Should Non-Christians Pray for Faith?

00:00:00.000 | (music)

00:00:04.300 | Welcome back.

00:00:05.400 | This Monday morning, we begin our new week together asking whether we should encourage

00:00:10.480 | non-Christians to pray for faith, or is a faithless prayer like that basically pointless?

00:00:18.800 | Here's the question.

00:00:19.800 | "Dear Pastor John, my name is Jeff, and I am a PhD student in Los Angeles.

00:00:23.920 | My question is about faith.

00:00:26.140 | Many times I have been evangelizing my friends and they say that they admire my faith, but

00:00:30.800 | they don't possess faith like mine.

00:00:33.300 | They have difficulty believing themselves.

00:00:35.720 | I always tell them that God generously supplies faith, and it's not something I mustered up

00:00:40.760 | myself.

00:00:41.760 | I might show them 1 Peter 1.3, that He, God, caused us to be born again, or 1 Corinthians

00:00:47.200 | 2, verses 11 to 14, we receive the Spirit that we might understand.

00:00:53.560 | What should I tell someone who realizes that God gives us faith, but who feels stuck waiting

00:00:58.680 | for God to give them that faith?

00:01:01.040 | The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God until they've been given

00:01:05.120 | by the Spirit.

00:01:07.000 | Or should a faithless person not pray at all, or do they simply wait until God may or may

00:01:11.920 | not give His Spirit?

00:01:14.080 | Pastor John, what counsel would you have for Jeff?"

00:01:17.160 | Well, first, let me agree with Jeff.

00:01:20.840 | Saving faith is humanly impossible.

00:01:27.080 | The fallen, sinful, spiritually dead human soul does not have the moral ability to believe.

00:01:39.580 | They have the mental powers, they have the powers of volition, but the heart is so bent

00:01:48.420 | away from God, it cannot make itself prefer God.

00:01:53.660 | You can't make yourself love God.

00:01:55.780 | You can't make yourself treasure God.

00:01:58.180 | You can't make yourself rely upon God if you are dead and bent away from God.

00:02:06.400 | When the rich young man turned away from Jesus and refused to follow Him in love with his

00:02:12.340 | money, Jesus said, "It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for

00:02:17.580 | a rich person to enter the heaven."

00:02:19.380 | And His disciples threw up their hands and said, "Well, who then can be saved?"

00:02:23.420 | And Jesus didn't respond by saying, "Oh, you over-interpreted my words."

00:02:27.500 | He didn't say that.

00:02:28.820 | He said, "With man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

00:02:36.680 | And Paul underscored this condition of the natural human heart with the words, "The natural

00:02:43.260 | person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he

00:02:48.860 | is not able, he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned."

00:02:56.600 | And again, in Romans 8, 7—that was 1 Corinthians 2, 14—in Romans 8, 7, he said, "The mind

00:03:05.640 | of the flesh," that is, the natural mind, the unregenerate, unconverted, non-born-again

00:03:12.680 | mind, "is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot."

00:03:20.720 | Or again, Ephesians 2, 5, "We were dead in our trespasses, and that's how God found us

00:03:26.900 | and made us alive."

00:03:29.140 | That deadness included a blindness to the glory of Christ.

00:03:33.900 | The God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the

00:03:39.080 | light of the gospel of the glory of Christ in the image of God.

00:03:43.600 | Christ does not look glorious or supremely valuable or desirable to the fallen human

00:03:52.280 | heart.

00:03:53.280 | A new birth is needed, a spiritual resurrection.

00:03:59.320 | Yet the command remains for unbelievers to believe.

00:04:06.400 | God has the right to require from humans what they ought to render to him, even if sin has

00:04:15.360 | made that rendering humanly impossible.

00:04:20.500 | We are responsible to do what we ought to do, even if we are so bad we won't and thus

00:04:30.600 | can't do it.

00:04:32.280 | For example, Acts 16, 31, "The jailer cried out, 'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?'"

00:04:39.800 | And they say, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved."

00:04:44.580 | And Paul isn't the first to command the impossible.

00:04:48.720 | Like Ezekiel looked out on a field of dry bones and prophesied, "Hey, dry bones, live!"

00:04:56.760 | And they did.

00:04:58.400 | Jesus did the same in John 11 with Lazarus.

00:05:02.340 | He spoke to a dead man.

00:05:04.200 | Lazarus come forth and he did.

00:05:07.020 | And Jesus sends us, he sent Paul and us out to do the same, the same impossible thing.

00:05:15.960 | He said in Acts 26, 17, "I am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from

00:05:24.920 | darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God."

00:05:28.560 | Human evangelism is indispensable in the miracle that God works to raise the spiritually dead

00:05:37.240 | and give them saving faith.

00:05:39.000 | I planted a pulse, watered, God gave the growth.

00:05:44.160 | Humans plant, humans water, absolutely essential.

00:05:48.600 | And God does the impossible.

00:05:50.520 | He gives life.

00:05:52.840 | The reason faith is impossible for spiritually dead sinners is not that spiritually dead

00:06:00.840 | sinners can't make decisions, but that faith is more than a decision.

