The other day I was doing a bible
study and a question was posed: Which has
most hindered your faith recently:
Fear
or familiarity.
Easy peasy.
Fear, right?
Nope, not even close…
Familiarity. Hands down
.
I truly believe that if God is in
it, I might pause for a minute, pray, see if what is ahead of me lines up with
the Word of God, but being afraid doesn’t typically stop me from doing
something. What do I have to lose if He
is in it?
That doesn’t mean it’s easy or
that I don’t wonder “what the heck?” but fear doesn’t hinder my faith. I just suck it up buttercup, put my sass
pants on, say a prayer and remember Josh 1:9
“This is my
command—be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever
you go.”
I think what most hinders me is
that I know God is going to show up. I forget about the wonder of His love for
me, because I’ve come to expect it. I
forget that His dying for me so that I can have eternal life far outweighs whatever
provision is coming my way. His death
was the purpose of it all.
I just got a new book The Grand
Paradox that was suggested by Chilly Chilton and i tell you, I read the forward and I wish I could have got back in my
pajamas and snugged up with a blanket and a glass of iced tea and devoured this
book.
Here is an exerpt from the book:
We want answers from God. We have a ravenous
appetite for clarity in life. And often, we desire justification or, at least,
some kind of explanation for why He allows certain things to transpire. God,
however, is more mysterious than we think He should be or wish He were. Most of
the time, we don’t receive the desired answers or the clarity for which we
clamor. In spite of our seeking, God seems just out of our reach. Try as we
might, we can’t pin Him down.In short, the truth is: life is messy, and God is mysterious.
We struggle with these truths. We spend our energy, often wrestling in prayer, hoping to attain that place of peace in which our life is less difficult, painful and challenging.
…
So how do we live, grow, flourish, and remain content in the mess? How do we trust, follow, and continue to obey God when He seems to remain elusive? (xix-xx)
The truth is that maybe my familiarity is laziness. I trust God but I don’t always want to deal with the messy. I want God to use me to solve the cuddley problems like helping kids read and believe in themselves or growing a community garden because those things are “easy” for me. Sure I could fail, but I don’t usually focus on that. But the tough things, like helping my city turn from it’s current state of mess to a little less messy, or the mental health crisis we have going on in our state/country, or how about GMOs? Oh the ugly problems, those are hard, messy problems and they require a Faith.
So… I am excited to read this book, maybe get a little messy and lose the familiarity that binds me…
Here I am, send me. Isaiah 6:8
Even if it's messy
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