Finding Faith

Something has been on my mind for the past few weeks in regards to a random comment that I made. Ever since I said it, I knew that I wanted to blog about it, but I've been pondering how I was going to present it, and truthfully where I wanted to go with it...

I had been packing and boxing up some of my things and putting stuff in storage. Prior to this, one of my cats had knocked something off one of my shelves and a letter broke off. The object was a wooden knickknack that says "Faith." Amidst the packing I made this remark:

"I need to find my faith so I can fix it."

This was simply a random statement and yet it really made me think.

Faith is something I often misplace. Yet faith is one of the most important things I should carry with me at all times. In my opinion, without faith, I don't have much of a leg to stand on.

I have faith...that God has a plan and a purpose for my life. If I didn't have that faith, my life would be quite frightening and in many ways, depressing.

I have faith...that God will give me the wisdom and tools needed to get through life. I also have faith that God will give me the tools and wisdom to help me get my son through his life or at least to help him get his life started in the right direction.

I have faith...that God will direct my life and walk with me through the challenging and often times overwhelming decisions that I need to make in order to become who He has created me to be.

I have faith...that one day the division that seems to be present within my family will one day disappear.

I have faith...but sometimes it's misplaced, shaken and sometimes a little broken and needs to be found and fixed.

Like when I recently learned that someone I have sought advice from has walked away from her marriage.

Or when someone I know and adore is fighting a terrible illness that has no known cure.

And in a moment when a tragedy occurs that you can't comprehend, even though there is no "direct" impact on you or your loved ones...the heart still aches and the faith that you hold on to so tightly begins to break away.

As I listened to the news and radio talk shows later last week, it hit me. No matter what happens...when evil comes to the surface and rocks our world God is still God. He is faithful. And regardless of how much of a shock some things are, He warns us throughout Scripture that things like this are going to happen. And all too often I concentrate too much on where my faith is and forget to focus on how faithful God is.

"She'll not live a day," a physician told an attending nurse. Concerned, the nurse befriended the dying woman and in a few hours had won her confidence.

Motioning for the nurse to come near, the old woman said sorrowfully, "I have travelled all the way from California by myself, stopping at every city of importance between San Francisco and Boston. In each city I visit just two places: the police station and the hospital. You see, my boy ran away from home and I have no idea where he is. I've got to find him. ..."

The mother's eyes seemed to flash a ray of hope as she added, "Someday he may even come into this very hospital, and if he does, please promise me you'll tell him his two best friends never gave up on him." ...

Bending over the dying mother, the nurse whispered softly, "Tell me the names of those two friends so I can tell your son if I ever see him."

With trembling lips and her eyes filled with tears the mother responded, "Tell him those two friends were God and his mother," and she closed her eyes and died.

(Living and Praying in Jesus' Name by Dick Eastman and Jack Hayford)

"You may have heard it said that a person does not really know who his friends are until the bottom drops out. I think there is great truth to that. All of us have experienced the pain of discovering that people we thought would be faithful-no matter what-were simply "fair-weather friends." You know, friends whose loyalty hinges upon the climate or circumstances. As long as the relationship is enjoyable, they are with you all the way. But when it begins to demand some sacrifice on their part, they are hard to find. The ultimate measure of friends is not where they stand in times of comfort or convenience, but where they stand in times of challenge and controversy. That being the case, apart from adversity of some kind, we would never know who our faithful friends really are.

In the same way, we will never know in a personal way the faithfulness of Christ apart from adversity. As a result, our faith in Him would never increase. It would remain static. One of the primary reasons God allows us to face adversity is so that he can demonstrate His faithfulness and in turn increase our faith. If you are a believer, you have made a decision to trust Christ with your eternal destiny. But you will not experience His faithfulness in that particular area until you die.

God wants more from you and for you than simple intellectual acknowledgement of His faithfulness. It is His will that you experience it now.

If our lives are free from pain, turmoil, and sorrow, our knowledge of God will remain purely academic. Our relationship with Him could be compared with that of a great-great-grandfather about whom we have heard stories, yet never met personally. We would have great admiration, but no intimacy, no fellowship. There would always be a sense of distance and mystery.

That is not the kind of relationship God wants with His children. Through the death of Christ, God has opened the way for us to have direct access to Him. He went to great lengths to clear the way so that nothing stands between Him and His children. There is potential now for intimacy between us and our Creator...

God is in the process of engineering circumstances through which He can reveal Himself to each of us. And both history as well as our personal testimonies bear witness to the fact that it is in times of adversity that we come to a greater realization of God's incredible faithfulness to us."

(How to Handle Adversity by Charles Stanley)

I snapped this picture as we were driving up to Nick's game on Saturday and the picture really sums up what I'm trying to express. Our faith can become such a blur as we move through parts of life. But when we stop for a moment the blur comes into focus and it is then that we realize no matter what we go through in our lives, God always has been and always will be...faithful.