November 2023

Suffering

A friend of mine shared with me a couple videos in which the speaker addressed the issue of suffering.

I admit, suffering is a difficult topic to tackle, especially if you’ve experienced much personal suffering yourself, have been a witness to the suffering of others, or have felt burdened with anxiety by the stories of tragedies, wars, injustices, and pandemics, going on all over the world.

In my own personal life, I’ve survived indescribable trauma from neglect and abandonment at a very young age. These experiences left deep scars. Emotions that had been suppressed for decades suddenly bubbled up to the surface some years ago. I thought I had forgiven those who had hurt me, but I had been blind. I had been in denial of how deep the scars were.

The question that was addressed in the video is this: How do we reconcile suffering with a good God?

I believe that if we ask this question, it is because we have not meditated long enough upon the sufferings of God Himself. Surely, God has suffered. He is painfully cut to the heart each time He is sinned against and rejected by those of whom He had created to be His image bearers. His Son, also, was well acquainted with suffering, sorrow, persecution, even death on a cross. How do we reconcile Christ’s suffering with His perfect, sinless life? He who knew no sin… suffered the humiliating death of a criminal. What an injustice! And God the Father did nothing to save Him. Even so, God the Father suffered the most heartbreaking loss any parent could endure: the loss of his only Son.

Contrast this suffering to the suffering that affects all mortal human life. It is the suffering every human being endures. It is the result of the Fall. This type of suffering is meant to make us humble, so that we never think more of ourselves than what we ought. God told Adam that if he ate of the forbidden tree, he would surely die. But God in His mercy allowed Adam to live. Even so, God was very harsh on Adam. He threw Adam out of the garden and told him that from now on, life will no longer be easy. Instead, it will be full of suffering. And we’ve been living under that curse ever since.

When the sufferings of this life felt overwhelming, the faithful in the Old Testament cried out to the Lord for mercy. Why did they cry out for mercy? Because they considered their very lives to be a blessing from God. Surely, God would have been just to end the entire human race since all had rebelled against Him in some way. And if our very lives are blessings from God, we have no right to complain, even of our sufferings. The faithful pleaded with God not because they felt they had any right to complain, but because they knew God to be a God of mercy. They understood God as a Father who is compassionate towards those who love Him.

“Suffering is having what you don’t want or wanting what you don’t have.”

This is the definition that was given in the video. However, in my opinion, this definition sounds a bit too self-centered. Based on this logic, if I don’t get what I want, then I’m… suffering? Any minor inconvenience could fall into that category. But I wouldn’t call that “suffering”. If a person feels he is suffering every time he doesn’t have what he wants, then he is a miserable soul indeed! This definition certainly describes the needless “suffering” of a self-centered soul, who resents the things he does have and covets the things he doesn’t. I don’t see how it applies to the sufferings of someone of faith. It describes someone who grumbles whenever things don’t go as planned, or the petulant “suffering” of a child who has been deprived of his toys. This definition may describe the reason why people indulge in resentful complaining when things don’t go their way. But this isn’t suffering.

True suffering goes far deeper. Suffering is enduring great hardship, pain, or loss.

We all know what it means to suffer. The wounds are deep and painful. You are cut to the heart. Both your heart and spirit are broken, shredded, and trampled on. It is the heartbreak over a broken relationship. It is the rejection of friends and family. It is the affliction of an intensely painful disease. It is the indescribable loss of someone dearly loved. It is enduring the ugliness of abuse and the persecution and betrayal of friends. It is walking in the same shoes as Job did, experiencing the same hardships he did, when he lost his wealth, his marriage, and his entire household, and he sat in ashes as boils afflicted his skin.

Suffering HURTS. It is PAINFUL. And if neither loss nor tragedy causes you pain, sorrow, or tears, you need to check your pulse. Because suffering will happen to us all, both Christian and non-Christian alike. No one is immune.

Suffering will do one of two things to a person: either it will soften the heart, or it will harden it. A softened heart will humbly accept the pain and will pour out their heart before God and others, in unashamed tears of sorrow. A hardened heart will be too proud to indulge in sorrow. A hardened heart may even consider the pain unacceptable. Such people will either fight bitterly against it, attempt to flee from it by avoiding, minimizing, or dulling the pain, or they will wallow in self-pity. Suffering will build up the character of someone whose heart is softened, but it will only worsen the character of someone whose heart is hardened.

