John 11:25-32 (Mere Faith)

The Difference Between Biblical Faith and Mere Assent

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who Christ is.

May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you. You know, one of the most disgusting and eye-opening films that I've ever seen was a 2004 documentary called Super Size Me.

You ever seen it? Morgan Spurlock decided to eat McDonald's three times a day, and over the course of 30 days, he had to accomplish a couple goals. The first goal was he had to eat everything on the menu at least once.

The second goal was if he ate anything whatsoever, it had to be from McDonald's. If he drank anything whatsoever, it had to be from McDonald's, and he had to do this for 30 days. The effect of this experiment was that he gained 21 pounds in 30 days.

His cholesterol was higher than it had ever been in his life. His mood and his sexual... He had mood and sexual dysfunction. It took him 14 months to get back to normal after this, just to reverse the damage that was done to his body.

And in that, I see sort of a metaphor for evangelical Christianity. It's true. Maybe we're not all going and eating fast food every day. I hope not. I pray that that's not the case. But what we've done is we've feasted upon unbiblical things, and we feasted on it so much and so deliberately and so often that we have become a fat, sick, and nearly dead church in this country.

And what I'm talking about most importantly is an unbiblical view of what faith is. What is faith? What does the Bible say about faith? What does the church universal believe about faith? Well, I'll tell you, first and foremost, that faith is not intellectual assent.

The Bible calls for a whole body, whole soul kind of belief that orients every part of you towards the Savior. It's not intellectual agreement. It's not, I cognitively understand a few data points of facts that can help me win an argument on a Facebook group.

There's a lot of keyboard warriors out there. This is not what faith is. It's not evangelicalism. It's not I exist so that I can have an emotional experience. It's not that I go to church so that I can have experiences or liver shivers or premonitions or Holy Spirit bumps.

Because that's shallow and empty-headed. Biblical faith begins with a propositional truth that changes your mind. It begins with Jesus Christ. And then when that comes in, and you understand what that is, it changes your worldview.

You don't look at the world the same way that you used to look at the world. It changes the way that you eat. It changes the way that you drink. It changes the way that you drive. It changes everything about you.

It gives you biblical categories now for you to understand. It tells you that I'm a sinner in a world that says you're basically a good person. The Bible and faith tells you, no, you're not. You're a sinner.

The Bible says that you and I are wretched on our own. The Bible says that we're like filthy, polluted garments. The Bible says that we're like worms in our sin. The Bible says that we've rebelled against a holy God.

And we've fallen short of his glory and we deserve the punishment of sin. These are biblical categories that you can't believe until faith comes into you. You can believe them mentally. You can believe them cognitively.

I've read atheists before who can describe the gospel better than I can. But faith is different than that. It goes from the brain and it goes down into the heart so that it produces not just intellectual concepts, but feelings that are authentic, produced by the Holy Spirit of God.

It causes you to weep over the things that you once loved and to love the things that you once hated. It causes you to hate the sin that you once drank deeply from, and it calls you to love holiness and purity and righteousness in a way that you've never loved them before, in a way that makes you uncomfortable, in a way that you even carry yourself.

Christianity and belief is not a finish line where you raise your hand and you say, I know Jesus died for me. That's it. I'm done. Got my get out of hell free card. Let's move on to some different things.

That's not what Christianity is. Faith is a starting point where you realize how wretched you are. And over the course of your life, you grow deeper and more convicted about those things. Actually, if we're living our faith correctly, we should hate our sin more today than on the day that we were converted.

We should see more sin inside of us. It may not be as egregious as it used to be. It may not be as awful as it used to be, but the tiny things now. I remember when I was in the military and we had just got back from Iraq.

I was sitting in my room and one of my friends came in and he sat down on the seat beside of the bed and he said, look at this. And he was wearing his military issue PT shorts. And he showed me a gray spot on his leg.

It was just a gray spot. And I was like, what is that? And he said, that's a piece of shrapnel. I said, my goodness, how did that get in there? He said, it's from Iraq. You see, because when I was over there, I got some shrapnel in my body from a mortar round that landed too close to me.

Big pieces came out really quickly. Now it's the smaller pieces that went deeper, that are working themselves out a little bit more slowly. He said, now that I can see it, it'll be about a month before it breaks through the skin and I can take something and pull it out.

