FAINTING CHRISTIANS
By Pastor Jim May
In the hills of Tennessee there is a breed of goats that is called the “Fainting Goat”. They are also known as “Nervous Goats”, “Stiff-leg goats”, “Wooden-leg goats”, and “Tennessee Scare goats”. No one knows for certain where they originated from but the first goats of this type were owned by a man who was thought to have come from Nova Scotia.
It seems that they have developed a genetic disorder known as Myotonia that causes them to freeze up and faint very easily. The condition isn’t harmful to them and only lasts a few seconds and then they are able to get up and go on. Anything can make them faint. They even faint when they get excited about being fed.
I have seen some videos on the Internet of these goats in action and it’s hilarious to watch them. One owner just walked up into the middle of six or seven of them and suddenly waved his arms over them. Every one of the goats just fainted dead on the spot and fell over on the ground with their legs stiffed out. In another sequence the farmer was trying to herd the goats into a pen. Most of them were all together and moving slowly but one was separated from the rest. As the separated goat began to run to join the herd, his legs became still as a board and he fell head over heels while he was running.
As I watched those goats I began to think of a message that I had heard several years ago and I thought about how those “fainting goats” reminded me of how a lot of people are, especially those in the church.
One of the first recorded “fainting goats” in scripture can be found in Genesis chapter 25.
Genesis 25:29-33, "And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint: And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom. And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob."
There was Esau, the hard working farmer. There is no doubt that Esau was one hard-working man who loved his family and was very responsible.
How many of you have ever tried your hand at farming, or perhaps at just raising a garden? Let me tell you that it’s hard work. When you think about farming in the days before tractors and steel plows and all the machinery and tools at our disposal now, it’s hard to imagine just how tough it must have been to be a farmer in ancient times.
Who can blame Esau for being “faint” when he came in from a hard day in the fields? It was only natural for him to be famished and thirsty. He was learning what God meant when He told Adam that mankind would earn his living by the sweat of his brow.
The point is that too many people are like Esau in that when they are at their weakest and they have a great need, or when they are suffering, instead of waiting upon the Lord in prayer, they just faint away and fall out!
I have tried on a number of occasions to reach out to these “fainting Christians” who have fallen out of the church. They were running well! They were doing their best to serve the Lord but then they became weary. They were overcome with spiritual weakness and they just keeled over and fainted.
You just can’t do anything for them for a while. They have a sort of “spiritual myotonia” that gives them a stiff neck. The condition blinds them from the devil is doing for a little while, causes them to have a deaf ear to anything that the Lord is trying to say to them, and makes them hard to reach. For a time they are frozen in their tracks as though they just can’t seem to make up their minds whether to get back into serving the Lord or not.
Thank the Lord, most of the time, that stiff-necked condition only lasts for a little while and they are soon back in church worshipping God. But there are many instances where they continue on in that stiff-necked condition and never turn back.
I think it would be good right here to stop and remember what Isaiah said in Isaiah 40:28-31, "Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint."
Oh if we could just learn to wait upon the Lord in times of weakness, in times of illness, in times of adversity, in times of discouragement, in times of distress – if we could just learn to wait upon the Lord all the time – there would be a whole lot less fainting goats in the church!
There seems to be a whole lot of fainting Christians in the church though. Just like the fainting goats, they will fall out and keel over at the slightest unexpected and out of the ordinary turn of circumstances in their lives.
I’ve seen some who faint when they get sick. Instead of doing what the scripture says and calling upon the elders of the church and having the church to pray for them, they just keel over and faint and quit coming to church altogether!
I’ve heard every reason for not coming to church when we feel bad. “One of the ones used most often is, “I don’t want to give what I have to anyone else.” Now that’s a reasonable sounding excuse isn’t it? It almost makes you glad they didn’t come and makes them sound so considerate of others. But lets look at it from God’s point of view.
God sees them as a “fainting goat Christian” because first of all, if we really trust God and believe in Him, we should know that He is the Great Physician and able to heal all our sickness and cure all our diseases. Instead of fainting and worrying about giving somebody else something or catching something from them, we should be trusting God for healing and protection for those who we are around.
Now I know that there are times when we just can’t go any more. But I’ve seen people use even the slightest headache, or slightest stomachache, or the slightest cold let those things cause them to “faint and fall out”.
There are other Christians who faint and fall out of the church the first time the Pastor preaches against a sin that they are guilty of. They won’t come back because that preacher is just too hard. I wish he would preach on the Love of God and give us a positive message every once in a while instead of constantly putting us under condemnation and conviction.
I am going to preach you a positive message right now. I’m positive that if we stay on our knees before God and wait upon the Lord, that there won’t be any fainting goat Christians. I’m positive that if we serve the Lord with all our heart and live a sanctified, holy, and separated life unto the Lord, and allow Jesus to be the Lord of our lives that we will make Heaven our home. There couldn’t be a more positive message than one that teaches us how to get to Heaven!
I’m also positive that if we don’t learn to wait upon the Lord, and we don’t serve the Lord, and we don’t live the life that the Bible teaches, that we positively, absolutely, definitely will not make Heaven our home. If the truth makes one of the fainting goats in the church feel bad and they fall out and faint because of it, I can’t help that. The trouble isn’t with the message, or the messenger; the trouble is with the fainting goat that won’t hear the truth and falls out instead.
Some fainting goats Christians will fall out if there finances go south for a while. Some will faint if their car breaks down. Some will faint if their favorite team loses a game. Some will faint if their children are sick. Some will faint if the devil says “Boo” to them. Some will faint if the world just waves a hand at them in some threatening manner! The church is full of “fainting goats”! We fall out, faint and keel over at the slightest move of the devil!
Proverbs 24:10 says, "If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small."
There’s the reason that so many church people faint and fall out of the church! There strength is small. Why is their strength small?