May we never trivialize the sufferings of Christ. Certainly, He suffered, but He thought nothing of His own sufferings, or His own wants and cares, but He purposed Himself to consider and do only the will of His Father. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to die a brutal death upon a Cross. Yet in no way did Christ despise the Cross of which He experienced the greatest physical pain one can imagine. Not only did He not despise it – He embraced it gladly because He knew the gain His followers would receive as a result of His sacrifice. His greatest “want”, His greatest desire, was not to gain anything for Himself, but for us to gain an eternal inheritance. Surely, Christ achieved this goal. But it was not without great sorrow and loss! It was not without suffering!

Christ’s sufferings remind me of a classic story, Sleeping Beauty. As you might recall, the princess is in a deep sleep, and only the kiss of a prince will revive her. But in the story, the valiant prince, her betrothed, is imprisoned, and once released, he must go on a quest fighting a fierce dragon. He endures one hardship after another, one battle after another, but he does so willingly and without complaint, because his eye is on his prize – his betrothed. In similar fashion, out of love for His Bride, the Church, Christ was willing to endure any quest, any hardship, any form of suffering, to raise up the Church, from death to life.

To love as Jesus loved is to love so deeply that all our self-focused wants and desires are nothing in comparison to being with Him, in meeting the needs and interests of others, to give until it hurts, so that others will not be in want, to intercede on behalf of the saints to the point of tears, to ache in our hearts for those who have fallen away from the faith, to bless those who curse you so that they may receive a blessing and know the grace of God. To suffer as Jesus suffered is to look towards our eternal inheritance: “For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross.” For the joy set before us, eternal life with our Lord and Savior, we gladly accept our momentary sufferings in this world.

Suffering in this way puts an end to all manner of attitudes of self-interest. Never again will you give any thought to consider suffering “unacceptable”. In fact, Saint Paul considered his suffering the “glory” of the people of whom he ministered to. When he was questioned regarding his qualifications as an apostle, he could have listed all the churches he had started during his missionary journeys, but instead, he listed all the sufferings and hardships he had faced since becoming a disciple of Christ: he had been stoned, flogged, shipwrecked, imprisoned, all for the sake of the gospel. How might our own attitudes of suffering change if we looked at suffering in the same perspective?

John chapter 9 describes a story of a man born blind. The story begins with Jesus’ disciples discussing what “caused” the man to be born blind: was it his sin, or the sin of his parents? Jesus’ response blows the mind and flips all our assumptions about suffering on its head: “Neither, but so that the glory of God may be revealed.”

This verse had earth-shattering implications for me. I have suffered eye disease since early childhood. I have gone through countless eye surgeries. I thank God every day for the vision I still have, but I must confess, there had been times I’ve asked the question, “Why, God?” Jesus’ answer regarding the man born blind gave me great hope that God could use my suffering for His glory. I have since shared my story to others, and I’ve given God all the credit for preserving my eyesight for the last forty years. God has watched over me, and I’ve done more with my life than I ever thought possible, considering all that I have endured since early childhood. He alone sustains me.

“We say that there ought to be no sorrow, but there is sorrow, and we have to accept and receive ourselves in its fires. If we try to evade sorrow, refusing to deal with it, we are foolish. Sorrow is one of the biggest facts in life, and there is no use in saying it should not be. Sin, sorrow, and suffering are, and it is not for us to say that God has made a mistake in allowing them. Sorrow removes a great deal of a person’s shallowness, but it does not always make that person better. Suffering either gives me to myself or it destroys me.” – OSWALD CHAMBERS

Romans 8:18 – “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

The Place of Reason In A Christian’s Life

I read in a book by Joyce Myers that we need to be mindfully set on obeying God rather than fear, doubt and Satan’s lies. I agree with her, that doubt is Satan’s way of attacking our faith. Doubt rises when Satan is determined to want to stop us from doing God’s will. It means to make a decision to listen to God and not to submit to doubt, fear, lies, or even our own intellect that might try to convince us to do something contrary to God’s will.

Satan will try to plant seeds of doubt – that is a given. But we have a choice whether to listen to it or not. We must submit to the Spirit’s will above our own. God is superior in intellect and knowledge. Not only that, He is also benevolent and kind. Thus His reasoning and rationale is always sound – He has an infinite amount of knowledge to back up His decisions – more knowledge than our puny brains could possibly fathom. Also because He is benevolent, He will always use His knowledge for our best interests. Thus, He is a reasonable God, and one that will not use His knowledge against us. His decisions are always right and true and based on facts that our puny brains can’t possibly fathom. Thus we can be confident and assured that His demands are never “unreasonable”. He will NEVER make an unreasonable or illogical request. He is the inventor of all things, including logic and reason.

