16.5 — Faith That Stays

Based on John 16:23-33

The first thing I noticed when I entered the convenience store was the cashier’s hair. One side was red; the other side was black. She greeted me with a Go Dawgs grin and a familiar, “What’ll it be, honey?” I slid her a five-dollar bill and said, “Small bag of ice, please.”

Halfway through returning my two dollars in change, she suddenly stopped.
“How about a lottery ticket, hon?”

I’m a sucker for anyone who calls me honey, so I replied, “Why not?”

As I turned for the door with my two-dollar chance at a twenty-million-dollar jackpot, a man stopped me.
“Mister, I’ll give you a thousand dollars right now for that ticket.”

What would you have done?

Well, that never really happened. But it does expose something true about us.

Early on, most of us learn to prize certainty.
Not because it is always true, but because it is calming. Predictable. Manageable.

Given a guaranteed thousand dollars or a chance at twenty million, many of us will quietly take the thousand, not because it is wiser, but because it spares us the discomfort of not knowing how things will turn out.

Psychologists tell us this is common. Uncertainty unsettles the nervous system. Certainty soothes it. And once you start noticing this instinct, you see it everywhere.

In money.
In relationships.
In work.
And, more quietly, in faith.

Jesus seems to understand this about us. In John 16, he does not scold the disciples for wanting certainty. Instead, he begins gently loosening their grip on it - because certainty is about to fail them. And because something weightier is ready to take its place.

When Answers Stop Working

(John 16:23–24)

“In that day you will ask Me no questions…”

At first, this sounds abrupt, almost dismissive. But that isn’t the posture here. Jesus, like any wise teacher, would never reject their curiosity. He is preparing them for a change - specifically, a change in how knowing works.

Up to this point, whenever something didn’t make sense, the disciples could turn and ask him. Confusion had a place to go. Answers came from outside them, from a voice they could hear and a body they could see.

Doesn’t it feel good to have someone to go to for answers?

Soon, that will no longer be possible.

The Jesus they know will be gone. But access to God is not being withdrawn - it is being internalized.

What once came through Jesus standing beside them will begin to arise from within them. Prayer will slowly change. Less problem-solving. More listening. Less grasping for explanations. More attentiveness to presence.

Jesus links this shift to joy, not the relief of certainty, but the deeper joy that grows out of abiding (15:11). A joy that does not depend on certainty, but on presence.

David said as much in the 23rd Psalm - “I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me” - and these men had recited those words all their lives. Now, they are being asked to live them.

Writers today urge us to “live the questions now.” Jesus seems to be inviting something similar here, not as poetry or philosophy, but as lived faith.

“Faith is not certainty. Faith is staying.”

Asking “In My Name” — As a Friend Would Ask

(John 16:26–27)

Jesus repeats himself: “Ask in my name.”

The repetition matters. We repeat what we know will be tested.

But something subtle, and vital, happens in verse 27. Jesus says, “The Father Himself loves you.” John heard these words in Aramaic and later translated them into Greek. To capture Jesus’ meaning, he chooses not agapē - the wide, initiating love of God for the world - but phileō: the love of friendship.

That word choice matters. (I'm suddenly deflated, because I can't find the words to express just how important this word choice is. The entire Gospel of John balances on this word choice. Not only that, from this day forward, our lives, yours and mine, will be influenced by how we comprehend what Jesus said - and how John translated it.)

This was the second of the one-two punch that Jesus landed on each of these guys. A few minutes earlier, he told the disciples, “I have called you friends”(15:15). That was the first punch, and it landed hard. Let me try to show you what I'm seeing here for the first time.

In the world Jesus inhabited, friendship was not casual or sentimental. It was chosen. In Jewish culture, a friend was someone trusted with knowledge, someone brought into confidence, someone who stayed loyal when pressure came.

Friends shared life.
Friends received disclosure.
Friends stood with one another when certainty disappeared.

With that first sentence, I have called you friends, Jesus promoted them from students following behind him to companions walking beside him, inside the circle, sharing purpose, mission, and risk. (See what I mean? How does that make you feel?)

So when Jesus says the Father phileō the disciples, the meaning deepens. This is not distant approval or abstract affection. It is closeness. Mutual knowing. Shared life.

