Faith

Faith is hard because it is so easy.  What are the steps we want to ask?   Have faith and believe.

No really?  What must be done?   Everything has already been done is the answer.

In many ways the difficulty of faith is we want life on our own terms.  We want to create the solutions, to solve the problems, and to be in charge.

Jesus comes and simply asks that we believe that he is in charge and already has solved the problems. 

Speaking the Truth

The task of a servant of God is to speak the truth. Having love and compassion when speaking the truth is important, but we must remember the truth is often unpopular.

Living out our faith and speaking the truth in love is not always easy. We are not divisive when we speak truth in love in the church.

The divisive theologian wishes to keep the peace at all times. To steer away from any conflict at all costs. Often the most divisive people in the church are mistaken as peacemakers.

A true Christian peacemaker cares for the truth. To seek peace at all times regardless of truth is not Christian.

Living Out Our Faith

As Christians we are called to live out our faith. It is easy to become overly interested what living our our faith entail. It as as if living our our faith is a complicated formula we must figure out before we begin to live out our faith.

The reality is that if we are seeking to love God we often are best suited by simply acting on opportunities which exist around us. It is not that thinking about living out of faith is of no use. Thinking about living out our faith is often of use, but often we spend so much time thinking about living out our faith that we fail to act.

If we truly seek to live out our faith we should not hesitate to grasp the opportunities which present themselves around us. Questions of if the opportunities are the best fit for us are often of little use.

God uses those of willing hearts. It is ultimately not us, but God who brings success to us as we work out our faith in the world.

Strategy Is Not Bad for Faith and Life

After taking a quiz to find our strengths, one person scored well on strategy as a strength, and she seemed worried and sad about it. She said, "Don't worry, everyone. I'm not scheming against you!" Her view of strategy seemed only that of watching a show like Survivor. The people on the show view most relationships as only valuable in so much as they help the person get ahead, and it's full of strategy—thinking through various possibilities of who to side with to try to win money at the end. Games of strategy don't take into account the other person's success in the game. It's about winning! (But there is fun in doing an activity with a person you like, no matter if you win or loose—as long as the person isn't a poor looser or too much of gloater.)

Strategy is not bad for relationships at all. The definition of strategy is simply a plan or series of steps that are known or predicted to get to a goal or end result. Strategy can be at the root of wisdom if a good heart, which has a love for others and for God, is doing the strategizing.

For instance, you could have a strategy to spend more time with your kids or your spouse. That can take some planning. Possibly aiming to try to think about work less at home, or thinking of an activity that a person likes and scheduling in time to do them, or some type of meditation that helps clear your mind and focus more on what matters more.

Many people have and promote their strategies of reading and praying daily. They wake up super early and use that first hour for that. Or they have a set time at another time, or right before they go to bed.

When a person feels sad about having strengths of strategy, that is a little sad to me that they are missing out on acknowledging and using a good gift. God created our brains to do amazing things sometimes, and being able to think through different scenarios and possibilities and find the best way to proceed is a beautiful gift that we can enjoy using.

Reality

When wondering how things will be any better or clearer, aiming to see reality clearly may be helpful because sin (especially pride) often hides reality. For example, in the Garden of Eden, sin was believing a lie about God—that instead of his command being there to protect humans, the lie was that he was hiding something wonderful from them.

Often the reality is we often have very little control over the state of success and relationships. Relationships don't depend entirely on us. If we have a good relationship, we allow the other person in the friendship to do as they please. And companies and the results of our work sometimes largely depends on a whole team of people and even on customers, who are people we may never meet or know.

But acknowledging this reality helps us to realize the all-importance of faith in life. We need to rely again on faith. Faith that God is good. That no matter what happens in the company or job or in a relationship, he will be there. And the end of our story as a Christian is the most beautiful story. And even while we're here, the ability to glorify him is ever present.

It's easy to believe that everything depends on us and become overwhelmed or discouraged due to that because we're starting to feel too tired or doubt our ability to accomplish what we have in mind. We may wonder what we can do, but the question should be more "What is God doing?" and the answer is that he is doing everything for our good, and he will protect his children.

What God asks of us is to have faith. And the situation in our life is the situation in our life because he allowed it. Pride either tells us that we don't need God and we can fix it all on our own, or pride may tell us that we are not good enough or God doesn't see us because we are too small or insignificant (pride is displayed in pitying oneself, because pride is an intense focus on one's self).

The hardest part of all of this is to be humble enough to know that all humans don't see reality correctly. We are imaginative people inclined to be a bit too prideful (unrealistic of our abilities and sometimes not even self aware of weaknesses). Our sinful nature hates to think we have not much control over things. We definitely should do all we can and have responsibility but we need to let go of what is not ours to control.

