You have Monstrous Faith
Monstrous Faith? Right! Prove it to me.
By definition, faith is simply taking action on our hope. When hiking as a Scout, I tried to cross a muddy stretch by balancing on a narrow tree that had fallen across the wet patch. About halfway across, I started losing my balance and, in faith, grabbed a young tree that had grown over the muddy area. My hope was that it would keep me from slipping into the muck. Instead, it only slowed my collapse. With a bruised ego and a mud-caked jacket, I continued the hike with my fellow Scouts. But now I had no faith in young trees to support my weight.
You see, faith is simply taking action on our hope. Hope that another will be what we want them to be. Hope that something performs as we expect it will. Faith is simply the action we take based on our confidence in what we cannot quantify. You and I are people of mega-faith.
For instance, I use Waze for a driving app and my confidence or faith in Waze is about 95%. Now this is significant because I’m an OG who grew up using paper maps – yes, those archaic things that don’t tell you when to turn nor warn of police ahead. Now, unlike some people I know, I can drive without the app, but I do have a great deal of faith in the app. That’s because years ago I took a risk on what I had heard about the app and tried it. Other than occasionally telling me to turn after I had passed the street, I’ve only had a couple occasions where it failed to direct me to my destination.
Faith is the confidence we have in something that cannot be perceived with our senses, yet we can experience the results. I have no clue as to what my smart phone is doing nor how it gets the information for directions or even how it knows my precise location. I have been told that there are triangulation calculations going on between cell towers and a GPS satellite system, but all I can see or hear are the directions, “recalculating,” and a moving map on my phone. So, it is only by faith that I follow the directions. Faith in the TECHNOLOGY!
Are you starting to see that you are a person of mega-faith? If you follow that blue line on your app without question, then your faith in that technology is greater than mine as I still carry paper maps. Now, what about the faith you have in the driver of the car coming in the other direction, faith that if they were to cross those double yellow lines, the lines would grab their car and return it to their lane. That’s what those yellow painted lines do, right? Thus, you speed along in hope that they do not cross into your lane. And everyday of repeating your faith in those yellow lines increases your confidence. In a similar way, you have faith in the electronics operating your vehicle; faith that the tires were constructed in such a way as to keep traction on the road; faith that the gasoline is not tainted; and faith that the traffic signals are working correctly. And that is just the faith you and I exercise in driving.
I used to have confidence that the person driving behind me would stop when I stopped, but an accident a few years back has weakened that confidence and if I’m the first in line at a fresh redlight, I check my mirror for anyone that may be coming in “too hot.”
Am I starting to prove my assertion that you are a person of monstrous faith?
Are there other actions you take based only on hope?
What about the faith that you have in the food you eat? You have faith that what is printed on the outside is what you will find inside. You hope that it will taste good and, hours later, will not come out as urgent waddles to the toilet. Or what about your faith in the company that made the aspirin or cold medicine you take? Again, based on the recommendation of another and experience of its efficacy, your confidence in the producer of the medication increases- even when it is a generic label and particularly when it tastes like chalk because, well, you’ve been told its good for you.
What about your faith in the weather forecast? Oh, wait, that may only be an 80% confidence level. Perhaps not be a good example, but if you stop and think about it, there are many actions you take based on your hope that your decisions will end up good for you.
Are you starting to get that having monstrous faith is a common activity for each of us. Most of us have great faith in a multitude of things, and in people. Consider how many people you depend on today, hoping they will be the people they claim to be.
Are you starting to understand that it is not the faith that is significant, it is IN what or whom one has faith. And one’s actions demonstrate the confidence level they have in their hope.
Now, let’s consider the misconception that faith is strictly about God. If I had a twenty for every time I heard another say, “I wish I had your faith.”, I’d be rich. But they do already have my faith, just perhaps not in our Creator.
Faith in God simply means taking actions based on the hope or confidence that our Creator is real, is interested in our daily life, and is approachable. And faith, or confidence, in God is built the same way one builds confidence in the driving app, other drivers, or in our food. Here is a brief formula
KNOWLEDGE + RISK + ENCOURAGEMENT = INCREASED CONFIDENCE
KNOWLEDGE – Gained from personal study about God as illustrated by the stories of other’s experiences found in the Bible, in biographies, and those who are currently alive. Add to this one’s personal experiences based on previous steps of faith in God.
RISK – Choose to take a risk that stretches you just beyond your current comfort zone or confidence level.
ENCOURAGEMENT – Build a team of those who can encourage you to keep moving forward in the risk. Some of those encouragers may be historical while others may be currently battling alongside you. Don’t forget the Master Encourager, the Holy Spirit who is at work within you.
INCREASED CONFIDENCE – Your faith or confidence in Father has increased. Increasingly, that which seemed impossible is becoming common practice.
Now I will warn you, like that young tree that I depended on keeping me from falling into the mud, there have been many risks I have taken, and still take, that have not ended in the way I expected. There are numerous “clarifications” I continue to uncover.
At times, I read my own desires into what I consider a “promise” from God. Like when I expected Father to liberally give me wisdom for a situation and assumed that He would always direct me into a positive outcome. Not so. Jesus was led into the desert for 40 days of fasting by the Holy Spirit. He was led to the cross by the Spirit. In fact, Hebrews 12:2 states that it was the reward after the cross that led him through that suffering.
I also have come to better accept Father’s timing. I no longer despise that four letter word – “WAIT”. Sometimes it is because He is nurturing another in my corner of the garden and I’m part of their refining process. Or He needs to heal a wound in me before moving on. And at other times, He is simply waiting for me to obey, perhaps by submitting to Him or by forgiving another.
Additionally, I am better fathoming the role of resistance in the process of renewing my mind to desire what the Spirit desires. One of those who significantly helped move my faith forward put it this way:
“Resistance makes a man think new thoughts he never thought before. It makes a man ask questions he never asked before. It makes a man seek answers he never sought before. It makes a man beg God for help that he never before realized he needed. These quests, quests of the heart and soul, eventually make a man deeper, wider, taller.” (Randall Arthur, Wisdom Hunter)
Thus, this process of increasing one’s faith in Father includes increasing one’s comprehension of His nature while gaining experience in the process of putting off the old ways and putting on Christ.