That reminds me of what sin is like. The big pieces come out really quickly when you become a Christian. Alcoholism or pornography and some of those things, you hate those things when you become a Christian, but it's deeper sins like judgmentalism or the way that I speak, my tongue.

James says it's a raging fire. Maybe those things are things that I get convicted about as I go, but make no mistake, Christian faith produces a lifetime of conviction that causes you to repent. Martin Luther said that the whole life of a Christian is repentance.

When you're done repenting, repent of your repentance because your repentance wasn't good enough. Tainted with selfishness and self-preservation and pride. Faith causes us to grow to love who Christ is.

Faith, like Malachi chapter 3 says, when we understand it, we will leap like calves when we come out of the pasture. YouTube it, it's hilarious. When little calves get in a brand new pasture, they leap and they jump and sometimes they fall over because they're gangly.

But when you know Christ, it causes every part of you to rejoice, to leap for God. It produces Christlike emotions in you. It produces Christlike behavior in you. Gospel notions produce godly emotions and godly emotions produce godly devotion for a lifetime.

Now, why is this so important? Because eternal life hangs in the balance of whether we understand biblical faith or not. Pleasures forevermore versus eternal torments and multiplied sorrows hang in the balance of whether we understand faith.

If we don't understand what biblical faith is, we won't inherit the promises of God. If our faith is rooted in something other than Jesus, if we've built our house on the sand, when the rain comes and the storm comes, it will destroy that house and great will be the fall.

Faith, real faith, biblical faith changes every aspect of your life. It changes the way you think. It changes the way you feel. It changes the way you relate to other people. It changes the way you worship.

It changes everything about you. And if that has not happened to you, I don't say this as a matter of shame. I say this as a matter of plead to Christ and say, there's something wrong with my faith. It says in the Bible to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

Why do you think it says fear and trembling? Because we want to make sure that we've got this question answered rightly. Do we have real faith? Do we have faith that's producing something in us or do we have easy believism as Dietrich Bonhoeffer once called it?

The word faith in the Bible is a word that is called pistou. I didn't just curse there. It's it's called pistou. That's the Greek word for faith. Faith is a long standing Greek word. We often sometimes get the impression that, or at least I do, when you're looking at the Greek, that these words are entirely related to New Testament Greek and they didn't have secular connotations.

This word actually was seven centuries prior to the gospels being written. Pistou does not mean, hey, I heard a sermon, I understand the details and yeah, I kind of agree with it. That's not what it means.

Pistou is the kind of belief that causes you to trust and causes you to lay down everything and run after an object. It's actually better translated allegiance. Faith is not belief alone. Faith is allegiance.

You think about a soldier in a military army. He knows facts about his general, yes, but the facts don't lay dormant inside of him. It causes him to follow his general into battle. It causes him to run with him, to support him, to fight.

That's what we're talking about. Christ is the great general of the Christian army and faith causes us to follow him. Even if it gets us harmed, even if it gets us mocked and maligned, beaten and broken, we follow Christ.

If you don't have action paired with belief, it's not biblical faith. Now, biblical faith is not action to please God. It's because God is pleased with us. Now we do godly things. We have to understand the right order.

Faith is not simple, easy believism. It's entire life transformation. Now, I remind us of this because the Gospel of John is all about belief. The purpose statement of the Gospel of John is in chapter 20, verse 31, and John puts belief at the center of his book.

He says, these things, that means every word of John's gospel, has been written so that you may pustuo, so that you may have allegiance in Christ, so you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing in him, you may have life in his name.

This is not academic assent. This is trust and allegiance. If your faith has you in the same dead place that you were when you claimed it, it's not biblical faith. Faith produces life, new life, life that transforms you, changes you, makes you, and shapes you according to the image of Christ.

And that is my hope and my prayer for this church, that we would have the kind of faith that changes us, the kind of faith that causes us to be in love with Jesus, the kind of faith that causes us, like Paul says, to shine like lights in a crooked and broken generation.

Do we live in a crooked and broken generation? Absolutely. Is the church shining? Is the church radiant for her Savior? Does the church have a belief problem? Now, this passage today also has to do with belief.