I consider our capacity for logic and reason to be gifts from God, but just like any gift, it can be misused. In this manner, I disagreed with Joyce Myers. Joyce said she abandoned reason because it always got her into trouble. The more she knew, the more she worried, and became full of fear and doubt. But if she lacked knowledge, she obsessed about reasoning things out, to the point of talking herself out of following God’s commands. In her mind, all reasoning is evil. But I don’t see it that way at all. Without “reasoning” we wouldn’t have scientists, and surely there is a place for them in heaven too! I consider the ability to think critically, analytically, and logically, to be a valuable gift from God, not something to be ignored and tossed aside, but something that can be used to glorify God, if used properly, and with the proper perspective. When “reasoning” things out, a person should always be humble enough to keep in mind that his conclusions, based on the facts laid in front of him, may be wrong. That is, our ability to reason should never cause us to be arrogant and think that all our conclusions are right. God is the only person who is always right all the time, and who quite literally, really does have all the facts laid before Him. Thus, His conclusions and judgment are always sound. However, we humans cannot possibly know all the facts because we have only a small finite knowledge of the world.

However, that doesn’t mean that our capacity for reason shouldn’t be ignored. That would be the same as telling a musician he shouldn’t compose music because his mastery of music could never compete against God’s. Or telling a painter he should ignore painting sunsets because God alone can make a perfect sunset. The gifts that we have, whether logic, intellect, knowledge, music, painting, should be used for God’s glory, with the perspective that these abilities are merely gifts, we did nothing to earn them, and God could, at any time, strip them away. As long as we are humble enough to submit these gifts to God, to know that they are nothing in comparison to the power and grace of God, we should be fine. Our gifts should never be misused, either edifying ourselves with pride, arrogance, or come between us and the Lord. If our gifts are leading us into sin, then I see why one might abandon it. As Jesus says, if your eye is causing you to sin, pluck it out; if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. Better a man enter heaven blind or lame than not to enter heaven at all (paraphrased). So abandoning reason because it caused you to sin is perfectly good and right according to God’s Word. However, if someone is able to use the gift of reason in a manner that edifies the Lord, than it’d be a sin to encourage that person to abandon his ability to reason.

Personally, I am a very logical person, and got a degree in mathematics. I love math and science and feel that these things also are gifts from God. I believe that humans were meant to learn and explore this great universe, and God has revealed some of this knowledge through the sciences.

Notice I say “some”. Like I said before, we humans have the capacity of learning only a finite amount of knowledge. Therefore our knowledge of the universe will ALWAYS be finite, no matter how long and hard we strive to learn everything. This is God’s way of keeping scientists humble! However, the journey through knowledge and discovery can be a wonderful and thrilling experience, and someone who loves the Lord has an even greater appreciation for it, because it is so humbling to see how wondrous and marvelous God created this great universe.

Our capacity to reason, by using facts to come to draw conclusions, can sometimes be used by Satan to warp our view and draw the wrong conclusions, or ones contrary to what God would want us to do.

Consider this: a man needs surgery to save his life. Suppose the man feels in his heart that God is asking him to go through with the surgery. But suppose later on the man finds out about the risks of the surgery. Much to his chagrin, he finds that the odds are very high for complications, and even death. This knowledge sparks fear into the man’s heart. Then jumps in Satan. He can sense this man’s fear. Using the man’s gift of logic and reasoning against him, he tries to convince the man the surgery isn’t worth the risk. The man has a choice – either follow God’s will and submit to the surgery, or submit to his own fears based on logical reasoning. The man can either trust God and trust that God knows what He’s doing by asking him to go through with the surgery, or trust his own limited knowledge on what might happen if he goes through with it. Since God always knows what He’s doing, and nothing He directs us to do is ever “unreasonable”, although it might seem so to our limited brains, he should do as God asked him to do and follow through with the surgery.