00:06:09.440 | Saving faith is a treasuring faith, a treasuring trust.

00:06:14.560 | Faith involves seeing Christ not just as useful for getting out of hell or getting well or

00:06:20.680 | getting rich.

00:06:23.480 | Saving faith sees Christ as glorious, better than any other treasure in the world.

00:06:30.680 | That's why faith is not possible for sin-loving, self-exalting humans unless they are born

00:06:39.720 | again.

00:06:41.440 | We must be born again.

00:06:45.040 | What Peter says, and now we're getting close to the issue that was raised, Peter says the

00:06:52.920 | miracle of the new birth comes by the Word.

00:06:58.440 | In other words, alongside 1 Peter 1.3, that Jeff quotes, "God caused us to be born again."

00:07:05.760 | God caused us to be born again.

00:07:08.480 | Alongside that, we must put 1 Peter 1.23.

00:07:11.800 | So beside 1.3, put 1.23, "You have been born again through the living and abiding Word

00:07:17.920 | of God.

00:07:19.200 | For all flesh is like grass, and its glory like the flower of grass.

00:07:23.620 | The grass withers, the flower falls, but the Word of the Lord remains forever, and this

00:07:27.180 | Word is the good news that was preached to you."

00:07:32.580 | Now that implies two things in answer to Jeff's question about what to say to an unbeliever

00:07:41.360 | who listens to all of this and feels paralyzed as if the only thing he can do is simply wait,

00:07:50.880 | like lie in bed, sit in a chair, and wait for the gift of faith.

00:07:57.520 | The first thing it implies is that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God,

00:08:04.440 | or to use Peter's words, new birth comes by hearing.

00:08:10.240 | Hearing by the Word of God.

00:08:11.960 | Therefore, the absolutely key thing to say to the unbeliever is keep reading the Word

00:08:20.960 | of God.

00:08:21.960 | Keep listening on your app to the Word of God.

00:08:26.280 | Keep pondering the Word of God.

00:08:28.600 | Don't be passive.

00:08:29.600 | Here's a book, read it.

00:08:32.320 | Be greedy, greedy, greedy for understanding the Word as greedy as you are for silver and

00:08:39.760 | gold.

00:08:41.120 | This is how faith is sustained for believers.

00:08:43.240 | This is how faith comes into being and is awakened for unbelievers.

00:08:47.920 | Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.

00:08:53.800 | New birth comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.

00:08:59.280 | Keep exposing yourself to the Word of God in whatever way you can, and believer, keep

00:09:07.640 | putting it forward.

00:09:11.000 | The other thing implied in 1 Peter 1 is that we should encourage the unbeliever to call

00:09:17.400 | out to God for eyes to see and ears to hear and a mind to understand.

00:09:25.760 | Remember the man who cried out, "I believe, help my unbelief," in Mark 9?

00:09:32.520 | I think he could have said, "Oh God, help my unbelief."

00:09:38.560 | Period.

00:09:39.560 | In the Old Testament, several times we are taught that those who feel unable, in other

00:09:48.200 | words paralyzed, trapped in their own inability, in their own sin, they feel unable to return

00:09:54.640 | to God should cry out.

00:09:56.880 | This is an exact quote from Lamentations 5.21, "Cause me to return and I will return, oh

00:10:04.520 | God."

00:10:05.520 | Isn't that an amazing prayer?

00:10:07.000 | "Cause me to return and I will return.

00:10:12.320 | Enable me and I will be able.

00:10:15.120 | Make me come and I will come."

00:10:17.040 | Do whatever it takes, God, so we encourage the unbeliever to pray.

00:10:22.960 | Besides keeping the Word before unbelievers and encouraging them to pray, I would mention

00:10:30.200 | one more thing.

00:10:31.760 | Keep leaning in to their lives personally with care.

00:10:37.840 | Keep communicating, not to make yourself a nuisance.

00:10:42.640 | You need spiritual discernment to know when that's happening, but to show them that you

00:10:49.240 | really do want them to believe and be saved, to be your everlasting brother or sister with

00:10:58.840 | God forever in joy.

00:11:02.720 | Just as God may open their eyes to see the glory of Christ in the gospel, he may also

00:11:10.720 | open their eyes to see the love of Christ in your concern.

00:11:15.320 | Yeah, amen.

00:11:16.320 | Thank you.

00:11:17.400 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:11:19.440 | Thank you for joining us today.

00:11:25.560 | You can ask a question of your own, search our growing archive, or subscribe to the podcast,

00:11:28.800 | all at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:11:35.000 | Well speaking of faith, believers also fight for faith, especially in this age of entertainment

00:11:39.800 | and comfort.

00:11:40.800 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.

00:11:42.320 | We'll see you back here on Wednesday to talk about fighting for faith in the entertainment

00:11:46.760 | age.

00:11:47.760 | We'll see you then.

00:11:48.760 | 1

00:11:49.000 | Now, I'm going to ask you to take a moment and just pray for us.

00:11:56.000 | I'm going to ask you to pray for us.

Should Non-Christians Pray for Faith?

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