A Working Faith

As I approached the new year, I started to become aware of a mistaken mindset that I've had for a long time.  I have been seeing a trend in how skewed beliefs affect my decision-making.  All this time I blindly functioned with the assumption that I was doing the best I could.  

But what I have realized is this:  there is a glitch in my faith.

When  faced with something that seemed hard, I immediately translated that to mean that I wouldn't do it.  It's not because I was intentionally being rebellious or lazy.  I just considered obstacles as closed doors.  The difficulties were obvious signs that it wasn't the right time to take that path.  If it was remotely complicated, I thought that it wasn't meant to be.

Oh, ye of little faith.

What I have missed with this way of thinking is that space between the here and the supernatural.  Somewhere, faith and hope and peace and joy are floating around us unseen.  All these spiritual gifts, are just waiting to be inhaled into our souls- where we can't touch belief, but we can feel it.  

We can sense God in that place, holding out to us tiny wrapped packages. But we wonder if they're for someone else.  Or if we take a gift, we say, "Thank you," admire the thought, then set it aside and never use it.

Something like faith, was never meant to sit on a shelf.  It may appear a small thing, but it is packed with potential.  Faith can spark big things.  It can produce miracles.  It can change everything.  

Faith can.

When that race looks impossibly long, and we don't think we can finish...Faith can.

When starting over seems like a joke, because we haven't succeeded before...Faith can.

When there's no proof and there's no chance, faith swoops in and messes up all of our logic.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for- the evidence of things unseen.

It's not easy to explain.  And yet there are all these stories of one prayer, one person, one life-changing decision that have been traced back to just a little bit of faith.  Someone just took God for his word, opened his gift, and gave faith a try.

Faith works. 

But faith without works is dead.  It's unusable.  It's a thing without batteries or an operator.  It just sits their lifeless.  Wasted.

So really, there wasn't a glitch in my faith over the years.  I had forgotten to take my gift out of the box and turn on the switch. I thought that "having faith" would be enough.  Possessing it. Calling it mine.

When Jesus healed the crippled, the diseased, the blind, He accredited their faith for making them well. They asked.  They moved in a direction.  They looked for Him and found Him. 

It was their last chance.  It was worth the trouble and travel and criticism. It was their opportunity, and they took it.

Their faith WALKED.  It HEALED.  It WORKED.  Jesus said so.

Our faith is a combination of believing, doing, and Jesus. It's the point right before giving up and right after acknowledging that it's a team effort.  

So what if it's hard?

It comes down to this: Do I believe God enough to obey what He is asking of me, even if it doesn't look like it will work?  I can admit that I am limited, but God isn't.  I can only do so much, but at least I'm not standing still.  Activating my faith just means that I start, and then He and I finish...together.

And practice makes perfect, right? 

 "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only..." -James 1:22