I think of it this way – our heart is a compass and there is God on one side and our flesh on the other. We are approached with a moral decision. Suppose we know what God would want us to do, but our flesh selfishly doesn’t feel like it. The heart’s desire will either lean towards desiring what God would want us to do, or point to pleasing the flesh. Then the mind steps in and will logically try to “reason” why one decision is more appealing than the other. But if we know what God would want us to do, there is not much to “reason” out. If our heart is pointing towards God, our logic should dictate that if I want to please God, logically, I should do what He says. There is nothing more to “reason” out. However, when the arrow is pointing towards the flesh, Satan will inevitably plant every “reason” and excuse into our brain as to why submitting to the flesh is a superior solution. Our reasoning brain will listen to all the excuses until it all seems perfectly logical. The problem was when our heart’s compass started to lean towards the flesh, and we gave Satan the time of day by allowing him to provide us his arguments.

But what about all the decisions we make every day in which we don’t hear a voice from God? Perhaps we are trying to decide on which house or car to buy, what job offer to accept, or what college we should attend. We might pray about these things only to get silence from God.

God has appointed us stewards of our bodies and households. Thus, if it is cold and raining outside, as wise stewards of our vulnerable bodies, reason would suggest we wear a jacket and bring an umbrella before we leave the house. As wise stewards of our households, we might take a job offer that provides a higher salary in order to provide for a growing family. If we have financial struggles, we might decide on a cheaper home to buy in order to keep down costs. All these decisions are based on reason and common wisdom. And God would not be displeased by anyone using their talents of reason and wisdom in this manner.

There are many other decisions that we make all the time that have no right or wrong answers. It’s more of a matter of weighing our options. If our car breaks down, we consider other options of getting to work: rent a car, carpool with a coworker, take the bus, etc. If we get sick and come down with the flu, we might do one of the following: drag yourself into work because you don’t want to waste your sick days, stay home and self-medicate with over-the-counter medicines and get plenty of rest, or go to urgent care and get professional medical advice. We weigh the pros and cons of each decision. For many of these decisions there’s no right or wrong answer. God doesn’t always comment on these day-to-day decisions. In fact, most of the time He doesn’t. But that’s okay! That doesn’t mean He’s abandoned us.

I love reading the book of Acts. In the book of Acts, Saint Paul goes on several lengthy missionary journeys. It is interesting where his travels took him. His life after he became a believer was chock full of uncertainty. He never had a plan. And he never knew where he’d end up next. But that didn’t stop him. He’d just preach in whatever region he happened to be staying in. There were times he’d get chased out of one town and wind up someplace else, someplace he probably least expected to be. But he never questioned his circumstances. Wherever he ended up at, he’d start to preach there. If he ended up in jail, he’d preach to the jailer and his fellow prisoners. If he wound up in court, he’d use the opportunity to tell his personal testimony before the Roman leaders. If he was taken by force by Roman soldiers onto a ship during a storm, he’d use the opportunity to show compassion them, pray for them, and assure them that God intended them to live. He never questioned his circumstances. He just seemed to go along with the ride. While circumstances seemed to toss him about, this way and that, from one place to another, sometimes under terrible persecution and death threats, Saint Paul always took it all in stride. As far as he was concerned, every situation was preordained by God. All he needed to do was take full advantage of every opportunity to use those situations to God’s glory.

Sometimes our journey seems shaky and uncertain. Sometimes we worry about the future. We worry about making the “wrong” choices. We ask ourselves things like: What if I misinterpreted the signs? Maybe God never wanted me to break up with my boyfriend after all. What if God really wanted me to take some other job? What if I chose the wrong career for my life? What if God wanted me to move to another state? What if God really wanted me to … you fill in the blank.

But what is the worst thing that could happen if you did make a “mistake”? Do you really believe God will abandon you if you did make a mistake? Do you believe God does not have the power to rectify your “mistake”? Surely, God blessed King David and Bathsheba with a son who would become one of the greatest and wisest kings who ever lived. God not only forgave David for his “mistake” in committing adultery. He blessed him with a remarkable son, King Solomon, who would eventually organize the building of the Temple to the Lord in Jerusalem. Surely, God blesses us even with our mistakes!

Surely, I have made some life-changing decisions that at first, I wasn’t sure were the “right” ones. But what I have realized is that God is always faithful, even in the midst of our uncertainty. I can look back and see how God richly blessed me, even when I wasn’t certain of myself and my decisions. Whether I made the “right” decisions or the “wrong” ones, God was present. He was faithful.

In the end, we use our reasoning to the best of our ability, in a God-honoring way, but it ultimately doesn’t really matter whether we made the “right” decisions or the “wrong” ones. But what does matter is what did we do with the decisions that we made? Did we make the best of every opportunity to give thanks and praise to God? Did we use our gifts, whatever they may be, to the best of our ability, to God’s glory? Did we offer praise to God when God chose to bless us in spite of our “mistakes”?