Realizing our limitations is helpful because it takes the focus off the person who has the limitations (us) and puts it on the person who has absolutely no limitations (God) for how things will be better.

We also need to have a good knowledge of God. God is not like Santa Clause, where he only steps in when we are good. He is a God of forgiveness and hope. So that's why we can have faith. We don't have to rely on our works or abilities. We rely on him. It's our love and appreciation for him that helps motivate us to do good works.

Living Like we Judge Jesus

Often we can be guilty of living like we judge Jesus. We are too concerned with who we associate with. We are too concerned with righteousness to follow the will of God.

The reality it is how we live and why we live the way we live. We need to have more concern with reaching out into the world.

We often overthink living out our faith. We are called to live a life of love.

If we have all things, but lack love we have nothing. Love is an active power. We cannot live out love if we do not interact with others seeking their good.

True Christian love is difficult. We will find that at times we may be judged for being too willing to associate with the wrong crowd.

Jesus too was accused of associating with the wrong crowd. We often cannot please everyone in life.

We must always seek to live out our faith before God and realize that often others will not understand. If we are well respected by all people we have probably failed to fully live out our faith.

An Honest Perspective

Often it is easy when we look at biblical characters to find them unimpressive. We have the tendency to judge their failures rather harshly.

The reason is we often fail to understand the magnitude of our own issues. We frequently fail to find courage to do the right thing when the cost is relatively low and yet somehow judge those who slipped in moments of possible life or death.

It is our sinful nature to judge ourselves better than we are. The fall makes self judgement difficult.

We give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, but not others. When we come to the bible we must always remember when we see the failures of others that these are the tendencies within us.

And many of the biblical characters whose failures are described are people of greater faith and greater courage than we have. It is easy to fail to learn because we think of our self better than we ought.

God's grace is always sufficient.

Only Christ Stands (poem)

Often we feel strong
Often we feel faithful
Only by Faith we are strong
Only through Faith we are faithful
Only Christ matters
And our relation to Him
In Christ we are strong
Following Christ we are faithful
All other paths
Will fail
Only Christ stands
And we stand
In Christ

God's Consistent Nearness to the Christian

Those who have faith in Christ are adopted into his family for eternity, and they can now have a relationship with God. Prayer is something we can do at any time, and God listens because Jesus has paid the price to restore that relationship.

 So God is always present to listen to our prayers. God is always loving us. God is sovereign over everything. In so many ways God is near to us. Phrases like "the presence of God" meaning God only being present at certain times, such as only in prayer or only when we are doing something truly noble, may be harmful. The people who listen to or say these things may start to think or feel that they must meet a quota of good deeds to feel like God loves them or is present in their circumstances.

When we are not praying or doing very noble things, it's possible we may feel it harder to love God as much or see his beauty quit as clear at that moment. But that is about us, and not God being any farther away from us. As humans, we're sometimes limited on how many things we can focus on in one given moment.

 We should rejoice in what Christ has allowed for us and for how we are always loved. We shouldn't try to feel like we'll gain motivation to do good deeds if we say good deeds will get us into some new state with or closer to God. We are already as close as we can be. We can grow in more knowledge, and therefore that may help us grow in love for God (more things to know to marvel at or praise him for)--but that is about us moving closer to him, not him moving closer to us.

 Motivation to do good deeds can happen when we really believe that God is such a gracious God. Christ has saved us and anyone who is willing to come to him in faith. A natural response to being saved is to be grateful, and our appreciation and love for the person who saved us causes us to want to serve or honor that great person.

The Gospel (poem)

The gospel is where Faith starts.
The gospel is how Faith continues.
We never get past Faith.
It is through faith we learn to follow God.
Only at the last day,
when we see God face to face,
only then,
will Faith end.

Appearance

Often in life it is easy to be discouraged because others have their lives together. The reality is that we as people almost always present the best perspective of ourselves but know the realities of our life that others do not.

You see each person presents the best front for themselves and hides what is less pleasant. This is why often our initial impression of others can be quite off.

We are often discouraged because others have their lives together and we do not. You see since we often only see the best side of others we do not know the reality of things.

Life is difficult and comparison is not helpful. You see God has not placed the same challenges in each person's life. We all face unique things in life.

We should live ideally day by day resting in God's grace. Our faithfulness to God is all that matters. It does not matter how our works or life or faith compares to others. It is often not even possible for us to know.

The only question is what God would have us do today out of love for him. How will we live out the love of God in the world today.

Personality Is Not Faith or Orthodoxy

Among churches which are concerned with upholding a creed at times you will find the issue that the churches cannot distinguish between the creed and the culture of the church. It is interesting that in certain creedal churches those who have been raised in the church, who share in the personality of the church because they have been raised in the culture, are given a nearly complete pass in regards to orthodoxy.

