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How to Apply Your Faith

In my daily devotions, I have been going through Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s ‘Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Its Cure,’ and there are a number of reasons why I would highly recommend this book to any Christian who has ever struggled with depressive thoughts or emotions on a consistent basis. Lloyd-Jones gives a beautiful and balanced treatment of what he calls spiritual depression, and he analyzes different ways in which this problem could be rooted in spiritual misunderstandings or sinfulness. One of his most particularly eye-opening, practical, and beautiful treatments of the condition comes from the chapter that I read this morning, titled Where is Your Faith?

In this chapter, Lloyd-Jones tells the old familiar story about how a huge storm came about as the disciples were on the boat with Jesus in the middle of the sea, while Jesus was sleeping. The disciples, seeing that the water had begun to come up into the boat, started to panic, and they woke Jesus, asking him if he did not care that they are all about to perish. With a word, he calmed the storm and the sea was once again peaceful. Having rebuked the storm, he then turned to rebuke the disciples, asking them, “Where is your faith?” The particular rendition of this story that Lloyd-Jones uses is the one recorded in Luke 8:22-25. From this passage, he points out many of the mistakes that the disciples made and the exact way in which their faith lapsed in this scenario, and he draws application that we can use today. In particular, he gives us Three steps for applying faith to tough situations: (1) Refuse to panic, (2) Remind yourself of the truth, and (3) Apply the truth to the situation.

1. Refuse to panic.

This section includes one of Lloyd-Jones’s most repeated quotes: “Faith is a refusal to panic.” He explains this first step in the process like this:

Faith is not a matter of feeling. It stretches beyond the realm of feelings into the realm of reasoning. He explains that “A Christian is not meant to be dejected when everything goes wrong,” and then follows up by saying that “faith is not a matter of feelings only, [it] takes up the whole man including his mind, his intellect and his understanding. It is a response to truth…”

Because faith is a “response to truth,” this means that it is also something that does not happen automatically - “faith is not something that acts magically.” Lloyd-Jones explains that “many people…conceive of faith as if it were something similar to [a thermostat],” where “you set [it] at a given level…and it acts automatically.” He tells us that faith, as opposed to being a magical thing that automatically occurs (save that initial faith given to us at regeneration), is “an activity” - “it is something that has to be exercised.”

Faith, in its initial form, is a gift. All of us who have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and turned from our sins to trust in him alone have been given the gift of faith. However, this does not mean that the rest of our life is a free ride. We have to work to maintain spiritual discipline and make use of the means of grace that God has given us to ensure that we will continue to persevere until the end. And so, therefore, when it comes to having faith in a given situation, it is a matter of applying the gift that we have been given to the situation at hand.

Lloyd-Jones tells us that the disciples, when faced with the storm, already had a measure of faith that had been given to them. This is why Jesus addresses them in the way that he does. When Jesus says to them, “Where is your faith?” He implies that he knows that they already have faith. It is as if he is asking them, “Why are you not taking your faith and applying it to this [situation]?”

Now we get to the point. How to apply our faith to a situation. Lloyd-Jones explains the fist step like this, “The first thing I do when I find myself in a difficult position is to refuse to allow myself to be controlled by the situation.” This is what the disciples did not do when they were confronted by the storm. They immediately allowed themselves to be overtaken by fear and panic when they saw the storm coming up. In doing so, they lost all self-control and forfeited their ability to reason properly or make wise decisions. “It looked as if they were going to sink, and their trouble was that they were controlled by that situation. They should have applied their faith and taken charge of it…but they did not do so. They allowed the position to take control of them.”

In short, the disciples panicked. This is something that we should not do as Christians. “Faith is a refusal to panic.”

The first step in applying your faith is getting yourself to a standpoint and a frame of mind from which you can reason properly. As long as you are controlled by the situation at hand, you will never be able to think objectively about it. The first step is to “take charge of yourself, and pull yourself up…You do not let yourself go, you assert yourself.”

2. Remember what you know.

Now that you are able to reason properly and think objectively, having refused to let the situation at hand control you, your next step in applying your faith to the situation is to “remind yourself of what you believe and what you know.”

Here again is something that the disciples did not do when faced with the storm (especially considering that they never even got themselves to the point where they could reason because they were so panicked about the situation). They did not remember who it was that was with them. “If only they had stopped a moment and said: ‘Now then what about it? Is it possible that we are going to drown with Him in the boat? Is there anything He cannot do? We have seen His miracles, He turned the water into wine, He can heal the blind and the lame, He can even raise the dead, is it likely that He is going to allow us and Himself to be drowned in this way? Impossible! In any case He loves us, He cares for us, He has told us that the very hairs on our head are all numbered.”

This is where the real application of faith begins! The first step is only a necessary prerequisite for the real work of applying our faith (the faith in the Lord Jesus Christ given to us upon regeneration), as it simply clears our minds from chaos and allows us to think objectively and reason properly. When we are able to reason, we can then reason according to faith, which “holds on to truth and reasons from what it knows to be fact.”

This is how faith reasons - “All things may seem to be against me ‘to drive me to despair,’ I do not understand what is happening; but I know this, I know that God has so loved me that He sent His only begotten Son into this world for me, I know that while I was an enemy, God sent His only Son to die on the Cross on Calvary’s Hill for me.”

When we exercise faith, as an activity of reasoning, we are reminded ourselves of where that faith was grounded initially and remains rooted to this day. We remind ourselves of our position in Christ and of God’s love for us - we remind ourselves of that beautiful Christian doctrine that we know to be true! We remind ourselves of what and Who has saved us and where our true hope lies!

It is at this point that we are ready to apply the final step:

3. Apply the truth to the situation at hand.

Reasoning from what you know to be true, think about the particular situation in light of those things. Think about the particular situation from the standpoint of you standing in Christ and God’s covenant love for those who have trusted in him and called up on his name for salvation. Remember his commitment to work all things for the good of those who love him and who have been called according to his purpose.

“Whatever your circumstances at the moment, bring all you know to be true of your relationship with God to bear upon it. Then you will know full well that He will never allow anything to happen to you that is harmful… I do not suggest that you will be able to understand everything that is happening…but you will know for certain that God is not unconcerned. That is impossible. The One who has done the greatest thing of all for you, must be concerned about you in everything, and though the clouds are thick and you cannot see His face, you know He is there…Now hold on to that.”

“God permits that thing to happen to you because it is ultimately for your good.”

If we remember all of these things and think about them from the perspective of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and from the standpoint of the truth about our standing with God if we have been raised to new life in our Savior, then we have successfully applied our faith, the faith that we have been given in Christ, to the situation at hand. This may not provide an immediate solution or a full explanation of the problem, but it does give us the anchor that we need to continue to persevere in the faith even in the midst of trials. In fact, when these trials arise, we should rejoice, because they are God’s means of sanctification in our lives.

“That is the way faith works. But you and I have to exercise it. It does not come into operation automatically. You have to focus your faith on to events and say: ‘All right, but I know this about God, and because that is true I am going to apply it to this situation. This, therefore, cannot be what I think it is, it must have some other explanation.’ And you end by seeing that it is God’s gracious purpose for you, and having applied your faith, you then hold on. You just refuse to be moved.”

Beautiful words from a beautiful book, all to the glory of the Lord!

#martyn lloyd-jones #spiritualdepression #solideogloria #reformedtheology #christian

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