Why is it that we feel like we have to deserve love or nice things?

Sometimes we feel undeserving because we carry around unrepented guilt

Sometimes we feel undeserving because we don’t feel valued as a person. Perhaps others treated us as people who did not hold much value. People used us for their own pleasure. They manipulated us. They told us things that weren’t true. They betrayed us. They treated us like dirt. As if we were not valuable creatures.

God treats us as if each one of us has intrinsic value, more valuable than gold or silver. Worthy of being cherished, nurtured, and cared for. That intrinsic value has nothing to do with works – we do plenty of things wrong! That value may be something we never get to see – but our creator does. He knows our value and our worth because He’s the one who created us.

Expectations vs. Reality

I think many of us live in the world of expectations rather than reality. Whether we realize it or not, we view the world based on what we expect to happen rather than dealing with reality. We might expect our spouse to always do their share of the household chores, we expect our children to get good grades, we expect our coworkers to act professionally, our government to be fiscally responsible, our weather to always be bright and sunny, etc. But when we set these expectations high, we tend to encounter one disappointment after another. Our spouse always neglects the laundry, our kids are barely passing their classes, our coworkers back stab each other, etc. When disappointed, we tend to get angry. We get angry not so much at what others do. We mostly get angry over the fact that nothing’s going our way. People aren’t acting the way we expect or wanted them to. We want control. We don’t like feeling like we don’t have control. So we get mad. As if somehow we’ve been betrayed. So we take it personally. It ruins and clouds our judgment.

Sometimes, we might sigh and decide to just let it go. But all we end up doing is readjusting our expectations. To avoid disappointment, we might readjust our expectations. Instead of expecting good things to happen, we expect bad things instead. We expect people to hurt us, betray us, hold grudges, manipulate us, but be anything but be kind and affectionate towards us. If people are kind, we assume it is because they want something, not because it is genuine. We do this as a means of protecting ourselves from hurt and disappointment and for the most part, it works. However, it takes work to keep up those walls all the time. It also isolates us. We find that, even with our friends, we can never let our guard down, not completely. Because we expect, at some time or another, for them to betray us. They are nice now, we tell ourselves, but sooner or later, at some point, they will betray us. But these are not realistic expectations. At some point, yes, a person might do something they probably shouldn’t. They might hold a grudge or do something unkind. But what is the point of worrying about it? Maybe it will happen, maybe not. One cannot prepare oneself for every unkind thing another person might or might not do to betray us. It is not possible. Nor is it practical. Nor does it make sense. If they do hurt us, the hurt will be just as great whether we thought about it, and “prepared” ourselves for it or not. The only thing we can do is worry about the hurt when or if it comes. In the meantime, we should be thankful for the positive relationships we have, without worrying about how it might get ruined.

I think I’ve been so sheltered my whole life with very few friends, and certainly none that have lasted, that it is very hard to know what to do to keep a relationship going. I feel very inadequate. I feel like I have to walk around egg shells around the other person. I even feel that way about my friends. But if they are truly my friends, they will accept me for who I am no matter what. They will accept me for being myself. And those that don’t accept me really aren’t my friends anyway. And the easiest way to make friends is to be yourself and be vulnerable to others. There is nothing gained by allowing walls of distrust to build around you. You make less friends, the ones you do have are unfulfilling because you never allow yourself to get too close to people, you feel lonely and isolated, and you’re not really protected from any hurt.

Putting up walls of expectations, no matter what they are, are also useless. Expectations that are set too high will disappoint; set too low, and they will isolate you. Also, how will you expect to build others up when you’ve set your expectations low?

All people have the potential of achieving great good, or great evil. Strangers are very difficult for me because there is no expectations. And if I just met that person, and they have done me wrong, I may not know how to encourage the good in that person. Logically I may know they are capable of doing good, but since I only know the bad, I immediately set my expectations on that person so that I expect that person to always do me harm. How do I encourage the good in a person I don’t even know?

It should be known that the most beautiful of things happen in unexpected places. If we dwell too much on what we expect, we will miss out. It is important to just deal with whatever it is we need to deal with at the current moment, without any expectations for good or bad. Don’t let others’ expectations be our guide. Just be who we are and do whatever needs to be done. If we allow the expectations of others to guide and direct us, these will only imprison us.

Although I know this, it just seems impossible to do it.