It is interesting that in creedal churches some of the most worrisome expressions of faith come from those who have never been outside of that denomination. It is not that the denomination has failed in teaching the creed but rather the denomination is blind to the fact that those who have been raised in the denomination are at clear odds with the creed.

These people may be promoted to eldership without the bat of an eye even though they are at odds with the creed. Often it is not the easiest to see but no one ever questions them even when they say error because they have never not been in the church and feel like the other in the church.

And here is the great error. True religion is not something one is born into. True religion is not a shared culture of how we act on the surface. It is of course of great benefit to be born into a believing community and raised in a Christian way. But Christianity is not simply a lack of a rejection of what one has been taught by one's Christian family.

Christianity is a religion which must become personal and take root. It is not as if we are Christian simply by not leaving the church we grew up in and not rejecting its teaching. You see some people grow up in a church and remain and yet seem to have no active element to their faith.

They may remain because of community or all the good business networking connections they have gained. Or maybe other members of the church are clients. But faith is always active. Faith is a new beginning each person takes before God. It is necessarily more than a lack of a rejection of what one has been taught.

Our Hearts are Restless

Augustine wrote that "our hearts are restless until they find faith in God." It is a great truth. It is easy to overhear many conversations of people who had a bad week trying to fill the hole in their lives with shopping, parties, and activities.

Many good things are used as medication to avoid dealing with our real issues. It is difficult to face the void that often exists in our relationship with God. It is often far easier to try to forget our problems in the area of faith than to deal with them.

Of course putting off issues of faith, while easy, is ineffective. Since man is made for relationship with God his need to have reconciliation with God is a fundamental need.

We often do not see the fundamentalness of this need, but it is none the less fundamental. The pushing off of the issue never really helps since it reemerges nearly constantly because of its priority.

A right relationship with God is ultimately very fundamental to human health and happiness. Often we see religion as an unhappy thing. It is of course because we often presuppose what true happiness is.

We imagine happiness is something which it is not. We exclude the idea where true happiness can be found before we even consider the possibility that true happiness may be found in God.

I suppose you will find many atheists who say that faith in God made them miserable and then they grew and rejected God. I cannot in every case say why they feel as they do, but often you see that it is not faith in God that made them miserable but that they disliked what God had asked of them.

God asked for sacrifices in their lives that were "unacceptable" and that "no good God would ask." Since God had demands then God was unjust they say. The reality which this shows is how little they valued God.

Anyone who has been happily married for a time will know that certain sacrifices are always made in a true relationship. A relationship of value is worth the inconveniences that naturally come with it. If we despise the inconveniences faith in God brings than it simply shows that we do not understand the true value of our relationship with God.

Holiness is Active

Today it often seems that all talk of holiness centers around avoiding this or that. Holiness has become not doing this or that bad thing.

Many people are criticized for what they have done, but no one is ever criticized for doing nothing. The reality is that we need to move past looking at what we are doing primarily and look more at what we are not doing.

The great reality is that many people in the church live a completely "holy" life in terms of avoiding sin, but also lead a life completely devoid of any positive action. You see what they lack is any expression of love toward the world.

If we have everything and lack love then our faith is futile. You see faith requires an active outward influence. A Christian's love must be expressed to live out faith.

We cannot be holy if we do not take positive concrete steps to live out our faith in the world. These steps need not be large, but if we wish to follow God it is of absolute importance to ask what we are doing in the world rather than what we have avoided doing.

Seasons of Change

As much as we may love routine or how things are in our life or plans now, change seems to always sneak into our lives. People move, new technologies change the way tasks are done, jobs responsibilities or opportunities change, and many other things.

There are times in life when there is very little change, and other times when it seems like change happens way more than we want for months on end.

It's at times of unexpected change that faith is of great help to us. We often don't know why things are changing, but we know that God has a good plan for us. We know that he will give us the strength and will love us still at the times when we feel weak.

Whether it's a time of change in your life or not, now is a good time to soak in the meaning of the Bible, of what Christ's work means and how God has a good plan for his children and will be with them. That will help prepare for times of transition but also helps in times of transitions.

Often transition takes up large amounts of time and thought, and having already really learned about God and our relation to him can be in the back of our mind or there in quick moments in between tasks, and is a comfort to us.

The more we study and truly learn God's Word, the more we'll feel a confidence that God will always love us and allow things to happen for our overall good.

This reminds me that God never changes. However much we feel life around us is shifting and changing, we know that God is still the same God he was yesterday. And if we truly know God, we know that is a great thing.

Nothing New Under the Sun

Our culture today realizes that each age brings its own set of presuppositions and has its own errors. One irony of our age of course is how we see ourselves as so uniquely different from other times.

The reality is there is nothing new under the sun as scripture teaches. Relativism is not new and contextual thinking is not new. We are only different from other ages by our degree of struggle with certain issues.

