Pleasure is the foundation of our society today and it is pursued secretly and publicly from cradle to grave. Obviously, though, as they say, pleasure brings pain.

Finding freedom from the pain (frustration, sorrow, fear, etc.) requires understanding the whole structure of pleasure.

In what is pure counter-intuitiveness to the world’s way of seeing things, the Apostle Paul testifies, “Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.”

Paul says any suffering we go through now isn’t even worthy of spending time on when we look at the glory that’s one day going to be revealed in us.

The message is, “Pain’s inevitable; misery’s an option.” There’s a mental attitude about it that decides whether you’re going to let it eat your lunch or not.

*****

Dealing with my own share of pain and suffering lately as I struggle with the debilitating physical effects of ongoing depression and anxiety, I came across an old sermon by Jordan the other day in which he talks about the faith OF Christ being “the real fundamental, basic issue of the Christian life that isn’t understood by religion at all.”

Jordan says, “If you listen to those (preacher) dudes I was listening to on the radio this afternoon, they got no idea about any of this, which means how many people from that denomination are going around town today completely blank when it comes to having somebody they can rest in and rely on and not worry about anything; just quit.

“Religion doesn’t give you that privilege, but God’s Word does. Christ’s faithfulness is our resting place. He’s who God trusts and we can trust Him too. There’s a lot of comfort and peace in that. A lot of, ‘I’m through with the toiling process in that.’

“Paul, talking to Peter in Galatians 15, says, ‘We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.’

“It’s not your performance, it’s HIS performance! Our justification before God isn’t based upon what we do; it’s based upon HIS trustworthiness—what He’s done! We believed in Jesus Christ that we might be justified by the faith of Jesus Christ. We’re justified by HIS faith in God’s Word.

“There’s this thing in theology called ‘saving faith.’ A fellow even wrote a book once called Lost Believers. Well, how can you be a lost Believer? If believing is enough and all there is, could you be a lost Believer?

“What he’s talking about is lost people confessing to be Believers—people who say they’re Believers. But listen, they believe in something. The problem isn’t in their believing, the problem is in what they’re believing.

“Faith is faith. The Bible says, ‘You receive the witness of men.’ You know how to believe what somebody tells you? Believing is just believing. There’s no big deal in that and there’s no value in believing; the value is in WHO you believe—can you trust that person to tell you the truth?

“If you don’t tell someone the truth, and they believe you, they could be in bad shape, couldn’t they? They could get real lost.

“When I first moved to Chicago I used to go into the Loop and ask somebody if they knew where so-and-so street was and they always seemed to know right where it was whether they knew or not. Did you ever follow somebody like that?

“Now when you hear people say, ‘Well, I was a Believer but I was lost,’ you know what the problem is? They hadn’t believed the gospel. They hadn’t believed that faith alone in Christ alone got them eternal life. They believed, ‘Jesus paid a part and I a part.’

“It’s important to understand that your salvation, or your Christian life, isn’t a matter of you just getting up enough faith to believe. In the gospels, when Jesus told that woman, ‘Great is thy faith,’ He wasn’t saying, ‘You’ve got 30 pounds of faith and the other guy’s only got five pounds.’

“He’s saying, ‘You really understand the program. You’ve got the doctrine straight and the others haven’t. You’re putting your faith in truth and what my plan and purpose is; they’re not.’ Remember, ‘O ye of little faith’? That’s not, ‘They’ve got five pounds and she’s got 30 pounds.’

“That’s, ‘She gets it and they don’t—their faith is more in human viewpoint than in the truth of God.’ And when Paul talks in Romans 12 about the ‘measure of faith,’ that’s exactly what he’s talking about.

“So don’t misunderstand the stuff about faith being an issue of how much you do; it’s how trustworthy is what you’re resting in.

“I think Ephesians 3:12 is one of the great prayer passages in Paul’s epistles that’s overlooked most of the time. He writes, ‘In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him.’

“You understand you can come to God that way? Look back at chapter 2:18: ‘For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.’ Now tell me something, when he says ‘through him,’ it’s the blood of Jesus Christ that gives you access to God, isn’t it?

“Did you ever in your life when you pray think, ‘Man, my prayers aren’t getting through the ceiling!’ That’s because you forget how to pray.

“We have access right into the hearing of the Father. How’s that come about? In Him; through His blood. Our faith resting in the truth of God’s Word to us allows the Holy Spirit the liberty to take that truth of who we are in Christ and bring it into our experience, and we have access with confidence by the faithfulness of Him; by His trustworthiness.

“Paul writes in Philippians 3, ‘Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.’

“The guy’s been saved 35 years and he’s still saying, ‘All I want is to know Him.’ You see how He’s the object?