The next two weeks, actually, will have to do with belief because it's all the way through the passage. Jesus kicks off this section, verse 25, by saying, do you believe what I just said? And then he goes on and he challenges belief, and we see that the people in the narrative are acting out what true belief is so that over the next two weeks, we're going to look at what is the nature of true belief and what is the nature of true salvation.

This week, we're going to be looking at true belief. What is true belief? That's the first thing we're going to look at. The second thing is what does true belief cause to happen in us? What does it cause?

And then the third is what does true belief require of us? That's the one where we tend to get stuck because as Christians, we say, it's faith alone. Faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone doesn't require anything of me.

But wait, it doesn't require anything for you to be saved, but as someone who is saved, your faith makes demands upon you. And that's what we're going to talk about today. So if you will, turn with me to John chapter 11.

This is the 47th sermon in this chapter. Not really, I'm just kidding. But I think it's nine. We'll be in verses 25 through 32. This is what the text says. Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life.

He who believes in me will live even if he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? She said to him, yes, Lord, I have believed that you are the Christ, the son of God, even he who comes into the world.

When she said this, she went away and called Mary, her sister, saying secretly, the teacher is here and is calling for you. And when she heard it, she got up quickly and was coming to him. Now, Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him.

Then the Jews who were with her in the house and consoling her, when they saw that Mary got up quickly and went out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. Therefore, when Mary came where Jesus was, she saw him and fell at his feet, saying, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Lord, I pray that today, as we examine your word, that we would get a glimpse of what real, true, authentic, biblical faith looks like, that we would see what faith is, that we would see what you have done and what causality comes out of our faith that does things inside of us.

And Lord, I pray that we would see what our faith requires of us. Lord, I pray we would see in the interaction that you have with these two delightful, beautiful sisters in the faith, Mary and Martha, that we would see what you did in their life and we would see how they responded.

And Lord, it would be instructive for us today. Lord, I pray that in a message like this, where almost nothing new and novel will be shared, no history lesson that we're not aware of, Lord, all of this will be a reminder of things we already know.

Lord, I pray that in the grace of that, that you would remind us like we talked about in Deuteronomy, that we would remember, that we would rejoice, that we would cling to what faith is. Lord, where we fall short, I pray that we would confess and repent.

And Lord, I pray, like Hebrews says, that we would throw off every weight and every hindrance and every sin so that we could run the race that you have called us to. Lord, we pray this in Christ's name.

The Raising of Lazarus as the Setting for Faith and Salvation

Amen. Now, as you'll remember, we've been examining one of the most thrilling, powerful, memorable scenes in all of the gospel, which is the raising of Lazarus. It's an incredible scene that actually writes Jesus's death certificate.

The people create a commission after this event to kill Jesus, and this is sort of the final straw that breaks the camel's back. We saw also Jesus in John's gospel especially is really talented, really exceptionally great at offending the Jewish leadership.

He does it in John 10 by saying that I and God are equal, and because of that, they picked up stones for the second time to kill Jesus, chased him out of the city, and Jesus and his disciples in December of AD 29, or AD 32.

Scholars debate over those two dates. But in that year, the disciples fled from Jerusalem to Galilee, and they spent three months in Galilee where Jesus was preparing them for the day of his death. Now, they didn't fully get that.

They didn't understand it, but Jesus was preparing them for the moment that he would not be there any longer. He spent time with his disciples. You can imagine the disciples felt like, this is great. We're with Jesus.

This is where we want to be. This is where we gave up our lives and our income and our families. We left everything for this. This is a great moment in time. And you can imagine the consternation that they felt when they're heading back to Jerusalem.

You can almost imagine them saying, Jesus, I know the law says that we're supposed to go to Jerusalem for Passover, but do we really have to do that? Do we really want to risk it? Because Jerusalem is where the people wanted to kill Jesus, and the disciples knew it.

Again, things were going great until a messenger showed up and said that Lazarus was sick. And you can imagine the disciples' hearts immediately falling, and them saying, he loves Lazarus. Of course he's going to go.

He heals people. He gives people sight. This is what Jesus does. And you can imagine the sort of relief that they felt when Jesus said, this sickness won't end in death. Let's keep doing ministry. They were praying, oh, thank God.

