Faith and Life
Recently I have been thinking a lot about the future and where God wants me. This is in a lot of ways natural because I will be graduating in 82 days according to the countdown calander. It is odd to realize in 82 days I don't know what I will be doing. This is where faith comes in.As I have been thinking about this, we had a couple come in to speak in chapel last week. Dale and Jonalyn Fincher have started an organization with a motto of "Sturdy answers, better souls". You can find their website here (he has written a wonderful article on why the Movie "The Lion the Witch and the Waredrobe" was so dissappointing... I mentioned in a conversation with him how I didn't like the movie as well as the book and he told me to read the article and I loved it :)) Anyway as a friend and I were talking to Dale one evening, he talked about the concept of faith and how it has gotten so twisted in Christian minds. It has become a "feeling" that the Holy Spirit gives us. He argued that was a complete twisting of scripture. The concept of "a leap of faith" or "childlike faith" were concepts that went against the word of God.
Now I am going to make a huge jump over to a Bible project I just had... and if anyone is reading it I will put it all together in the end (I think). For my Bible elective I am taking a class where we are studying the letters of the Bible (the epistles). In that class we had a group project where we were supposed to explain one of these books. My group chose 2 Corinthians and I was assigned the job of analyzing about 5 verses and explaining the theology of those verses. The verses I chose to do was 2 Cor. 4: 16 - 5:5. In this passage Paul argues that even though they are experiencing suffering they have hope. What I found interesting in this passage was that this hope or faith was not a feeling. It was in spite of what he was feeling. Instead it rested on the fact that Christ said in John that he was going to build a heavenly home for us and that the Holy Spirit was being sent to guarentee our heavenly home. As I was studying the issue of faith and hope based on this letter I went over to Hebrews 11:1 where we see a definition of faith. As we read the chapter we recognize that all these examples of faith never acted on a feeling. Instead, they believed the promises of God and grasped them in their life.
As I was talking with Dale all this came to mind and it began to make sense a little more. Faith is not a leap. Faith is not something that just occurs. Faith is knowing and trusting the promises of God and living life in light of those promises even when everything around you is telling you otherwise (just as Paul did as he wrote 2 Corinthians). So even when I feel as though I am lost and no one knows where I should go, the promises of God tell me that he will direct my paths, that he will make my paths straight, that he has a plan. Even though in 82 days I will have a college diploma and not know what I am going to do with it, God knows, and it is my responsibility to grasp those promises and live in faithfulness to him in the meantime. And even on those days that I don't know if I can trust God and decide I know what is best, I can look back at the people of faith mentioned in Hebrews 11 and see that although they showed great faith they also stumbled, and yet God didn't give up on them.
If anyone wants a good laugh check out Charity Blackwood's blog. The post I am talking about is the Terrible, Horrible, No good, Very bad day. If you have never read that book you may not enjoy it as much as I did. But don't despair, go to the local library I am sure they have the book. It will take you five minutes to read and you will be a much better person for having read it. Then you can go to Charity's post and enjoy the humor in it.
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