What Does Real-World Faith Look Like?

“Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17).

Almost every parent, at some time or another, tells their children something like, “When you get out there in to the real world … ,” emphasizing that the world in which they are nurtured, the environment of a loving home, is a marked contrast to the real world. So, what is the real world? It’s a great deal different from the protected environment in which most children are privileged to be born and grow up in.

The real world is a pretty tough one. It’s a world of cut-throat competition, a dog-eat-dog world where the golden rule is, “He who has the gold has the rule,” and the motto of the street is, “Do it to the other guy before he does it to you.”

That’s the real world. It’s a hard one too. The world where you have the fastest time in the trials, but another boy gets appointed to the team because you’re from a poor family and his family has pull. The real world is the one in which the immoral, drinking, carousing man gets the promotion, while you, with better skills, get passed over because your sense of morality makes others think you are too goody-goody. The real world is the one in which a mother of three young children loses her fight with cancer while her neighbor who sleeps with a variety of men seems to enjoy good health.

You know, I’ve been thinking about our faith in relationship to the real world. I’ve noticed that often when we think about the real world, we tend to feel that we’ve to be really tough to make it out there, and that our faith which does well in the nurtured, protected environment of a home or even a church on Sunday can’t stand the heat of the real world.

African violets or delicate orchids grow beautifully in the protected environment of a greenhouse, but put them under the scorching heat of a desert sun and they quickly wither and die. Sometimes, our faith is the same way. Thinking that it can’t stand the heat of the real world, we tend to leave it at the door of the church, or at least in the parking lot adjacent to the real world. Or we feel good about God and heaven at home, but at the conference table, or out in the marketplace where there is intense competition and only the strongest, most cunning seem to survive, we aren’t sure that our faith can stand the heat.

Is there such a thing as “real-world faith?” One which wears overalls, and helps you maintain your cool when you’re on a bicycle and a driver runs you off the road, and your competition delights in destroying your market?

The dictionary defines the English word real as “genuine, authentic, without fraud, or sincere … ” Real-world faith! Frankly, there is but one kind of faith and it is real-world faith. It was into a real world that Jesus came long ago. His was not a nurtured, protected kind of faith. He faced the assaults of an unbelieving, hostile world, and He never turned or ran.

Real-world faith begins with an encounter with the real Jesus, not a wimpy, namby-pamby sort of individual who wears lace on his handkerchief and hides in the cool recesses of a cathedral. When Jesus Christ really touches your life, and you know who He is, your life begins to change, and that change can stand the heat of the real world.

Interested in strengthening your faith, taking it from the hothouse to the real world? Then pay attention to the guidelines that come from the book of Romans. Paul wrote, “So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17, NKJV).

Real world faith is the only kind that can meet the needs of hurting people. It works!

Resource reading: Joshua 1.