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….