We're not going back to Jerusalem. We're not all going to die. Then two days later, Jesus, after he had sufficiently bothered Mary and Martha by delaying, now he bothers the disciples by saying, we're going.

Thomas even cries out, I guess we're all going to go and die. They got it. They understood the point. They were heading towards death when they go to Jerusalem. It was especially dangerous as Passover drew near.

The Jews would have planted spies and different people to notice if Jesus came to the city because all faithful Jewish males would have came to the city near Passover. And this event in John 11 is about two weeks before the Passover.

So they were expecting Jesus soon. Maybe not as soon as he came, but they were expecting him. All of this is the peripheral background that's happening in John 11. This is the pressure that's going on in the background of what's happening.

Now, as we've noticed, John 11 is also sort of a reprieve because it has given us a time to sit and dwell upon these wonderful, rich theological concepts that are also happening. It doesn't feel like the pressure is there, but it's there.

But as you know, for the last several weeks, we've been able to talk about a theology of death, a theology of resurrection, a theology of the end times, or as Martha calls it, the last day. But over the next two weeks, we're going to see how this also contributes to our theology of what faith is and our theology of what salvation is.

So we have a wonderful little break in the narrative to be able to discuss some of these things and what a grace it is that we get to do that. John 11, 25 through 32, shows us what belief is in full. It's a wonderful picture.

And the way that I'm going to be preaching the sermon is a little bit different than the way I've been preaching the last couple sermons. The last couple sermons is, let's go in the Old Testament and let's talk about a concept and talk about it like a diamond.

We'll look at it from this angle and that angle and this angle and that angle, and we'll see all kinds of beautiful things. Today, we're going to look at the narrative as it is. We're going to be just in John 11.

Today, I'm not going to have 50 different supporting verses on the screen. We're going to look at just the narrative as it is, and we're going to see in the narrative a sort of prototype or a sort of blueprint for what faith really is, and we're going to see it in the lives of Mary and Martha.

True Belief Is Allegiance to the Triune God That Produces New Life

So let's begin with what true belief is. True belief is the resurrection and the life, and he who believes in me, even if he lives, or he will live even if he dies. He who believes. Belief is rooted in the triune God.

You say, where do you see that in this text? I am is the name for God. I am is the name that God revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai, and he said, who should I tell the people that you are? And God says, tell them my name is I am that I am.

Or maybe another way to translate it is I will be who I will be. I am pure existence. I am God. So God the Father, sort of under the surface of this text. He says, I am the resurrection. Well, we know in heaven that Jesus sits at the throne of God, and he sends the Spirit of God to resurrect the saints of God.

So therefore, you've got even the Spirit in an undertone here. You've got the Father who's I am. You've got the Spirit who's the resurrecting power of Christ, and you've got God in the flesh speaking to these people, speaking to Mary and Martha saying, I am the resurrection and the life, the triune God.

It's not explicit, but it's here in this text that faith, true belief is in God, the Father, God, the Son and God, the Holy Spirit. And if you don't have that kind of faith, if you don't believe that Jesus is God, if you don't believe that God, the Father is God, that the Holy Spirit is God, if you don't have faith, hope and trust in the Trinity.

Then you don't have true faith. Many cults believe that God, the Father, is God, that Jesus is a creation of God, the Jehovah's Witnesses. Mormons believe that God once was not a being, but he exists now as Elohim over this planet.

And if you're a good Mormon and wear your spiritual underwear, you can be a God too. If you're male, sorry women, you are the populators of the new earth. Isn't that sick? These triune twistings that happen make these disgusting sort of perverted religions.

True faith is in the triune God, as revealed in Scripture, and it's necessary. We have to believe that God, the Father, sent his one and only Son to die on the cross for our sins, the true and glorious gospel, and that Jesus Christ, God, man in the flesh, went to the cross willingly and joyfully for you.

And as he was walking up the hill called Calvary, even though blood was dripping down his face, tears were streaming down his cheeks, and his face was broken over the pain that he was feeling, it says, for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despised its shame for you.

And then when Jesus rose from the dead on the third day and ascended to heaven at the right hand of the Father, sat down at the right hand so that he could reign over his church, he sent forth his Spirit to wake up Christians one generation after another after another.