My parents were control freaks. One could not go beyond certain boundaries, no matter what. That was just… unacceptable. Dare I say it… unforgiveable. In my younger days, there was a lot of yelling, a lot of verbal abuse, or the other extreme, neglect. When I got older, I came to the realization that I was never ever asked how I felt about anything. I resigned myself to the uncomfortable truth that my feelings didn’t matter. If they did, my parents would’ve asked me how I felt. But they never did. And the few times they did ask, they had done so as an afterthought, not because they really cared. If my own feelings conflicted with their expectations, they’d immediately invalidate them and attempt to change my mind. And they always had the last word. This left me feeling utterly worthless as a human being. I simply stopped speaking up for myself. What would be the point? I knew my place within the family unit. To survive this oppressive environment, I ended up resigning to whatever lies they’d manufacture for themselves.

But that was true as a child. What about now? What is the worst thing that can happen if someone like myself were to do the unexpected, if you were around friends or strangers? You might get stares. You might get frowns, as if you’re crazy. You might get stunned silence. And you might not get any validation or support for breaking the boundaries of being YOU. I think that’s what frightens me the most. Stepping beyond the boundaries of other people’s expectations and feeling that no one will be there to support you. They may even ridicule you into going back to playing the same roles you’ve always played. You feel like you have to go along with their expectations in order to be accepted and loved. But that’s a conditional love, which is no love at all. If you go along with other people’s expectations as a self-protective mechanism, to protect yourself from the possibility of being hurt by those who adhere to rigid conformity, then you will never feel happy nor free with the people you are with. You will end up feeling anxious, vulnerable, afraid, beaten down. You will submit to what they want, albeit grudgingly, and with a lot of resentment. Inwardly, you’ll feel like a coward, but you won’t know what else to do.

Fortunately, God’s love in unconditional. And if people truly love you, they will treat you with an unconditional acceptance. And these are the people you want to surround yourself with. Do not surround yourself with harsh legalists or rigid conformists; people that are too inflexible, harsh, and merciless towards those who do not conform to their ideals. Do not surround yourself with people who care nothing at all about your feelings. People who genuinely care about you will automatically ask you how you feel, in a heartfelt genuine way. They will lift you up when you are down. They will admonish you gently, with tenderness and love. They will always treat you with patience and love. They will lavish you with unexpected joy. You will be a delight to them, and they will be a delight to you! There is only one expectation in these cherished relationships: LOVE. Relentless, unwavering, unhindered, LOVE. And it is only within these relationships can a person truly GROW and BECOME the person they were always meant to be, the very BEST they can be!

By God’s grace, I now have people in my life who are like this. Even so, I still feel uneasy. All it takes is one unfortunate incident with a callous person to throw me off balance. And it takes me a LONG time for me to recover, even with a great support group of close friends. Every time an unfortunate incident happens, it sometimes will trigger old memories of my childhood, and I wind up reacting to the situation, subconsciously, like I used to do as a child, by feeling defeated and withdrawn. It takes all my willpower sometimes to climb out of the rut. But, by God’s grace and LOVE, I know that one day all the scars of my childhood will one day be healed. By God’s grace, and under His abiding LOVE, I will blossom into the person God had always intended me to be!

FAITH

Christians use the word faith a lot. But do Christians really know what the word means?

I believe it is vital for Christians to know and understand the definitions of the words they use all the time; words such as faith, grace, love, covenant, sacrament, etc.

Here is what faith is not:
• It is not simply having a belief in something
• It is not wishful thinking
• It is not being smart enough to be able to use the word faith in a sentence
• It is not having all the Scriptures memorized that has the word faith in them
• It is not a catch phrase
• It is not ‘blind’

So, what is it?

One place to start is the dictionary.

faith /fāTH/ noun

complete trust or confidence in someone or something.

Let’s think about this. Let’s ponder it deeply. Having faith is having complete trust. It means you are 100% confident that something is true. Thus, if you have faith in a person, that means you have 100% trust in him. That person is 100% reliable. There isn’t a doubt in your mind. It is “complete trust”. Therefore, if you say you have faith in God, then you are saying you have complete trust in Him. It doesn’t mean simply that you believe God exists. It means you consider Him 100% reliable. He is 100% dependable.

