The hardest thing about Christianity for me is the faith part. I suspect that's no revelation, and I'm sure I'm not alone here. I'd be willing to bet, however, that if you sat down and talked to 10 different Christians, you would hear 10 different answers concerning which way and in what areas they find faith challenging.
For example, I for one have never struggled for long periods of time concerning myself with whether or not there is a God, or even whether or not I am saved. Now don't get me wrong, I went through a time of working through those questions, and I still find myself facing them occasionally. But, as a general rule, I find that they do not pose a long-term serious challenge to my faith. I find that the type of faith struggles I have more regularly - and more on-going - are those of a somewhat more pragmatic nature.
Before I get into that, let's make sure we're on the same page with what faith is...
"Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see." - Hebrews 11:1
My questions of faith tend to be daily life questions. "Where is God leading me?" "Is God still leading me, or is Taylor leading the way himself?" These are challenging questions to me because I want my life to be one lived in submission to God, but I know my personality is very..."goal oriented" we'll say. So, to me, it is very important to not just believe (have a passive faith) that my life will happen to somehow vaguely move in the direction God wants. But rather, I find great value (and spiritual strain) in striving to make sure that my life is being fully devoted to God, striving to make the most of the "talents" God has placed in my hands, and striving to destroy those strongholds that Satan strives to have in different areas of my life. This sounds so good and noble. It's not really. In fact, it's nothing more than what every Christian is called to be doing, and I may not be any better at it than most.
So, my personality runs into faith roadblocks that look like this:
"Is this path I want to pursue, a path offered by God as an answer to my prayer, or is this Taylor creating a path and forcing his way after God said 'no?'" Taylor is confused.
Or, the classic:
After getting no apparent answer, Taylor questions "is this God telling me to wait patiently (not a talent of mine), or is this another answer of 'no?'" Taylor is confused.
As I'm writing this, I am realizing that I am falling back into a struggle I have to deal with regularly: control. Who's in control. Well, it's God no matter what. But living that out is one of the hardest faith struggles in my life. When I feel like God has told me, "something is coming, just be patient"; I find it very hard to believe that in the meantime I'm just supposed to passively sit back and let life happen." There must something I need to do. But there is nothing noble in doing things for God if they are not done in the way and timing prescribed by God, i.e. God's will.
I know that there are many times that people just need to be told, "make a decision, God will bless you one way or another!" And in many situations I believe that. Trust me, I don't have a problem decision making; rather I have a problem backing off and letting God do his decision making in his time. If I've waited two months for an answer to a life altering prayer, I start looking for more control (clearly God is otherwise engaged).
So this is my constant challenge: learning to more clearly discern God's voice over my own in the hopes of better understanding God's responses to my petitions. I know there can only really be 3 answers: Yes, No, and Wait. Yes or No, I can handle. It's the seemingly unending silence of "Not Yet...Wait" that is so hard.
So it's not the being "confident in what I hope for" that is the faith challenge for me. It's the maintaining "assurance about what I do not see" that keeps me humble. I have complete faith in God's ability, I lack faith in my own patience in waiting, and my ability to discern wisely what God puts before me.
In times like this in my life, I feel that God recognizes this weakness in me and so he does whatever he can to exploit it. I know that it's only because he wants me to grow. So, I must pray, sit back, and feel totally helpless. I must continue to trust that if something I have been praying for does in fact happen, there will be no doubt as to who should get the glory for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment