Faith looks crazy
It’s taken me a long time to gather my thoughts on this one. God doesn’t always act in ways that make sense to us. I’ve always loved this verse in Isaiah 55:8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. When I have a problem I analyze all possible outcomes and then when I pray I have this idea of how God could act to fix it. It’s easy to limit what God can do because we can only conceive of what seems possible to us, while the reality is that there are no limitations for God. In Exodus 14 the Israelites are caught between the Red Sea and the Egyptian army and from their perspective there’s pretty much one option, death. They never would have imagined that God would part the Red Sea and then drown the army in it.
There are several instances in the bible where God tells someone about His plan for their life and it seems completely implausible to them. When God told Abraham that He would be the father of many nations, Abraham actually laughed because of his old age and the age of his wife. That promise took 25 years to fulfill, but what God had spoken did come to pass. After Joseph was told by God that he would rule over his brothers, he was thrown into a well by them and sold into slavery. Over the years, as Joseph rises in esteem he gets thrown into jail and what God had spoken seems less and less likely. God’s words to Joseph do come to be though, but not in the way or the timing that Joseph would have imagined.
The last few months my thoughts have really centered on what faith looks like and how to increase my faith. I’ve been struggling with what to do when you think God has told you something but then circumstances don’t seem to line up with what you think you’ve heard. So I’ve really just come to a point where I know that I can only get so far in my understanding and I have to just believe that God will be able to speak to me in ways I can understand and that He is able to bring about His plans for me. I get worried that I’ll miss the plan or the signs that keep me on the path or pray for the wrong thing. Thankfully it’s not up to me to always know exactly what to pray for or what to do. It’s not as if God says “you prayed for that, oh no now I have to do that,” as we delight ourselves in the Lord He is able to shape the desires of our hearts and He knows our needs even before we ask. I am encouraged by the stories of Abraham and Joseph because I can see how God used their situations to develop true faith that relied completely on the sovereignty of God. I know He can use my limitations to shape me in the same way.
There’s an interesting quote by C.S. Lewis “God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t…He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.” So often we go through difficult circumstances with the idea that God is somehow testing our faith and this quote completely changed the way I think about that. I always wondered how after those 25 years of waiting God could ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, did He not know enough about the faith of Abraham? I think now it was Abraham who needed to learn the depths of what his devotion to God was. The only way we learn to have true faith is to have our circumstances shaken so that we look away from them long enough to see clearly the character of God. The very essence of faith as stated in Hebrews 11 is that we hope for and are certain of what we do not see.
It’s easier to hold on to hope when we have circumstances that look promising. What do we do though when our situation offers no plausible solution? We are forced to believe not in our ideas about the ways it could work out, but to fully believe that God can do things that we can’t imagine. I think we often treat faith as an emotion that we experience, we want to “feel” faith. Faith though is more an act of will than an emotion, though sometimes we are given a gift of faith, it is often a decision to be made. I heard in a church sermon that faith is “gaining assurance by focusing my confidence on the integrity of God.” Focusing my confidence requires action on my part. I can’t replace feelings such as discouragement or fear with feelings of faith, but what I have learned to do is declare the truth of word by speaking it out loud to affirm who God is and what I know to be true about His character. Consistently reminding ourselves of who God is and what He has done and is able to do can keep us from becoming discouraged. It will also draw us into deeper intimacy with God because God is pleased by faith, as it says in Hebrews 11 “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”
