PART 4
What is Faith?
Today will be a little bit of an intermission from the tools…. But it’s such an important aspect of life, that I thought that it was worth the mention. Today we will be covering the topic of what faith is. Its a small concept, that carries with it, huge misunderstanding. Even those that think they understand it… usually don’t.
Faith is the “ complete trust or confidence in something.” But, the complete trust or confidence in what is the real question here… you see… when people pray…most of the time, they are asking God for something… and when they say that they have faith that God will answer their prayers….what they mean is that they have faith that God will give them what they asked for…
So what you’re really saying is that you have faith that you will get what you want….. but wheres God in all of that?…. oh yeah…. Thats right… he’s just the one who’s gonna give it to you…but since when did God get reduced into a Genie or Santa Clause? , rather than the almighty, omnipresent and omnipotent God of the universe….
You’re supposed to have faith that God will always do what is best for you right?…except that when people pray, they are typically asking Him to do what THEY think is best for them… and thats completely OK … theres really nothing wrong with asking for what you want…. The problem arises when you are only open to receiving the answer in one particular way… in the way that you expect … … you see how I fit the whole “expectations” thing in here too? You can apply it everywhere really… In any case, if you are so busy expecting only what you asked for, in exactly the way that you asked for it,… then you will probably miss it when He does answer you.
You know there’s this story that I like to tell about a drowning man who loved God. There was this man who loved God so much that he devoted his entire life to Him… One day, he went out to fish in a small boat and a storm came. The boat capsized and the man was sent flying into the tumultuous waters… so the man who was now drowning .. immediately began to pray to God, asking Him for help… as he was praying, a man in a boat passed close by and extended his arm and said “ here! Take my hand !”, and the drowning man responded “ no thank you, God is coming”…. Then another boat came by and they threw a life saver near the drowning man in the water and they yelled from the boat, “ sir, please grab onto the float! If you do not, you will drown!” But the man, full of faith, said “ no, I got it, God is coming to save me!”… the downing man was getting so tired that he could barely keep afloat, and then a third boat came… “ this time, a large boat with a large man standing near its hull… and he yelled “ Sir, let me help you! We are the last boat out on these waters, the storm getting worse and you will surely drown!”, and the drowning man yelled “ I have my faith sir..God is coming to save me! “….well as you can guess… the man drowned and went to heaven where he finally met God face to face, and he said to God “ Did I not serve you my entire life? I was drowning and I prayed and prayed for you to come help me…. But you let me die?!?” And God answered, “ what do you mean?? I sent you three boats in the middle of a storm, what else did you want?!” … You see the man expected help to look a certain way…Maybe he thought it would look like God floating on in and pulling him out of the water ( or maybe he thought God would magically give him the ability to float)… in any case he was so blinded by his expectations that he couldn’t see what was right in front of him.
So the moral of the story is, that sometimes people expect for their prayers to be answered in a certain way, and if we don’t remain openminded and vigilant, we can miss God’s answer no matter how obvious it might seem to everybody else.
So now that we’ve gone over that… Can I ask you something…when you pray or if you’ve ever asked God for something and haven’t gotten what you asked for … what did you attribute to the silence that you got in return? Did you ignore the fact that you got no answer, so that you wouldn’t have to question whether anyone was really listening in the first place? or did you pretend that God ignored you or just wasn’t listening ? … Well, you don’t have to be afraid that he’s not listening…you just have to learn how to listen… because the fact is, that God always answers your prayer in one of three ways:
Yes
not now, or
I have something better in mind
So, just remember to have faith that His answer to your prayer will always be what’s best for you and you can only hope that His answer matches yours.
You know a friend of mine once explained this in a way that I liked…. She told me that we see life through a pigeon hole ( thats basically like taking a roll of paper towel and looking through it… your vision is limited as to what you can see…. You can only see whats right in front of you, within the confines of that hole that you are looking through, at any given moment)… whereas God sees everything all at once ( He sees your life in its entirety with every single possibility that could stem from every single one of your possible actions)… So, I don’t know about you, but thats the guy that I would want making my decisions for me. Actually, that’s who I always let make ALL of my decisions for me and I gotta say… not a hitch yet.
And the reality is, that your faith is supposed to be in the fact that God not only knows what is best for you, but that he will always do what will be best for you in the long run. You see… with our limited pigeon hole range of sight, we cant see as far ahead as he can, nor can we see the consequences that the things that we want can bring. There are so many nuts and bolts to the machine that comprises our existence, that its best to leave it to the one person that fully understands it.
And I know that in some situations, the purpose behind those answers is harder to see… like when it concerns the passing, the handicap, or serious illness of a child… or when you yourself find yourself in a position where your child might be losing you, and, that’s scary and its sad and understanding the purpose behind these situations is, sometimes, beyond our human scope… but just remember that our lives and circumstance are not the only ones intended to be affected by these situations and that there is always a purpose behind them, even if it’s not one that we ever come to understand … and even if its not one that was meant to effect a difference in you. Remember that the children in our lives are also God’s children. God gives us these children so that they can learn from us, while we learn from them. And sometimes, we end up learning and growing so much more because of them than they will ever learn from us; Things that they will only learn when they become parents themselves, and thats one of the reasons why this cycle exists. We are here to take care of God’s children for Him. It is our greatest accomplishment to make our children more dependent on our Father, than on us, because it is Him who will always be there, whenever we cant… children are here to teach us by helping us learn and grow… sometimes by simply living alongside us, and other times, by us having to endure some of the most difficult times of our lives because of them. But like I said, if we think that we would do anything for these children, then wouldn’t God do so much more than we ever could? There is nothing that He cant give and no lengths to which He wouldn’t go to provide them what they need. So know that whether your child has left you, will leave you, or whether it is you leaving them…. That they could not be in better hands than in the hands of your Father. My greatest accomplishment will be the day that my own children love my Father more than they love me. And you know what’s weird? The more help their love for Good grow, the more their love for me seems to grow. Its kind of surreal, really.
And this is not to say that loss will ever be easy, or that you will ever lose that part of the grief that remains in your heart … but just take things day by day and let God to carry you through, so that you don’t have to live in grief, or in the uncertainty of the future that you face. So if you do find yourself in one of these situations, take from it, every single lesson that you learn and never let any of your struggles go to waste. And always remember that as you walk this road, you never walk alone.
So always trust in God’s intentions for you and on the same note… remember that in order to have faith in God….you must also have faith in His timing. Sometimes we find ourselves in a situation that we want to get out of and no matter how much we ask, it seems like God’s answer is “ not now”…. And thats because sometimes, if your situation doesn’t change, its because it is you who were meant to change from that situation. So think about what lesson you are supposed to learn or how this situation can help you grow or change in regards to your perception or intentions, and embrace it… and then see how quickly is resolves. The best way for me to explain this, is as an analogy…its like walking in a straight line and hitting a wall.. over and over and over again… how many times do you have to hit that wall, before you realize that you have to learn to go around it, in order to get to the other side… in the physical world, we tend to learn that fairly quickly… but emotionally and spiritually, not so much…some people can be hitting the same wall for years, all the while wondering why that wall just doesn’t move out of their way or complaining about that wall always being there… that’s when you hear the “ why does this always happen to me?” coming out of people’s mouths. And the answer is… that theres something that they’re supposed to learn, that they’re not learning … and until they learn it… they’re gonna keep hitting that wall!
So don’t hurry things. Just do your best, and the rest will fall into place. As long as you try your hardest, you will always end up where you were meant to be.