For the last 2 ,000 years, we are the beneficiary of the Holy Spirit's work of resurrection. This is essential Christian faith, but it's just the beginning. It's just the beginning. We can't just stop here because true faith also doesn't end in mental concepts, as we've just said, it ends in a changed life.

Look at what the same verse says in verse 25, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even if he dies. True faith happens when your old dead man is raised, when your old dead woman is raised, when the corpse of your soul is resurrected and new life comes into your body and into your soul and into your heart and into your mind.

It causes your old way of thinking to shame you and pain you. It causes your old desires, noxious as they were, to offend you. It causes new passions to come in you and offend you. The changed life is one of the greatest evidences of faith.

It's not putting on a show, it's where character actually has undergone a biblical reformation. It's where cursing and speaking and noxious ways have been put away. It's when loving people, even when they malign you and hate you, and you do it joyfully and authentically.

It's when you pray for your enemies, you look for churches that preach the gospel. It's when you read the Bible out of joy and not out of duty. It's when you hunger for the things of God, when you hate sin, when you love purity, love righteousness, you've been made new.

It's not just in your head. I remember a sermon from Tim Keller one time. He said, what's happened in American Christianity is like a vending machine. He said, we put the quarter in. Actually, it was an old sermon.

I think he said we put the nickel in. But we put the quarter in and it gets stuck so the drink doesn't come out. So you have to go and beat on the side of the machine to get the coin to drop down. He said it's very similar to what's happened in the modern church.

We understand the gospel cognitively, but we need something to beat the gospel upside of our head so that it trickles down into our heart because we need changed life. When Nicodemus heard the gospel, it confused him mentally, but it didn't change him until later when he saw the risen Christ.

We need life change to say that we have true faith. The Bible says that there are many who on that day will say, Lord, Lord, didn't we do many miracles in your name? Didn't we serve you? Didn't we lead a Bible study?

Didn't we plant churches? Didn't we read the Bible and pray to our children with our children? Didn't we share the gospel with so and so? Didn't we cast out demons? Didn't we do miracles? Didn't we do this?

And Jesus will say, depart from me. I never knew you. One of the hardest verses in the Bible, and it hinges upon the reality of true faith. We can deceive ourselves. Many will deceive themselves. Many means majority will deceive themselves.

I want to be one of the only churches that the many doesn't apply to, but this is a serious thing that we have to consider when it says many will come and he will say, depart from me. I never knew you.

The point of faith is not what you know. The point of faith is if you are known by Christ. Do you know God or does Christ know you? That is the essential piece of faith, and if Christ knows you, it won't be intellectual assent.

It won't be a set of data. It won't make you smart to win theological arguments, although you can be smart. You can win theological arguments. That's not the point. My point is that if Christ knows you, his spirit will come in you and it will change you and you will bear much fruit.

You'll have affections, a new heart, and if this is not happening to you, pray and seek God and cry out for salvation because that kind of faith will burn just as crispy in the fires of hell as any atheism, paganism, or hedonism on that faithful day.

He will say to some who thought that they were Christians, depart from me. I never knew you. It's worth fearful, trembling examination. My goal in sharing this with you is not to scare you because the true believer in Christ has assurance that causes us to leap with joy and causes us to cling to the gospel, and the true believer in Christ does not walk around constantly believing that they're going to hell.

But many deceive themselves, and I'm just appealing to you to examine yourselves thoroughly because this is important. Jesus did not say, I am the right theology. If you would simply believe in that, get all the grammar right, learn some New Testament Greek, then you'll be saved.

He didn't say that. He said, I am the resurrection and the life, and if I know you, if I know you, if I've anointed you, if I've saved you, then you will be changed. You'll have new life. Look at how Jesus continues.

This is the second or third aspect of faith. It's triune faith, gives new life. Third aspect is gives eternal life. Jesus says, everyone who lives, which means life now, and believes in me, belief now, will never die.

That's life everlasting. I'm not going to spend a tremendous amount of time on this section because we often, in evangelical circles, Freudian slip, we often preach about everlasting eternal life, and we forget life today.

We forget sanctification today. We want to go from justification to glorification, and most sermons I've ever heard on eternal life were about the life that is to come instead of how we are to live today.

