Journey in Faith
Spirit, thank You. Thank You for this moment of peace. When I find
myself off in some dark corner, remind me that this ‘place’ DOES
indeed exist. Help me drop to my knees and surrender to You
so that You can bring me back here with You. Convince me that
it is HERE that I have
freedom. It is HERE that I can be intellectually confused AND
Peaceful. It is HERE that I can rest. And in resting, it is
then FROM here that I
can reach out and share with others the Grace that You have
given me.
Let Faith be my anchor. Help me use my mind to serve others, in turn serving
You. Remind me that I have nothing to PROVE, for the real Truths I cannot
prove. They are Yours and You have already made them complete. I need not
discover the Truth. It has already been given to me in faith. It is obviously
too big for me to grasp. Why must I be so prideful to think I must comprehend
it for it to exist? Remind me that I don’t even understand how it
is that I love my wife and my boys; let alone the complexities and balance
of the universe. My love for my family makes no real sense to me, but I
know it simply IS. That seems to be what all the important Truths are about.
They are not things to master and comprehend. Instead they are gifts of
Grace to accept and nourish. I NEVER question my love for any one of my
boys, yet it is a complete mystery to me. Its origin is from somewhere
beyond and its existence is neither something I can clearly explain or
even comprehend. I cannot quantify it. I don’t love one son more
than another. I can’t control it. There is no way for me to turn
it on or turn it off … it simply IS.
Let my love for You follow this same example. Let my trust in You be so
far outside of myself that I could not possibly come to understand it intellectually.
Let my love for You be as innocent and certain as my boys’ love for
me. If there is one thing that I have done right it is that, through Your
Grace, I have truly expressed my love to them. Remind me that You have
done the same for me. Through all my mistakes and weaknesses, they know
something greater than me exists between us. And in my imperfection You
have used me to share enough of Your True Love with them for them to be
certain of its security. How miraculous that they can see and accept my
love beneath the clouds of my failings. Likewise, help me look beneath
my broken self to see the Love between us.
I know I fail … continuously. It is part of the human experience.
Just remind me that this does not destroy our relationship. You created
me and love me as I am. Help me realize this so that I can spend more time
graciously enjoying life rather than resenting myself. Before I DO anything,
You already Love me. Remind me that it is from here that I can move into
action as opposed to believing my actions will somehow manufacture Your
Love.
Thank You for life. Thank You for Love, for Grace, for Hope. Thank You
for this mysterious Faith that is the only thing which can go beyond my
own existence and unite us. It is inconceivable to consider a bridge that
can reach so far beyond me that it can connect me to an infinite Being.
It must somehow cross from one domain to another. It is here in this place
of bewilderment rather than understanding that I come to accept the Living
Word. Intellectual understanding cannot bring me here. It simply cannot
go beyond me, yet I somehow ‘know’ there is something greater.
And so, I conclude that I have not found Truth, but it is finding me.
Through The Spirit It presents Itself as both man and God. It is simultaneously
both lowly and infinite. And this is where my faith in Christ Jesus begins.
In all my searching, in all my confusion, in all my frustration … it
is the only Truth that has presented itself to me. It is the only Truth
that has come from outside myself in search of me. To think I can find
Truth would be like asking a blind man the color of his shirt. He may know
his shirt is yellow, but only if someone he trusts tells him it is so.
He can only seek this truth by reaching beyond his limitations and having
faith in the answer that he receives. Likewise, with as much genuine humility
as I could find, I cried out to God for the Truth. The answer that found
its way into my heart (or maybe actually OUT from within my heart) was
this:
I am indeed incomplete. The emptiness that I sense within me is real.
Life experience has shown me that no matter what I try, it’s impossible
to fill this void myself. God offered Himself in human flesh as His Son,
Jesus. In this form He is both human and divine, providing the perfect
vessel to bridge the seemingly infinite gap between us. Intellectually,
I am confused about the vast array of spiritual inspirations in the world.
Within the Christian faith I am disheartened by the divisions throughout,
and even within, so many denominations. Scripture often inspires, yet often
confuses me. And the inconsistencies seem to go on and on … My list
of doubts and concerns regarding my faith could fill a library. But these
are intellectual challenges that my ego constantly echoes to try to distract
me from my spirit. My spirit KNOWS God because my spirit is connected to
Him. My spirit KNOWS that He is ‘ginormous’ ;-) My spirit KNOWS
that He is beyond my intellectual grasp. Yet my spirit accepts the Grace
of Faith that He has given me.
And this is as far as I can take you. Faith is much deeper, but words
cannot go there. Language and human thoughts are locked within my mind,
but faith reaches beyond this to my spirit. In this place, ‘knowing’ is
no longer intellectual, but instead resembles something more like acceptance.
I see my limits, but simply ‘know’ there is more. So, I cry
out and then listen … Blind yet curious, I go beyond my understanding
and ask the color of my shirt. God tells me it’s yellow, but to ‘know’ this
I must trust Him. Who knows, chances are my shirt includes an array of
intricate floral patterns with a rainbow of colors. This would represent
the limitless bounds of my continuously growing faith. But today, that
would only confuse me more, so God provides me with a less accurate Truth
that I can grasp … And I am confident that today my shirt is indeed
mostly yellow.
Resting in this spiritual knowledge is not ignorant. I’ve come to
learn that it is the only thing that actually makes sense. Past experience
has clearly demonstrated that relying on my spiritual knowledge always
brings me to the place of Peace that I so desperately seek. And from here,
I can use my intellectual tools to help navigate my human experience. If
I used the word wisdom to describe the insights gained during every life
experience; If I were to say that these insights – though sometimes
not immediately obvious – are continually leading me closer to God,
I could conclude that my spiritual wisdom grows through a recursive process
something like this:
- Curious, ambitious, confused, overwhelmed, frustrated, fearful, desperate,
defeated, hopeful, slightly faithful, slightl peaceful ...
- Which leads me back to curious and starts the cycle all over
again
- For each progression, I now add the word More :
More curious, ... , more fearful, more desperate, to once again
defeated, but then more hopeful, slightly more faithful,
slightly more peaceful ...
This is as close as I can get to any type of explanation because my spirit
lives beyond language. To me, trusting my spirit is, in turn, trusting
God because it is my connection to Him. I don’t understand it and
I obviously have a difficult time trying to explain it, but somehow I know
that my spirit carries my true wisdom. Further, it seems that the wisest
decision it makes is to stay connected to God, which truly is exactly all
that I’ve been seeking. Completely caught off guard, my intellect
is stunned to see that the further I searched, the further away I continued
to move. Finally humbled by this realization … Finally exhausted
and defeated, my intellect (my self-righteous ego) had no logical choice
but to surrender to my spirit, which readily released the Grace of God
that it has so patiently been carrying all along. Each time I trust my
spirit, Grace flows and Peace follows. Until God tells my spirit otherwise,
this is where I’ve decided to let my truth rest and my wisdom continue
to grow.
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