You’ve gotta have faith……

Those of us that have faith don’t know how lucky we are.

There’s plenty out there about holding onto your faith in tough times and in times of doubt, but that is based on a faith that we have already journeyed with and experienced and come to accept as our norm. It assumes faith. I may question what God is doing or why He is doing it or allowing it, but I do not question the existence of God. That doesn’t ever cross my mind.

To me, faith in a Creator God is the most natural thing in the world. I don’t need convincing. The proof for me is the wonderful world around us and hope and love and good triumphing over evil – God is as essential to life as breathing. God is in my every breath. He gives me my every breath.

And like David, I can say with conviction –

There is no one like you, Lord, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears.  1 Chronicles 17:20

Faith is complete trust or confidence in someone or something. Faith starts small and grows out of experience. It is a choice – if I choose to put my faith in you, I cannot be sure that you will not let me down. If you do, I will be hurt and will never trust you wholeheartedly again. If you do not let me down, then my faith in you will grow and grow and I will trust you more and more.

I’m actually rubbish at trusting other people. Trusting someone else and doing what they say can take a real leap of faith. I was thinking about this when running with my friends on Sunday. I call all the shots, you see. I decide the distance and the challenges. And everyone puts their trust in me and does what I say. They trust me not to push them beyond what they can do, to not cause them injuries, to keep them safe, to help them feel they have succeeded. But I realised that I am not willing to put my trust in any of them. They have trusted me in a way that I would really struggle to trust them. I couldn’t turn up, not knowing how far I was going to be expected to run. I couldn’t trust someone else not to get me lost or push me too hard and make me fail. It was a real eye opener – and of course, now I have had the thought, I feel challenged to let them and step out of my comfort zone and learn to trust my fellow runners. Just not yet.

But that’s faith in someone I can see with my own eyes. Someone I can touch with my own hands. Someone I can hear and talk to face to face.

How hard is it for people who have never experienced faith in God to start to believe in an invisible God? Where can we start in proving what is impossible to prove with hard evidence? The things that I believe are evidence – the wonderful world around us and hope and love and good triumphing over evil – can be explained away in so many other ways – what I attribute to God, others will attribute to science or chance. I have no concrete proof.

What feels certain to me is a mystery to many others.

How can you believe in something you can’t see?

How can you be so sure?

I was chatting to someone yesterday who is clearly searching. He envies my simple faith. He wishes it was that easy. His rational mind keeps putting up obstacles. He was being urged to take a leap of faith, to jump into the unknown – is that how it starts? Is that what it takes?

Why can’t God make it easier for people to follow Him? Why can’t He give us more proof? Why are His ways so hard to understand? Why doesn’t He reveal Himself more clearly to us all?

Because then, it wouldn’t be faith, I guess.

I googled faith and came across this short video which I actually think is pretty good at explaining the inexplicable – it oversimplifies a little, in my opinion, but I guess it has to to be contained in a video of manageable length……see what you think – ‘I want to believe in God but I don’t know how #fallingplates’

I believe there is no God but the one true God. I believe there is no one else that even comes close – never has done – to being like God.

I wish I could take away your doubts and convince you. I wish I could prove it to you. I wish I could give you faith.

My final thought is that when we talk about seeing and hearing and touching, we’re talking about a physical dimension. We’re trying to force something/someone that exists in a spiritual dimension into a physical dimension. God is spirit. He cannot be seen, touched and heard in the physical dimension. So perhaps we’re looking in all the wrong places. Perhaps it’s about responding on a spiritual level – about learning to look with different eyes, to hear with different ears, to touch with different hands…….

Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, I want to see you….

Speak into the very depths of me and let me learn to recognise your voice.

Touch me with that special touch that can only come from you.

And help me to know you for who you are.

That may seem impossible right now. But it is a journey and every journey has to start somewhere.

This is the prayer under the #fallingplates video – it’s a great place to start –

God, I don’t know if you’re out there. I’m not sure how I feel about you if you are. But if you do exist I’d like to know more about you. Reveal yourself to me. Help me to find you.