So I want to focus on that more, but that reality, that reality is true. Jesus will return. Jesus will return, and he will call his people home. If you're living at that time, 1 Corinthians 15 tells us that you'll be called up.

1 Thessalonians 4 tells us you'll be caught up with Christ. If you're dead, don't worry. He can reanimate your body. If you're cremated, don't worry. He made Adam out of dust. He can make you out of dust.

He will give you new life, new body, resurrected body. That is what is to come, but let us not forget to live now while we're still here, to live as Christ and to die as gain. Let us not forget to live now even while we wait on the hope of eternity.

The summary of what faith is, what pistou is, is whole mind, body, heart, allegiance to the triune God that changes your life both now and forever. That's a definition now that we've got for faith. I'll repeat it again in case you want to write it down or scratch some notes.

Faith is a whole mind, heart, body, and will allegiance to the triune God that causes life change today and eternal life forever. It's a definition that we can work with, but it's more than that. We've got to move beyond what just faith is and what faith causes in us.

It causes life, causes eternal life, but we have to now move to what faith requires of us. This is the sort of downhill runway, planes coming into the airport sort of part of the sermon, but we have to talk about what faith requires.

Because Jesus said, if you love me, then you'll obey my commandments. What does Jesus command? What kind of things are we supposed to do when we are called to love Christ? I'll share with you an example of what faith is.

Faith is like a tree. The root of that tree is Christ. The root of that tree is the triune God. If you're rooted in anything other than triune God, you're not saved. You're not a tree planted by living water that bears its fruit in season.

You're a tree that will wither and will fade, doubly dead, as the book of Jude says. But if your roots are in Jesus, and if your root is in the triune God, then the trunk of the tree is what God has done in you.

Justification, resurrection, new life. These are things that God, by His power, has done inside of you because He's planted you by streams of living water. The fruit that comes out of that trunk and those branches is the result of faith.

Our faith is not in our fruit. Our faith is in the root, but if we have faith in the right root, we will produce fruit. It's a lot of rhyming there. Maybe write a poem someday. We have to have the right root to bear fruit.

That's the point. John 11 paints this picture perfectly when he talks about what true faith requires. The first thing that true faith requires, after you've believed in the triune God, after you've had the life change of the Holy Spirit coming into your life, faith requires a sincere biblical confession.

Jesus asked Martha, do you believe this? He's enlisting from her a confession. He asked her, do you believe that I'm God? Do you believe that I am the power of the resurrection? Do you believe that I'm the only one who can ever give you life?

These are asking her to confess her faith. Confession of our faith is a biblical necessity. Biblical faith always requires a response. There is no such thing as a private, quiet, silent Christian faith.

Jesus says, if you're ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of you. Faith requires confession. And look at how she responds to Jesus. She responds with a faithful confession. She said to him, yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the son of God, even he who comes into the world.

This is not a meaningless point. Jesus asks her the question. He's God. He knew the answer. He knew already what was in her heart. He asks her to get her to share the confession because confession is necessary.

Necessary for Mary here, necessary for Peter in John chapter 6 when he says, are you going to leave me too? And Peter says, where can I go? You have the words of life. Jesus knew where Peter was at in his heart, but he had him speak it because there's something about us saying what we believe in our heart that makes it real to us.

It's a grace to us that he has us confess the faith that he's given us. He knows what it is. He gave it to us. It's not like he's saying, tell me what the thing is that I gave you again. No, he knows what it is.

He thought and paid for it. He deposited inside of you. He's asking you to confess it because it's good for you. It helps you, makes you grow. After conversion, you and I grow in confession. We come to know him more, transformed by him more.

We become more capable of speaking the truths of the word of God. And we do that in a variety of different ways. The means of grace. We talk about the means of grace a lot here at the Shepherds Church.

Do you know what the means of grace are? If you don't, I want to tell you because they're really important. The means of grace are the conduits by which God brings grace into your life. You imagine someone laying in a hospital bed with an IV in this arm and something else in this arm bringing the nutrients into them that they need.

God has given you things that if you will connect with them, if you will appropriate them, if you will use them, if you will make use of them, they will bring grace into your life. What is that? That's the Bible.