Radicalism doesn’t just Happen

Nobody starts trusting God like a switch turned off or on.

Faith is a process, or more accurately, the product of a process.

In the same way, obedience is the result of a process.

They are growing processes that require more than time and occurrence or experience.

How many times in the Gospels do you read something like this?

Now we know that You are the Son of God

How many times did they require to know? How many times does one need to know something? How can you know someone or something again and again?

You see, the revelation of God does not just happen. Faith doesn’t just increase.

The reason Israel was condemned to forty years of wandering was because they had misinterpreted the purpose of their experience with God. They had decided they did not want to know God beyond His provision. They were content to be feeding on His bounty without letting the same impact their obedience.

To them, God was only fun because He was responding to their smallest cry. But they did not want to interpret that experience to impact their obedience, or even faith.

Thus, when they were called upon to take a step of faith decided that God was not adequate enough to obey since they were not really sure whether He could handle the giants His order required them to tackle.

In short, their faith in God had not grown an inch despite everything He had done to and for them since they were in Egypt.

‘Where is your faith’, is one thing you hear Jesus asking His disciples for the same reason. And that is the same reason Judas fell even after going through the experience of walking and ministering with the Son of God. To imagine he experienced everything the other apostles experienced yet actually went to the religious leaders to sell Christ!

I am saying that radicalism, or what people call extreme faith, takes time to grow. It is not a one-time miracle as many would want us to believe.

The fodder for the growth of the same is our interaction with two key things; what God says and what He does. And it principally depends with what we choose to do with them.

Lacking one of the two is detrimental to such growth. There can be no such growth without those two ‘ingredients’.

Many people pray and see God in great ways but are unable to grow their faith in that direction because their intake to what God says is minimal or depends on secondary sources of the same.

This is because their faith is dependent on the source of that word. That is why we have so many believers sold out to the words of a prophet or pastor (or any other title) and their structure but have no interest at all in the Bible or the body of Christ as a whole. Many are even disconnected to their immediate families for the same reason.

Their faith is actually not toward God but their superstar, who really is their god. The proclamations from those altars carry more weight than the plain teaching of the Bible. Or the Bible is as valid as the superman speaking it. The reality is that faith is a product of our interaction with God.

We can trust Him as much as we have experienced Him. And our experience of Him depends on the revelation we have of Him through what He has said (His word).

Once His word agrees with His conduct (from our experience), we can then trust Him even on other things we have not experienced.

His word carries enough weight as to overturn everything I knew if it is not in accord with what He says.

Incidentally, that is how parenting also works.

A child will respond to a parent according to their past dealings with him/her. The weight of a parent’s word is dependent on their past conduct.

Back to radicalism.

Do you realise that even those we call religious fanatics do not just happen? They have their schools and teachers that connect them to their radicalism. Those teachers must continuously demonstrate that they not only totally believe what they teach but are ready to take the bullet should it be required of them for their faith.

Let us go to one such radical in the Bible.

Then Paul answered, What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. (Acts 21:13)

The fact that Christ had informed him about Jerusalem and Rome gave him such focus that prophecy to the effect of his imprisonment and torture were not adequate to weaken his obedience. Such prophecy (that did not mean that he doubted it) could not stick to his sold-out agenda and obedience.

We trace the journey to his radicalism to who he was before encountering Christ. He just transferred his radical obedience to the law to Christ.

But you also realise that it had the same two elements whatever level you look at.

No wonder many pharisees were able to turn to Christ after His resurrection. Their lives were governed by God’s word and their obedience to it. Realizing that Christ was the fulfilment of the word they obeyed just gave them a new momentum.

What am I saying?

The only way we can please God in increasing measure is by allowing His word to increasingly run our lives.

This is because the more immersed we are in His revelation, the more aligned we will be to His will in our lives and the easier it will be for us to walk in complete obedience, what people call radical obedience or radicalism.

It is therefore possible to become radical in your faith. And it is as easy as ABC

Allow your spirit to be led by the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit.

Base all your life on the Bible which is the completeness of God’s revelation

Commit to doing everything God says in His word as He says it.

This will solve all your concerns about what the world may want you to be as you will be flush in God’s River of life and therefore flowing in those sweet currents.

I hope I have communicated.