Faith
What is faith? This is a question that has troubled me for several weeks, to the point I felt compelled to write about it. It is an age old adage to tell someone to “just have faith” and everything will be ok. This week as I pondered my question I read a response to one of my meditations that further confused where I thought I was going. This is what the person wrote, “You know, I don't think I have faith. Faith to me is expecting something good may happen to me and then attributing the good result to God. God to me is real. I don't have to have faith that he is real. He is. And I don't need him to do nice things for me. Life designed by God is what it is. The ups and downs and all are just what it is. God is there through it all.”
I thought this was a beautiful response and even though it starts out by saying I don’t think I have faith, it is obvious that the person that wrote this has much more faith than I do. God is real, God is life, God is love, and yes life designed by God is what it is. After reading this I changed the focus of my question to this; how do we keep our faith active?
Faith is like a muscle that needs to be exercised as to avoid atrophy. Just as certain habits such as smoking and over eating weaken our heart certain sinful habits weaken our faith. Sometimes we are not aware at a conscious level of our sinful behavior so at those times awareness comes to us through dreams. No matter how wild or crazy a dream may seem usually at some level it is there to correct us, affirm us, or warn us of something in our lives. Remember many times in the bible God guides his people through dreams and I believe even today we are still guided through this wonderful and misunderstood channel of communication that without faith is often overlooked.
What is faith? How do we keep faith active? How do we understand dreams? The very questions themselves are so deep and powerful that without faith in believing that God is real I am not sure we can ever make sense of life itself. We do have faith, oh yes we do. We know at our weakest moments when the walls of the world come crashing down and all seems lost or hopeless the only thing that picks us up is the hope (faith) and belief (faith) that tomorrow will be a better day.
Our sinful nature weakens our faith and reduces us to something less than what we aspire to be. We often remark that our sins are our demons that we are not willing to fight. Demons exist in our life as anything that DEMEANS us or takes us away from the trust and love of God. Nurture the faith, listen to your dreams, stay close in the word and those demons will have no power. In words written by Jim Willig “faith can be our shield as well, it is not a dream, it’s the truth. The Gospel truth.
I thought this was a beautiful response and even though it starts out by saying I don’t think I have faith, it is obvious that the person that wrote this has much more faith than I do. God is real, God is life, God is love, and yes life designed by God is what it is. After reading this I changed the focus of my question to this; how do we keep our faith active?
Faith is like a muscle that needs to be exercised as to avoid atrophy. Just as certain habits such as smoking and over eating weaken our heart certain sinful habits weaken our faith. Sometimes we are not aware at a conscious level of our sinful behavior so at those times awareness comes to us through dreams. No matter how wild or crazy a dream may seem usually at some level it is there to correct us, affirm us, or warn us of something in our lives. Remember many times in the bible God guides his people through dreams and I believe even today we are still guided through this wonderful and misunderstood channel of communication that without faith is often overlooked.
What is faith? How do we keep faith active? How do we understand dreams? The very questions themselves are so deep and powerful that without faith in believing that God is real I am not sure we can ever make sense of life itself. We do have faith, oh yes we do. We know at our weakest moments when the walls of the world come crashing down and all seems lost or hopeless the only thing that picks us up is the hope (faith) and belief (faith) that tomorrow will be a better day.
Our sinful nature weakens our faith and reduces us to something less than what we aspire to be. We often remark that our sins are our demons that we are not willing to fight. Demons exist in our life as anything that DEMEANS us or takes us away from the trust and love of God. Nurture the faith, listen to your dreams, stay close in the word and those demons will have no power. In words written by Jim Willig “faith can be our shield as well, it is not a dream, it’s the truth. The Gospel truth.
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