They haven’t eaten enough of the right kinds of “spiritual food”. They are surviving on the junk food of Christianity.
You can get people to a concert! You can get them to a dinner! You can get them to church when there’s something exciting going on! You can get them to read the “Left Behind” series of novels. You can them to read books by popular authors. You can get them to attend family and marriage encounters. You can get them to all sorts of things that are easy to swallow and taste good going down. But you can’t them to take in any real spiritual food.
Try to teach them the real Word of God and they won’t swallow it. Try to teach them about living righteous and holy before God and they will just “faint” right then and there. Try to preach repentance for sin, and they will just stiffen up and faint right on the spot. Try to get them to read the Bible, the only inspired, infallible, Word of God, and they will faint very quickly and quit reading. They can read novels, watch TV and read magazines for hours on end, but they can’t read 10 minutes in God’s Word.
We have to give them the potato chips and coke of the gospel but we can’t give them any real meat because their spirit just can’t handle it and they will faint!
We are raising up a bunch of overfed, over weight, under nourished fainting goat Christians who have developed a spiritual myotonia that makes them stiffen up and fall out when anything that too strong for them spiritually is fed to them.
The strength of a fainting goat Christian is small because they just don’t exercise those spiritual muscles. It’s too easy to be a bench warmer and a spiritual couch potato. It takes effort to exercise and develop a strong faith and a close walk with God!
Luke 18:1, "And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint…"
Galatians 6:9, "And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not."
I thank the Lord that a lot of these “fainting goat” Christians will finally learn to break free from the cycle of fainting on God and they will become committed, sold out and on fire for God!
-They are frightened by the devil as he tries to stop them from having the victory in Jesus that he knows they can have and they just fall out and faint for while – but by the grace of God, they rise again and walk on with Jesus!
-They faint and fall out of the church for a while because somebody says something to them that they didn’t like – but by the mercy of God, he lifts them up one more time.
-They faint and fall out of the church because the preacher just didn’t shake their hand – but God brings them home again and relaxes that old stiff neck.
-They faint and fall out because the color of the carpet is wrong, or the wrong song was sung, or the wrong style of music was played, or the Sunday School teacher made a mistake, or the trash cans weren’t emptied, or they were asked to do something they didn’t want to do, or they didn’t get to do something they wanted to do.
-Somebody made an unexpected gesture and “over they went”, fainting dead out on God!
-Something made a noise that frightened or surprised them and “out they went”, fainting dead away from the House of God.
-A preacher waved his hand over them, and seemed to be preaching right at them, and “down they went”, not to an altar in repentance, but to the local daiquiri shop to cry in their “beer” for a while at being hurt by that meddling preacher.
-One little child gets out of step and makes a little too much commotion in the church and “out the door they go” fainting dead away. Somebody needs to control their kids!
How many fainting goats have you seen in the church? I seem them all the time. All I can say is that I thank God that their “fainting spell” only lasts for a little while. For most of them, their fainting is only temporary. They soon get over it and come back.
They walk a little stiff at first, putting up a protective shield, and putting on a smile while they try to learn to walk with Jesus again. But they are soon back into the groove again and serving the Lord.
But I do get concerning every time I see a “fainting goat Christian” fall out with God and the church, because there is not always a guarantee that they will rise again.
Sooner or later, perhaps after many years of fainting and rising time and again, those fainting goats will faint and never rise again.
I’m afraid for fainting Christian who don’t have the strength to stand or the will to continue on. I’m afraid that they are going to faint one time too many and never rise again; never come back to the House of God; and never make Heaven their home.
Where do we find those who faint and never rise again? Let me show you their destiny.
Isaiah 13:6-8, "Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man’s heart shall melt: And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames."
Jesus is coming soon! It won’t be long until he comes for his sheep, the true church, and takes us home to be with Him.
Those fainting Christians who have not risen again will not go in the rapture. They are going to really be Left Behind, never to rise again; never to know the joy of the Lord anymore; never to hear another positive message preached again; and never to know the close relationship with Jesus that they could have had.
Isaiah said, “all hands be faint and every man’s heart shall melt”! Where are those who are fainting? Where are those whose heart melted at every wind of adversity? Where are those who lived in defeat because they were afraid of the battle?
Isaiah said that their pain and sorrow would ever increase and never cease. They will be amazed at where they find themselves. How did it come to this? How did I wind up in this place? How did I ever let this really happen?
Where are they? They are in a place of flames! When they look upon one another, in agony, suffering and pain, and they see the effect of the flames upon one another, they will wonder how this could have happened to them!
I know that this phrase “their faces shall be as flames” isn’t really speaking of the flames of Hell in this specific verse. He is talking about the paleness and distress in the faces of Israel after they are suddenly defeated by the Babylonians.
But it also give us a disturbing picture of what fainting goat Christians will face in the end if we don’t learn to quit fainting every time the wind blows against us.
In closing, let me just ask you a simple question – Are you a “fainting goat”? Do you allow the devil to make you faint with every move he makes against you? Do you faint and fall out of the church every time things are just right to suit you? Do you faint at the slightest trouble that comes against you?
It’s time to stop fainting and start waiting on the Lord in prayer. It’s time to stand strong in the faith and trust of your Heavenly Father. It’s time to “wait upon the Lord”!
Those who truly sell out to God and those who learn to exercise their spiritual muscles through prayer, fasting and studying the Bible and being faithful to the call of God upon their lives will stand when the times get rough.
They will have learned to trust upon the Lord and lean upon His Word. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk with the Lord through every wind of adversity and they will not be a “fainting goat”.
Jesus isn’t coming after a church that is filled with “fainting goats”. He is coming after a bride that is strong, faithful, pure and holy. Let’s all be a part of that Bride of Christ!
