A reading from John chapter 24-28. Now Thomas, one of the 12 was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, we have seen the Lord, but he said to them, unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. A week later his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them.
Through the doors were locked. Jesus came and stood among them and said, please be with you. Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here, see my hands, reach out and put your hand into my side. Stop doubting and believe.
Thomas said to him, my Lord and my God. The word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Good morning.
Everybody hear me? I get my Garth Brooks mic ready. This is what Graham called this microphone. It's a kind of stuck.
Well, my name is Ben Nicholson. I'm one of the founding members of Foundry. I'm excited to be here this morning. I'm doing a little fill-in as we're awaiting the transition of our new pastor, Laurie Spangler, to be coming in.
She'll be here next week, so super excited about that. Before I get started, I'm going to get a couple of things out of the way. This is my disclosures. One, I'm not a pastor.
I have not trained. I have not gone to seminary. I do not speak the Hebrew language. I don't read Hebrew.
I don't speak any other language, matter of fact. I don't feel like I know the stories of the Bible as I should, but I really do enjoy getting opportunity to talk about some of the things that I think about and just some of the stories within the Bible and maybe how they've impacted me. What I am, what I am, is I'm a behaviorist. That's what I do.
I was a school psychologist for years. I've worked with children for nearly two decades. Because of this, I think about things a little bit differently. I view things a little bit differently.
A little more is cause and effect. This is because of my training and just some of the things that I've done over the years and working with kids. I'm telling you all this because what we're going to talk about today is just some of the stuff that I think about. Let me ask you a question.
You're a bit scared of the dark. This is going to be interactive. I need this as a guess. I need this as a no.
You've ever been scared of the dark? Yeah. Sure. I think we've all been scared of the dark.
I enjoy the outdoors. I love fishing. I love hunting. One of the things I do as a hunter, I like deer hunting.
Deer hunters, we get up early in the morning and we sometimes go down to obscure places down in the woods that are dark. I'm not going to lie. There's times when I'm walking to my location where you hear things. You get a little nervous.
Any deer hunter that says auto get nervous, they're lying. We were, I belonged to a hunting camp and we had this guy that was from down south and he was in the cage and accident and all this. He was asking a couple of us about the location of this deer stand. He said, you know, he said, that one down in that bottom.
I said, yeah, that's the one that's the one that's down in the bottom. I said, yeah, I said, yeah. I said, yeah. I said, yeah.
He goes, I'm not going to. I didn't scare the dog. But you know, this stuff gets you in the dock. All this because we're going to, I really want to talk a little bit about this word, believe.
Okay, what it means to believe and what believe means to me. So, I didn't like any other self-respecting person. I got on the internet and I found the dictionary and I wanted to look at what does believe mean or what does the meaning of believe and what does it say about that. So, the dictionary on the internet says it means to accept something as true or to feel sure of something, feel sure of the truth of something.
So I thought about this a little bit more. more, this belief, this idea of believing in something. And I wanted to dig a little deeper. So I asked people about what they thought of belief.
And then I also dug into some other resources. And I decided to break this down into two levels, we'll call it, of belief. The first, we're going to call opinions. So I thought I'd have some fun with this.
Opinions, right? Everybody's got an opinion. I got plenty. So we're going to talk about a few of my opinions.
One, I believe that he properly created homemade oatmeal raisin cookie supersede chocolate chip. Yes? No? Look, I'm entitled to my opinions.
John Steele and I had this debate on Facebook, which is really funny over this because he asked the question about this. But I feel like the properly made oatmeal raisin cookie is just better than chocolate chips, just my belief. All right, so here's the other one. No, I remember, no, I remember.
I believe that ketchup can and should be used on eggs and pizza. Look, listen, again, ketchup is just marinara sauce. That's really all this is, OK? It's just marinara sauce.
It's in a bottle. It's a little sweeter than a minute. But you can be used in the same way. It's just how I feel about it.
All right, look, y'all might can get along with this one. I believe that onion rings are better than french fries. If an onion ring is properly fried and it's crunchy and not soggy, I think it's better than french fries. I'll give it some opinion.
All right, this is all my last one and my last one of my opinions. So I wanted the kids to be able to get to find this one for any kids that are watching or listening. I believe that the Disney movie Brave is better than frozen. Look, I like Elsa and I like Olaf and I like them.
However, Marilla shoots a bow and I like accents. So the Scottish accents, I think that's just how I feel about it. I feel that Brave is a better Disney movie than frozen. In some of my opinion, our opinions are something that we feel relatively certain about.
But the problem with an opinion is that it can change, right? Opinions can be easily influenced by our friends, society, social media, so forth. So let me talk about the next level of belief. This is my thoughts on this.
So we're going to call this one conviction. It's a little different. It's a little different than an opinion. It's a little more intense.
Let me ask you a question. Have you ever, let's just say you're at the house and it's dark and you're alone and you're ready to get in the bed and you start to think that there could be something that lives under the bed. You think about this enough that instead of walking up to the bed and getting in the bed, you run and you jump to get in the bed. Anybody ever done this?
If you're shaking your head, you're lying. You ever thought there could be something out of the bed and so you don't want your leg to dangle off to the side of the bed? Right? This is a different level of belief.
It's a little more intense. I know a kid that believes that frogs are a dangerous, deadly animal that cannot be trusted. He believes this enough that if you were to chase him with the frog, he will run like the wind. If you back him in a corner, your life is in danger because he will defend himself with a fury like no other.
I know a person that believes that fish are a dangerous, deadly animal as well. Enough that I have seen this very large man run like an Olympic sprinter down the dock. Away from me holding this deadly one pound bass in my hand that I had caught him. Alan Martin's not here this morning.