We are worse on some issues than other ages and better on others. The human condition is constant. All men are born in sin and born into cultures which promote errors.

Ultimately history repeats itself because the most essential element of man. His fallen nature and estrangement and enmity with God is always unchanged.

The expression of depravity in each age shifts a bit this way or that but it is always the same. The age we are in today is never as unique as we think.

Technology and many societal structures have changed, but each man is born with the same dark heart. The central question that each man should desire to answer in each age is how to solve his enmity to God.

The answer in every age is faith in Jesus. Before Jesus' incarnation on earth it was a looking forward and trusting in the promises of God in the future. The trust was in the promise of God that he would send a Messiah. Now we look back to the Messiah.

Many people scoff that the faith is the same. The expected Messiah and the Messiah who came seem somewhat different from what much of Israel was expecting. Of course the reality is that it is the faith which is credited as righteousness.

We always see through a glass dimly. Scripture states this plainly and the fogginess with which those of faith at times see is no argument against the nature of faith.

Faith (Poem)

Faith.
Trusting in God.
Whatever comes our way.
Finding joy in fellowship with God.
Trusting always that God is for us always.
Looking to the eternal whatever today brings.
Or does not bring.

Understanding What We Believe

Post by
Michelle Dowell, Co-Contributor

To truly be able to lead and live well, it's important to truly understand what you believe. A lot of people say that they are a Christian and assume that means they know what they believe, but may not live or think much differently than the culture around them that is not Christian these days. We live in a postmodern culture, where this is acceptable to the culture: it's viewed as good to not strongly believe anything because postmodernism is more okay and fine with everyone's beliefs.

If someone were to ask you why you're a Christian, do you know what you'd say? If they asked you what is different abut your religion compared to other religions, would you be able to answer? Does your religion cause you to live differently than people of different religions or those who don't have a religion?

A major difference in the Christian religion compared to others is that it's not our works that get us to Heaven. It's Christ's perfection and faith that does.

Some people think that feeling/emotion is most important in religion and that thinking hinders religion. For instance, feeling that God is for them in that moment, or they made God happy is what they aim for. They feel like that's all they need. But not working to truly understand their beliefs of God and what God wants--that may cause them to feel things to be true that are not true: A person may feel happy and in some sense that makes them feel like God is happy with what they're doing--but really they could be happy in that moment because the sun is shining that day or they had a great meal the day before.

The way for them to truly know that God is happy or accepting of a choice is to truly understand the Bible as much as they can. To think about it. Some people may live in the thought that they can never please God because they feel crappy and nothing seems to go as right as they envisioned it, but really understanding God's true acceptance of us would help them feel like God is still okay with them. Our feelings don't always match the reality of the situation. We are fallen and there are so many factors to what makes us feel certain ways (the weather, how much we eat or sleep, what's going on in the world and in our lives).

The Image of God

We exist in life bearing the image of God.  Often it is easy to feel that this person is important in this way or that. It is true that in worldly things some people are more important than others.

But in spiritual things we are all image bearers of God.  It is tempting often in spiritual things to feel there are certain people which have more to offer to the church.  I suppose this is true in some respect as some people are more faithful to living the Christian life based on biblical truth.

But often in practicality the church misses who is important in the church.  I have met many figures in the church who are supposedly of great importance.  I have found some of them to be very heavenly minded and wise, and I have found some to be more earthly minded than many elderly Christians I can find in any local church.

The reality is that people often judge by appearance.  You will find that appearance is often wrong in spiritual things.  You cannot judge a person's faith in a few moments.  You may be able to judge a person's eloquence in speech and various natural abilities very quickly, but it is very rare to find people who can discern others' spiritually very quickly.

Always we should attempt to view all people as equally important to the plans of God.  The more we prioritize this or that person as important or less important to the plans of God, the less we understand the nature of God and his work in the world.

Suffering and Faith

At times in life we suffer because we do not trust God.  This or that happens to us and we worry about the future.  It can be in a sense that our worry in these times if we look back was the primary suffering we faced.

It is easy for us not to trust God's goodness toward us.  Jesus in his preaching tells his followers not to worry about the future because each day has enough troubles of its own.

It is not uncommon for our lack of faith to cause us suffering as at many times we suffer simply because of worry.  It is not that the hardship is brought on by our lack of faith, but rather our lack of faith makes the hardship ten times harder than it really is.

God wishes us to be happy and that is why Jesus had many things to say about worry.  It is easy to feel that God is not for us, but you see everywhere that God is for us.

God wishes for us to enter the kingdom.  He reaches out to us to join him for eternity.  He does not want us to worry in the present day.  He wishes to bring him our troubles in prayer.

If God is for us who can be against us.  God is for us at all times.  He loves us even when we find ourselves difficult to love.