway for strengthening our relational connection to God as we share our deepest selves with him.

And as we grow closer to him, we will grow in being able to trust in what he does, and we’ll want his way even more than our own.

This is why Jesus could say next to his Father, “Yet not as I will, but as you will.” This complete trust in the overarching goodness of God is what we’re aiming for as we grow ever deeper in our faith.

But I’ll be honest with you. At least in that hospital room, 21 years ago, even if my head could grasp the idea that God’s will is good and I should want it, my heart struggled to trust. It seemed dangerous, almost like conceding that suffering was ahead.

Here’s something I’ve learned since then that has made it much easier to pray with hopeful trust: God will make happen what he wants to happen, but there may be more than one outcome that he would delight to do. There could be several possibilities that are all pleasing to God, all within his will, and what we pray for may determine which option plays out.

Parents, did you ever change your plans for the day because your kids asked you to? There were definitely times that I made impromptu stops at McDonalds for an ice cream cone, or a detour to the park on a nice day simply because my kids asked for it. Because they asked, and it was within my “will,” so to speak, to say yes, it happened. If they hadn’t asked, it probably wouldn’t have happened, but it was fun to give them what they wanted when their requests lined up with what I was OK with for that time.

James chapter 4:2 says, “You do not have because you do not ask God.” Scripture affirms that asking God for what we want has a real effect, and almost more importantly, not praying, not asking him, also has a real effect of leaving us without.

Pastor and author John Piper is among the most resolute Calvinist theologians believing that God is working out his foreordained plan, but even he strongly advocates for the power of prayer and the effect it has. In a sermon he gave entitled, “Prayer Changes Everything,” he stated firmly, “Prayer causes things to happen that would not happen if you didn’t pray.”

And he has to be right, because if this wasn’t the case, Jesus wouldn’t have wasted his breath on that dark night asking for any other way forward. he knew the power in prayer. Yet after asking, he submitted himself to God’s will because he knew that would ultimately be best.

Jesus models for us the two expressions we hold in balance when we pray in genuine faith: we can tell God what we want and entrust ourselves to his will.

As our faith grows, the orientation of our hearts will turn more and more toward God, and we’ll become more and more able to trust him even when it might not make sense to us. This is a great sign of our maturing faith, and all of us, even if we never arrive at Jesus’s level of perfect trust, can take another step towards it.

Which brings me to the second point I said we’d process together. What power does faith have?

Without a doubt, faith has an effect on what happens. Throughout Scripture, we see examples of people whose faith led to remarkable outcomes. In Matthew 9, Jesus healed a woman who had suffered from a bleeding disorder for 12 years and affirmed, “your faith has healed you.” Similarly, in Luke 18, a man who was blind had his sight restored, and Jesus told him, “Your faith has healed you.” In some cases, even the faith of others impacted someone else. In Mark 2, a paralyzed man was healed, not because of his own faith, but because of the faith of his friends.

These examples could lead one to conclude that having enough faith guarantees Jesus will do amazing things for us. In fact, when we read Matthew 17:20, it seems to encourage us with the idea that the amount of faith we need to have for it to be enough isn’t even very much:

“Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

On the surface, this sounds like all we need is a minuscule amount of genuine faith to make the impossible possible.

But the key in all these verses is not our faith itself, but the object of our faith. It wasn’t just that the people who were healed, or their friends, had faith, it’s because they had faith in Jesus. Faith is effective not because of how big or strong our it is. That’s the whole point of the mustard seed idea. Faith, even a miniscule amount, is effective solely because of who we place our faith in. It is Jesus, not us, who has the power to make the impossible possible.

I’ve mentioned this in previous messages, but my favorite quote from the late Pastor Tim Keller remains that “we would choose everything God does if we knew everything God knows.” This is a profoundly good and yet hard truth. God has a bigger, higher, better perspective on the complexity of our entire life and all that he is doing to form us into who he made us to be. And when we come to him with our requests, God can be trusted to know when to say yes, when to say wait, and when to say, “I’m going to do something better for you.”

The phrase “If you just have enough faith” misleads us into thinking that our faith is what controls how God will respond. But the bottom line, the truth that sets us free is, “faith isn’t about how much of it we have, it’s about who it’s in.” When we put our trust in Jesus, even faith as small as a mustard seed is enough, not because of us, but because of him.

Our trust in Jesus and his way seals our place as God’s beloved sons and daughters, and because of that everything that happens is purposeful to God. How that plays out, is our topic for next weekend, so please plan to be back with us for that.

But now, we get to enjoy one of the most wonderful expressions of faith that we as a church family get to celebrate together. This weekend, we’re rejoicing with 18 people across our three services as they take the significant step in their faith journey of baptism. As with faith, we misunderstand the purpose of baptism if we use it as something to earn us points with God or think that it’s the way we get right with him.

Baptism is a public declaration of faith in Jesus, and a highly meaningful symbolic act. Just as Jesus laid down his life for us, taking all the wrath resulting from our sins upon himself, our sin dying with him, when someone goes under the water in baptism, they are symbolizing that they too have buried their former way life. And as Jesus was raised to life by the power of the Holy Spirit, when someone comes up out of the water, it is a picture of being raised to new life in Christ.

Let’s pray for these brothers and sisters as they take this step and as we all seek to grow in our faith in Jesus…