This post is from a larger series under the cat­e­gory Friend to Jesus. It is a detailed explo­ration of the three stages of faith: the believer, the ser­vant and the friend of God. If you want to start at the begin­ning, it begins with the post How Look­ing at a Car­avag­gio Paint­ing Can Change Your Life and then con­tin­ues chronologically.

One is happy as a result of one’s own efforts once one knows the nec­es­sary ingre­di­ents of hap­pi­ness: sim­ple tastes, a cer­tain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and above all, a clear con­science. George Sand

If you want a reli­gion that makes sense, I would sug­gest some­thing other than Chris­tian­ity. If you want a reli­gion that makes life, this is the one. Rich Mullins

So what exactly are the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a believer? In upcom­ing weeks, we will go over some tale-tale signs of the per­son who just believes in God, but doesn’t take it much far­ther than that. The day that a per­son comes to believe that Jesus is their Sav­ior is a beau­ti­ful, yet dan­ger­ous moment. It’s won­der­ful because it starts life off in a way in which we begin again. The words to por­tray this expe­ri­ence can range from cleans­ing to new­ness to free­dom. It’s a unique expe­ri­ence unlike any­thing that we will ever undergo. Think about it for minute—at one point, you are entirely alien­ated from the Cre­ator of the uni­verse to now being his child. That is one remark­able transformation!

And it can hap­pen in the blink of an eye, on a deathbed, at a rock con­cert, in the bath­room while tak­ing a shower, in the front seat while talk­ing to a friend, late one night in front of the TV. At some unique point, we decide to believe that Jesus Christ is the Sav­ior of the world. Every­one comes into rela­tion­ship with God in so many dif­fer­ent ways. My pater­nal grand­fa­ther was a per­fect exam­ple of this. For some rea­son, and I don’t know the whole story, he became a Chris­t­ian some time in his sev­en­ties. To be hon­est, he drove every­one bonkers because of this mag­nif­i­cent change. He was always talk­ing about God; going to church every Sun­day morn­ing and evening and every Wednes­day after din­ner; writ­ing large checks to dif­fer­ent min­istries like Billy Graham’s or to the Lutheran Church to which he belonged. My grand­fa­ther let you know that he was a Chris­t­ian. He had his tracts that he would hand out to guests who would visit. He preached fire and brim­stone as well as any preacher I’ve heard since (this is not nec­es­sar­ily a good thing). He had this dra­matic turn­around in his life that he wanted oth­ers to share in as well. His inten­tions were most likely pure, but I’m not sure about his pre­sen­ta­tion because in the end, he didn’t sway any­one to his side. In fact, he might have pushed peo­ple away.

You see, I always knew my grand­fa­ther as a very kind man, sit­ting on his knee, hear­ing his fish­ing sto­ries and eat­ing slices of fresh apple. But my dad and oth­ers, knew him when he wasn’t so nice or pleas­ant to be around. They knew him as a father who could be tough and overly strict. They knew him as a hard man. They knew some­one who was far from being a saint. This change con­fused them, I think because they won­dered if the change would be per­ma­nent. My grand­fa­ther didn’t live rel­a­tively long after giv­ing his life to God and so I think this also was where some mis­trust came, because those around him never really got a chance to find out if his changed life was was really going to stick or if he was going to revert back to the per­son they once knew—that guy who wasn’t always so easy to be around.

This is the prob­lem with believ­ers, one just never knows if this is just a phase or some­thing long-lasting in their life. We all have heard sto­ries of those who pas­sion­ately give their life to God, serve relent­lessly in the church, and yet a few years later, they can’t be found. We have all heard sto­ries of those who once were pas­tors, dea­cons or serv­ing in some capac­ity of lead­er­ship, and got caught in adul­tery or some other indis­cre­tion and haven’t been seen since. The rea­son it is so dan­ger­ous to stay just a believer is because one’s rela­tion­ship with God is based on some­thing very flimsy and that is, it’s sim­ply based on a belief. This may sound funny, but later on, when one makes deeper com­mit­ments, one’s con­nec­tion to God is not sim­ply founded on belief or faith, but also will be based on expe­ri­ence and a per­sonal rela­tion­ship with God. Jesus wants to be in every nook and cranny of our lives and with that, we can expe­ri­ence him in many direc­tions and dimen­sions in our lives. Jesus desires to be expe­ri­enced, and typ­i­cally, the believer has few events in his life in which God truly seems real and alive in their lives. If you were to ask a believer if God really existed; they at least eighty per­cent of the time would just shrug their shoul­ders. Believ­ers don’t know God exists; they hope so. This is exactly the conun­drum where Judas found him­self. Do you really believe that Judas would sell out the Sav­ior of the world for a mere thirty pieces of sil­ver, and at the same time, truly believe in his heart that Jesus was the actual Mes­siah? Of course, not. Judas betrayed Jesus because he wasn’t cer­tain and pos­i­tive that Jesus was telling the truth about him­self. This is where the story about the guy who builds his house on sand comes in—Jesus is main­tain­ing that we need to have a deeper rela­tion­ship with him, some­thing that can with­stand doubt or tragedy (Matthew 7:26). The prob­lem is, believ­ers don’t do this. They are build­ing on the beach, right next to the ocean as the waves come closer.