Here is another thing to keep in mind. The book of James says that faith without works is worthless. Now, let’s not confuse “works” that James refers to with the empty “works” that St. Paul talks about in his letters. James is making the point that some people are frankly hypocrites. They say one thing and do another. I think we can all agree that the “faith” of hypocrites is no faith at all! It is worthless. The faith that God wants us to have, the faith that God consistently honors and blesses throughout Scripture, in both the Old and New Testaments, is a faith that is so sure, so unwaveringly certain, that one responds with unquestioning obedience to whatever God asks of that person, even if what He promises or asks of a person may seem illogical, dangerous, or downright crazy. God asked Abraham to believe he’d father a child even in his old age. He asked Gideon to form an army of a measly two hundred to confront enemy armies of thousands, and tens of thousands. He asked Noah to build an ark and told him to just trust Him that He would flood the earth, even though such a thing had never happened before in the history of all mankind, and Noah had never even seen rain fall from the sky. He had never seen a rainbow. God had anointed David as heir to the throne, but David had to put his entire trust in God while dodging enemies on all sides, including King Saul, who were trying to kill him. None of these valiant folk were hailed for their passionate submission to the Mosaic Law, as written in the Ten Commandments and expounded in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. But they were hailed by their faith, their complete confidence that they could depend on God. If God said something was going to happen, they believed it. If God told them to do something, they did it without question because they knew God as an all-knowing god who knew what He was talking about. They loved God and all the things that God valued and loved. They loved all His characteristics. They knew God as a god who was merciful, just, forgiving, gracious, tenderhearted, compassionate, almighty, powerful, a great protector, defender, dependable, honest, honorable, and kind. And God never did anything “out of character”. The Law taught them only that they fell far short of being considered worthy of acceptance as His holy people. They understood that their standing as God’s chosen people rested entirely on God’s faithful willingness to forgive and give them a clean slate every time they repented. Thus, they relied not on themselves but solely on the integrity and character of God. And this is the faith of a Christian – that we are realistic of who we are: flawed, weak, and corrupted human beings, who will one day die and return to the earth as dust – and of who God is: singular (there is only one god), eternal, holy, divine, perfect, all-knowing, all powerful, sovereign king, judge, healer, life-giver, provider, comforter, savior, defender, protector, and friend – AND we act on that knowledge in the things that we do, in at least one aspect of our lives. That is, perhaps we’ve learned to depend on God in our activities in some areas of our lives but not in others, such as perhaps we hit a rough spot in our marriage and we learned to “give it to God” and when we did that, things worked themselves out. Or perhaps you lost your job and you’ve had to depend on God to provide for basic things like food or enough money to pay the bills, something you never had to do before, you always lived comfortably before and kind of took it for granted that you always had more than enough to provide for your needs. Ironically, when we let go of ourselves and the dependence we’ve always had on our own strength to get us through, that is when we are the most free. And that is when our faith in God shines the brightest. And this is precisely the type of faith God consistently honors again and again all throughout Scripture.

Does that mean the Law is meaningless? What did King David do once he was confronted by Nathan regarding his sin? David had slept with Bathsheba, had her husband killed, and then took her as his wife. He had accomplished all this with cold-hearted determination. He had no conscious, no remorse. He was consumed with single-minded possessive lust. But once Nathan confronted him regarding his sin, his heart crumbled. You see, deep down inside, David loved the Lord. He had never lost his love for God. He loved the Lord and treasured all of God’s laws and statutes as being just and fair. When the realization of what he had done hit home, he confessed to God, “Against You only have I sinned.” Surely, he had sinned against a great number of people, but what broke his heart the most was the feeling that he had betrayed God. In his heart he knew he had done everything God despises – lust, adultery, deceit, murder, and countless other sins. He mourned in tears for many days and barely ate a thing. When confronted of our sins, our hearts should respond as David’s did. It should cut us to the heart. If we truly love God, it should tear us up inside. At the same time, we remember also who God is. There is no sin so great that God is unable or unwilling to forgive. We may feel low and dejected, cut to the heart, but at the same time, we can go before the throne of grace in tears and mourning, confessing our sins to God, confident that God who loves us with an all-consuming love, will forgive us and restore our broken spirits. This, too, demonstrates faith. David had faith in the Law as being good and just and also in God’s merciful nature, being someone who also was always eager to forgive a contrite heart.

