Wrestling with Faith

How many times have you questioned God about why something is happening to you?  Why you were going through this terrible trial?  Why was He not getting you out of it or changing the circumstances in your favor?  So often we wonder if He’s even paying attention at all or if He just doesn’t care about us and we feel so alone and often confused.  The thoughts occur to us that our faith isn’t good enough or else He would answer our prayers.

 

Personally, I’ve wrestled with my faith a few times.  One time I was so distraught and angry that I told God I was done with Him.  I shook my fist at Him and told myself none of it was real.  He wasn’t real and everything I’ve believed about Him, well that too was all a fabrication.  Things at that time in my life were not making any sense, especially because I had been so faithful to God and I was asking, seeking and knocking as He told us to and yet there was silence….no reply to my petitions.  

As I sat down after clenching my fists at the air and spewing words of disappointment to an empty audience, I collapsed in my chair, dropped my head forward, sighed and became silent.  It was very early in the morning and the only sounds around me were the house creeks.  Then….a still, small voice spoke to my mind.  It sounded like my own inner voice, but it didn’t belong to me.  “Are you finished?” it asked.  Not condemning, but kind of like a parents voice of love and authority.  I took in another sigh and spoke audibly and defeated, “yes.”   Then came the Words….the many I had read for years in my private devotions to the Lord.  They flooded my mind, soul and spirit as though they were living and breathing and pouring new life into my very being.  There was something not natural taking place in that moment of my absolute defeat and despair.  Something supernatural was occurring – God was revealing Himself to me through His Truth.  Like a bubbling brook or a deep spring it just poured upwards into all of me like refreshing waters to a parched ground. 

“Lean not on your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge Me.“  “My ways are not your ways, nor are my thoughts your thoughts, but as the Heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways and my thoughts higher than yours.” And many more that spoke to my life at that time.  He WAS with me, just as He said “I will never leave you or forsake you.”  Yet, I did not understand why He stood so silent when I had believed and needed Him so much.  Not then anyway, but later I did.  Later everything made sense.  Later I received my answers.  They were just around the corner but I was ready to give up and throw it all away because of my own disbelief and impatience.  I thought He should have done things my way and misunderstood that it is always best to wait upon the Lord to do things His way.  But so often we think our way IS His way, but more often than not that is just not the case.

Jesus is the Rock and as we stand on Him
 He will hold us up through the storms of life.
Those are His hands coming out of the rock.
(This is part of a sculpture I made a few years back)

This occurred a few years ago and although I have not wrestled nearly as bad as that time, I have still wrestled and every time I do I am reminded again and again that I am His creation, not Him and although I am adopted into God’s family and am now His child, He IS still the Father, God of ALL creation who is not bound by time or sin and death.  When I slip into a lack of faith I make myself remember Who God is and who I am to Him and boldly and confidently come before His throne and ask Him for strength to endure; to trust, and to wait patiently while His plan works itself out in my life and in the lives of those around me.  Even now I am waiting still as my family has been in a dark, dark storm for several years.  What keeps me going?  His Truth.  I confess it out of my mouth daily.  I may not “feel” it, but I speak it regardless because His Truth is not limited to my emotions.  No His Truth is the rock I stand on to keep me from being tossed into the storms of life.  I’m not saying I don’t get knocked around, wind -blown, wet, cold, lonely, discouraged or even doubt, but because my feet are firmly planted on the Rock of Christ, He won’t let me fall into the torrential sea.  It’s the promise of Who God is that I hold on to and not my own understanding of the situation.  Is this easy? NO!  But Jesus never said it would be easy. 

Too often we blame God for the atrocities in our world.  There is so much darkness and despair, pain and suffering and we wonder how He could just let it happen.  But He doesn’t let it happen.  He gave us free will and lets us choose for ourselves.  Our world is fallen.  That means creation is fallen…all of creation, from the plants, the animals and to all of mankind.  We are born in sin because the world is fallen.  I think we forget that part.  We hear of the miracles of Christ occurring throughout the world in other’s lives and we want that in ours as well.  I too question God and ask Him why there are not more healings in the Church Body to show His power and glory on the earth.  He does not answer me.  But, what I am learning is that I must remember what He HAS done in my life and in the lives of those around me.  We must remember the times He took care of us, healed us, provided for us and even embraced us with His comfort and protection.  Otherwise we become like the Hebrews who were delivered from Egypt and forgot all that God delivered them from.  What they failed to understand was that it was through their wilderness experience God was trying to make them better people.  He was trying to get the Egypt out of their hearts and get their hearts to be more like His own. 

When we forget all that He has done we begin to wrestle with our faith.  We must remember and stand on His Truth, even when nothing makes sense around us.  What we don’t understand in our lives now, one day we will.  Whether in this life time or the next, but until then, to keep hope alive remember the times God revealed His love to you, even if all you have is the salvation you received at the Cross of Calvary.  Shouldn’t that alone be enough?  God loves us….God loves you.  He…loves…you….

