Articles by Kevin Baird

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

Jeremiah 29:11 (NKJV)

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. He was the founder of what has become known as logotherapy and is most notable for his best-selling book, “Man’s Search for Meaning”. In the early years of ministry, I actually read or reviewed that book on a nearly annual basis for his observations were both fascinating and compelling. In the book he writes of his experiences in a Nazi Concentration Camp. Through that experience he comes to the conclusion that there was one defining difference between those who survived and those who succumbed to that horrific evil and injustice. Those who survived had a deep sense of purpose, meaning, and a future. Those who did not survive had lost hope, a sense of meaning, and had become cynical. Frankl suggested that the primary motivational force of an individual, especially in a crisis, is the search for meaning. He concluded that life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones.

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“Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise:”

Hebrews 10:35-36 (NKJV)

“I have confidence in your strength; you are my refuge, O God.”

Psalm 59:9 (GNT)

I may have an established doctrine and even believe all the right stuff, but if I lack confidence in what (and WHO) I believe, then I cannot receive what God has promised. Crisis reveals many things of which I am evaluating in my own life. Surprisingly, the foundation of confidence is being tested through this pandemic as well. Confidence is basically understood as the state of certainty. Perhaps it is better understood colloquially as “being sure of something”. All of us have a confidence that is exercised in our life. The question is never, “Do I have confidence in anything?”, but rather, “What is it that I have confidence in?”

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“To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven: …A time to gain, And a time to lose…”

Ecclesiastes 3:1, 6

“Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

Philippians 4:11-13

Somewhere I picked up this idea that life was to be a constant upward trajectory in all things. That idea was confirmed as I have listened to much contemporary preaching in my circles that if I served God my life and circumstances were somehow assured of being a non-stop ride to success and abundancy. I understood that the early years of my life might be meager and struggling, but as I moved along through life there was this pseudo-optimism that I would never face lack or resistance. There is an appropriate biblical optimism to be sure, but for many any glitch in their sense of convenience or trajectory of success is a gut-punch. For some, they toss in the towel and quit the journey. I have been reading an increase of stories concerning millennials, in particular, who are jumping off the ship of Christianity and deconstructing their faith. They can paint the reasons any way they wish for that decision, but the irreducible reason for it is disappointment. Something didn’t fit into their paradigm of expectations and it left them disappointed and jaded. I don’t judge them (in the contemporary sense of the word), in fact, there have been times I have battled those same pesky thoughts. The difference, I think, in how I handled those moments was a clear understanding of the totality of what the Bible promised.

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So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.

~ Mark 11:22-24

Our last Pandemic Perspective Post dealt briefly with the internal tension between walking in faith and fear. If faith is embraced, then it should have some sort of demonstration as to its reality at work in my life. Jesus reminds me of one important aspect of the faith walk and that is my confession.

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For we walk by faith and not by sight…
2 Corinthians 5:7

For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith.
I John 5:4

Crisis always reveals what you actually believe. Say what you want during times of convenience and ease, it will always be the crisis that will unveil your true belief system. In this particular crisis (CORVID-19) we are confronted with the collision of two unseen forces. One is a lethal virus that has the potential to be spread exponentially faster than anything we have previously faced as a nation. The other is the Lord, Who declares His power is unrivaled. The virus works through fear. The Lord works through faith. The question to me (and to all of us) is, “Which one shall I walk by?”

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