I know a lot of you on Alan, so I get to pick on him because Alan's with his son of all gang tournament and couldn't be here, so he's a target now. So Alan is definitely afraid of spiders. That's a fairly rational fear, I guess. And so we're, as a hunter again, one of the things that we do at the beginning of a hunting season is we go clear deer stands.
Anybody that's ever done this understands the anxiety that's involved in doing this, I don't like wasps, wasps for my thing. I just got into beekeeping and I don't mind the bees, wasps for one of those things that I just, I don't do. So Alan's climbing up this deer stand with a big can of wasp re in the sand and he gets up to the top of the deer stand and he opens the door up and I'm sure there was wasp in there. However, Alan was not concerned with any wasp that were in there.
There was this spider that was on the edge of this deer stand on the eve of the deer stand and it started coming down, the deer stand. I watched Alan use a whole can of wasp re. Oh, one spider, he's standing on the ladder and he sprays this spider to the ground and I'm just like, you know, what about the wasp? Often that we find that when we have conviction level belief in something, we take action.
We take real, very serious, emotional deep inside of us action. It's because a conviction level belief eclipses our opinions because it's a whole other level of intensity. I'm using this example of fear and it's simply because, I think everybody can relate to this. You can feel that, right?
I think everybody's probably at some point in this. You start to really dig in and start thinking about some of the things that you've had a legit belief in or a fear in and this had a reaction with. I'm not saying that all of our beliefs and values are fully valid here. Not fully convinced that Bigfoot's real.
I do believe that the great North American primate could exist however I kind of doubt it. But what I'm saying is that when we truly believe at a conviction level belief, it's deep. It's deep inside of us. We have a strong internal desire, your heart races, you have these physiological reactions that go on.
And you can see it externally, right? If I'm scared of something, I promise you, you'll know, you will see it. It's a different level. You see it in our posture, you see it in our body language.
But sometimes, seeing is believing. Sometimes I need to see something in order to truly get behind the credibility of its existence. So I'm gonna dig into the story about Thomas and I'm gonna paraphrase this story with Thomas a little bit in the way that I view it. So, Jesus is going and Thomas and his buddies are hanging out and his buddies are like, man, you can't believe this week, we saw Jesus.
Thomas is like, come on man, quit playing. You can't see Jesus. He's like, yeah, we did, he came to us, he's alive. Like, look, I'm gonna say about this right now.
Like, you need, you know, no, I don't believe this. Like, this is, no, I mean, we're serious. Now you're messing with me, look, I'm not gonna believe this until I see him. I'm not gonna believe it until I see, I don't see the holes in his hands and I'm gonna put my hand in his side and I'm not gonna believe you.
I think you're crazy. You're just messing with me. This is what my friends would do. You're messing with me, no, I'm not gonna believe.
So then they're hanging out again. We're all hanging out. We're all hanging out. We're in this house, doors, lock doors closed, everybody's hanging out and all of a sudden, Jesus appears.
He's like, hey man, Thomas, look, it's me. See the holes in my hands? Come touch me, like a Thomas does. And he's like, my God, my Lord, you are alive.
So, I'm gonna dig into this and the idea of this interpretation. I was growing up, I always thought that the interpretation of this was that Jesus was kind of shame in Thomas, right? We kind of look at Thomas as a bad light in this story. And that Jesus was trying to teach him that we are to value faith over evidence.
I'll give this a little bit differently. I think Jesus was simply teaching that evidence can come from other methods other than physically seeing and touching and feeling. Why does all this matter? Because that level of belief is what allowed Thomas to have conviction and take action.
Instead of having an opinion, Jesus could be alive. It allowed him to take action. Why is action important? See what the Bible says about it.
This is James, chapter two, verses 14 through 28. What good is it my brothers and sisters? If someone claims to have faith but has no deeds, can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or sister is without clues or food.
If one of you says to them, go in peace, keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about their physical needs. What good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if not accompanied by action, it's dead. But someone will say, you have faith and I have deeds.
Show me your faith without deeds and I will show you my faith by my deeds. Guys, there's so many ways in this world today to see Jesus in this world. There's also a lot of ways to see the devil. They're real.
Unlike that thing that you think's under your bed, they're real. But the question is, how do we go from having an opinion level of belief to conviction level of belief? So I'm a behaviorist, right? So I think about things differently.
I believe that behavior is learned. How do you things? We're learning things, right? You weren't born knowing how to turn a light on.
You learned to flip the switch. You weren't born thinking that this thing could be under your bed that's gonna get you. Your older brother or older sister or friend or somebody told you that and you learned that. You weren't born knowing that Jesus is big enough.
You learned that. So how can we learn? How do we learn to have a conviction level belief? How do we get there?
It's a couple of things. It's my thoughts. Ask questions. Get with your friends.
Talk about Jesus. Come next week and meet Lori. Ask her the tough questions and ask me the tough questions. Be there for each other.
Get plugged in. We would love to get you plugged in here at Foundry. We'd love to get to know you if you're not a member. But no matter what, get plugged in where you feel that God wants you to be.
Pray. Jesus wants us to talk to him. For all the guys out there and I'm speaking for the guys, it's mainly to pray. It's cool to pray.
It's okay to pray. Matter of fact, God gave us an instruction manual on how to pray. It's called the Lord's Prayer. Talk to him.
This was a random thought. Have you ever been in a group of people or have you been in the church and maybe a Sunday school or maybe it's just a group of guys that say, what somebody pray for us? You look down. Don't look at me.
But you hear that. You start talking to yourself. You should pray. You should pray.
You should do that. You ever thought that wasn't you talking to yourself? Just random thoughts. Let's not stop talking.
Let's not stop asking the tough questions. And let's learn to have a belief like no other, a conviction level belief that turns into action for the kingdom of God. Amen? Amen.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Amen. Amen.