This is written for all the “religious” family we have out there in the world

Where does your theology lead you?  How does your dogma invite the lost into the Family of God?  How is it your version of the Bible, or your denominational titles are being a light in the world?  How did you get so far off track from the path you started?  People, “religion” does not save men.  Do not think that your billboards telling passerby’s that you read from the King James Version (not that there is anything wrong with this version, it's just an example I am using because I see it on church billboards so frequently) is going to save a single soul.  Or that your programs will entice the lost when the world sees how God’s people are divided! 

How do you not see that your religion has become an idol around your own necks?!  You spend more time condemning and criticizing other children of God for loving on people as Jesus did because your views on the scriptures are skewed.  There is a void of love in your religion that pushes people away from God rather than drawing them to Him!  

When did Jesus ever take the Word of God and use it as a hammer of condemnation over men’s hearts?!  When did he turn up his nose towards sinners and act disgusted?  Did He enter into the tax collectors house (which also was full of prostitutes) and scream at them that they were going to hell because they were “sinners!”   Did He yell at his disciples and condemn them for their uniqueness or for having their own style of ministering to others?  Where did Jesus say that only the Baptists, or the Lutherans, or the Presbyterians, or the Pentecostals or the charismatics, or the Methodists and so forth had the only true theology?  The Jesus I studied was full of compassion on the lost and loved them with such kindness and respect that they were drawn to Him and recognized their own hunger for the Truth.  They knew somehow that they could receive something from Him they could not get from the religious of their time.  He offered them hope and shared a gospel message that had never been heard before.  Well it was not new but He shared the heart of the Father concerning the Laws of Moses and lived a life that completed and complemented the Truth to help people, not hinder them.  Jesus gave people hope that they could find forgiveness for their sins by living the life of Truth and Love. 

Jesus was also not passive when it came to the Truth.  He did not fear the religious or even the lost but stood on the Word of God while walking in the Love of God.  There are religions who would rather turn the cheek to the gospel so as not to offend man and have allowed “sin” into their congregations, and their teachings are pleasing to itching ears rather than hungry hearts or their doctrines are watered down.  We cannot condemn sinners but we cannot condone sin in God’s sanctuary either.  We are God’s sanctuary on the earth and our own lives must be cleansed before we can attempt to help another who is bound in sin.  We cannot be passive, apathetic hypocrites.  This means we cannot water down the Truth to suit our own desires to be popular with the world!  This is also not the Church as she was meant to be! 

God’s doctrine is sound and just and He is able to protect the integrity of His Word no matter the denomination as long as it is His Truth and not a derivative of another man’s ideas on the Truth.  This is how cults are formed and people are lead into deception.  There is so much dissension in the Body of Believers because of men’s attitudes towards people.  We are NOT to use the Truth to imprison people brothers!!!!  The Truth is to set the captives free!  God is the Truth and God is Love and all those who are in God are also in Love.  Whoever claims to love but hates his brother is deceived and God’s love is not in him! 

My point?  How can the lost in the world see God in the Body when the Body is like a lampstand outside full of dirt and dead bugs and our light is dim at best?!  WE MUST clean our lamps with the Love of God’s Truth and purify our hearts in Christ Jesus so that we can illuminate in these dark times!  It’s God’s Love that transforms the world through the Church, not any version of the Bible, or denomination or theology.  We are saved by grace alone through the blood of Christ in his death and resurrection.  If we can all agree on this and set aside our dogmatic differences and unite under this Truth alone then, and only then can we be the salt of the earth, a lampstand on a hill and vessels of righteousness.  Only then can the world finally see Jesus in us and through us.  God’s love changed us and convicted us of our own sinfulness and it seems we have forgotten what it was like to have been lost. 

Love, not condemnation (for God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but to save it through Him) will reveal God’s mercy and compassion to man.  Love, not criticism will heal the wounds of the lost.  Love with grace and mercy will expand the Kingdom of Heaven.  We must unite brethren if we’re to complete the mission at hand as the Church (The body of believers, aka the Bride of Christ).  We have been adopted into God’s family and we must stop the sibling rivalry and stand together in Christ Jesus as a family. 

Sadly, some of those “religious” will find something wrong with even this plea and condemn me to hell because many are waxed cold in love and are themselves now blinded to the Truth just as the Pharisees were.  The worst part of deception is that the deceived don't realize they are deceived. God help us all and forgive us our absurdities and foolishness of thinking.  Raise up Your People to be a beacon of light in the world; reflections of Your Love and glory to those groping around in the darkness.  Draw them to Your Light Lord that they may be saved!  Break our hearts with what breaks Yours Lord.