Some people will say, “I have faith in God’s promises.” But we don’t put our faith in promises. Would you trust a promise made by a con artist to pay you back the money you loaned him? Probably not. But I’m guessing you would believe the same promise if it came from a trustworthy source, like a nun or priest. Thus, a promise is only as reliable as the promise-keeper. But what if you don’t trust nuns or priests. Then you wouldn’t put any faith in their promises either, even if they were good people. Thus, the amount of secure confidence you have in someone fulfilling their promise is only as great as your trust in that person’s integrity. Thus, your trust in God’s promises is directly linked to what you believe to be true about God Himself. If you think of God as distant, capricious, and uncaring, you probably are not going to have much faith in God’s promises to help you in your moment of crisis. However, if you think of God as intimate, merciful, compassionate, powerful, and attentive, you will be quick to call upon Him in faith that he will listen to your cries for help and save you in your time of need. You will be quick to believe in His promises because of what you believe about HIM.
I have often heard it said that God is a “covenant-making God”, as if that is supposed to be a mind-blowing concept. But we make covenants all the time. We get married, make promises to friends and family that we’ll spend more time with them, etc. We make promises and vows all the time. That’s not mind-blowing at all. It’s easy to MAKE promises. It’s easy to exchange wedding vows and throw a party. What’s mind-blowing about God is not that He makes covenantal relational vows with us. What’s mind-blowing is that He would be willing to stay loyal even when the covenant has been broken. There is one and only one condition that is acceptable by God for a man to divorce his wife and that is in the case of adultery. In the case of the covenant God made with Israel, God describes Himself as a husband being married to an adulterous wife (Israel). Over and over again, God reminds Israel, you have broken my covenant. By reminding Israel of this fact, He is saying, “Understand this: Because you’ve broken my covenant, I’m no longer bound by covenant to stay loyal to you or to keep my promises. You are acting like an adulterous wife, and I would be well within my rights to reject you and accept a new people, a new nation, to become my holy people. Even so, I have chosen NOT to reject you – I still love you, regardless of what you have done. Therefore, I choose to keep all the promises I had made to you, as if you had always been a faithful wife.”

Think about this. Ponder this deeply. Do you know anyone who would willingly put up with that kind of abuse?
This is mind-blowing. Adultery is the worst kind of betrayal. Imagine making promise after promise to your spouse, during your marriage’s honeymoon stage, expecting the relationship to last for as long as the two of you are alive, only to find out your beloved has been playing the field. Every instinct inside of you wants to leave this horribly dysfunctional and broken relationship. You feel angry, rejected, unappreciated, and unloved. Your heart is broken, and you know you have every right to leave the relationship for good. Yet, your heart breaks for your spouse. You find it in your heart to still love the person. And you make the conscious decision to not only stay faithful to that person as their spouse, but you are determined to fulfill all the promises you made from the moment you were first wed. If we are honest, we would probably call such a person a fool for being so naïve. That person is headed for heartbreak and disaster if they willfully choose to stay in such a relationship. But God was neither naïve nor blind when he made his decision. He knew what was in their hearts. He knew they’d probably betray Him again and again. He knew exactly what He was getting into. He knew He would ultimately suffer a lot of pain and heartache from a people who refused to listen to Him, time and time again. But by keeping his promises, he crowned them with unmerited favor.

This is the faithfulness of God. It defies all human instincts. Most people would run away from an adulterous relationship. Many walk away from that kind of betrayal feeling resentful and scarred. The depth of human love simply cannot comprehend the depth of pain and sorrow God was willing to embrace on behalf of his chosen, beloved people. In love, He willingly chose to stay bonded with Israel. It is impossible for human love to contemplate that kind of unwavering devotion. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t sound safe. Why would someone be that faithful to someone undeserved?

While there are some individuals who willingly stay in abusive relationships, they usually do so at great cost to themselves. They are battered, bruised, both physically and psychologically. They’ve been scarred deeply. They may suffer from a myriad of psychological disorders: anxiety, depression, battered wife syndrome, low self-worth, PTSD, alcoholism, substance abuse, etc. God is the only One capable of putting up with abuse and stand unhindered. God certainly grieves over sin, and even punishes us in anger and wrath, but our behavior never affects His character. His character and integrity never changes based on what we do. He never takes back His promises just because we’ve disappointed Him. He never becomes anxious, frustrated, bitter, or resentful over our own “bad behavior”. He never worries and frets over us. He’s never depressed. Never afraid. The magnitude of God’s patient love and tender sorrow for us is so great, that these emotions end up overriding everything else, and only the divine mind of God can supernaturally endure it unscathed.

Our reaction to God’s unmerited faithfulness to us should humble us. It should touch us deeply. There is no other love like this. It reveals to us how precious we are in His eyes. And because we are precious to Him, He is dependable. We can trust Him always.

Will you put your trust in Him today?