Everything has changed! They have gone from what they were, disciples, to who they now are: friends of Jesus, friends of the Father.

To ask “in my name,” then, is not to add a phrase to the end of a prayer. It is to ask from within a relationship - to ask as a friend would ask, from shared understanding and shared loyalty.

Prayer becomes less about requesting outcomes and more about participating in a life.

To my grandchildren and their children, not everything meaningful will come with guarantees.

Some of the most faithful steps you will ever take will not feel confident or clear. They will feel quiet. Unfinished. A little unsure.

That does not mean you are doing it wrong.
It may mean you are learning how to stay - how to walk inside the circle.

Why Jesus Teaches to the Edge

(John 16:25)

Jesus admits that much of what he has said has come in figures of speech. He has not explained everything plainly.

This is not because he enjoys mystery. It is because understanding has limits.

There are things we simply cannot grasp until life gives us the experience to hold them. Meaning does not arrive first as an idea; it arrives as something lived. We do not think our way into truth - we grow into it.

None of the disciples could hear of their new status and say, “Okay, I get it.” They would have to live with it, wrestle with it, let it settle into them over time.

Jesus teaches right up to the edge of what they can receive, and then he waits. Some truths cannot be rushed without being flattened. Some clarity arrives only after we have lived with the questions.

Jesus is not withholding.

He is being patient and teaching presence.

When Belief Has Not Yet Learned to Stay

(John 16:29–31)

The disciples feel confident now.
“Now we know,” they say. “Now we believe.”

Jesus responds gently: “Do you now believe?”

Not a rebuke. A recognition.

Belief, as Jesus understands it, is not mental agreement. It is passage. It is something we come through. There are truths we can affirm with our minds long before our lives know how to carry them.

You cannot understand love until you have loved.
You cannot understand grief until something precious is gone.
You cannot understand forgiveness until you have been wounded.

It’s not a failure. It’s simply how we’re made.

We often say, “Seeing is believing.” Jesus seems to be saying something harder and truer: experiencing is believing.

Faith that has not passed through loss has not yet learned how to stay. Certainty must give way to presence.

“Belief that has not passed through loss has not yet learned how to stay.”

To my grandchildren and their children, you cannot rush belief.
You cannot earn it by being right.
And you cannot force it by trying harder.

Faith grows the way love grows, by remaining present long enough for experience to do its work. Do not be afraid of seasons when answers fall silent. Some of the truest things in life are learned without explanation.

Scattering Without Shame

(John 16:32)

Then Jesus says something remarkable. He tells them plainly that they will scatter. Fear will take over. Self-protection will win the day.

What is striking is what he does not do.

He does not shame them.
He does not threaten them.
He does not withdraw friendship.

He tells them this so that when it happens, they will not mistake failure for abandonment. In real friendship, knowing that the relationship does not depend on success or performance builds trust.

Friendship is not continually earned.
It is granted, and then lived into.

Understanding this becomes a form of peace.

Peace Without Escape

(John 16:33)

Jesus ends this section with remarkable honesty:
“In the world you will have trouble.”

No denial. No spiritual bypassing.

And then:
“But take courage; I have overcome the world.”

How does the world conquer us?

Through fear of loss.
Through fear of rejection.
Through pressure to conform.

Friendship - real friendship - always carries risk. To love as a true friend (phileō) is to stay, to expose oneself to loss.

Jesus overcomes the world not by avoiding trouble, but by refusing to abandon presence. The peace he offers is not comfort or safety. It is coherence, a life that does not fracture under pressure.

Faith That Stays

So what is faith, finally?

Not certainty.
Not control.
Not having the right answers.

Faith is presence.
Faith is friendship.
Faith is staying.

Staying when questions stop working.
Staying when belief feels thin.
Staying when fear suggests retreat.

““To love as a true friend (phileō) is to stay — even when certainty disappears.”

I sometimes think back to that imagined moment at the convenience store: the lottery ticket in my hand, the offer of a guaranteed thousand dollars on the table. It’s easy to know what certainty would choose. What’s harder to know is whether certainty might cost us something we can’t yet name.

Faith, I’m learning, isn’t about winning or losing. It’s about what we’re willing to stay with when the outcome isn’t clear.

Faith is not something we grasp.
It is something we sit with -  long enough for it to begin holding us.

And that, it seems, is enough.