Faith In The Fog

What is faith anyway?  I’ve heard that word my whole life while living in the Bible belt but I really never knew what it meant until I swallowed my pride and started following Jesus around 5 years ago.  Faith is defined in Hebrews 11:1 (NKJV) as “… the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  We know that when we follow Jesus we are doing so in faith because we hope the words of scripture are true and base our hope on the evidence of Jesus Christ and his working in our lives.  Following Jesus in of itself is a huge act of faith.  In my personal story I went from being an atheist with a huge chip on my shoulder towards the church to a sold out child of God desperately trying to follow after the Jesus that made me into a new creation.

Faith observed outside of the context of a transformed heart may look crazy to someone not following Jesus.  Think about it.  Faith in Jesus makes you do some pretty crazy things if you’re really following Him.  Faith makes you open your mouth to speak to strangers about an invisible God, faith makes you obey the commandments derived from a book you hope was inspired by divinity and faith demands you live a live devoted to the savior.  Faith makes people leave jobs, countries, comfort, security and any slew of other situations.  We know we are called to an active faith because as James says in the 2^nd chapter of his epistle, “faith without works is dead.”

So if we aren’t active in our faith it is literally just a cold corpse of noise and ritual.  We even can go so far as to say that without faith and faithful service to the Lord that we are disobedient and potentially not even followers of Christ.  Hebrews 11:6 (NIV) says, “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.” 

Many times in our culture of keeping up with the Jones’ I often struggle with faith because things aren’t working out the way I thought they should or I forget somehow that my purpose on this earth is to please the Father in heaven.  When I let my emotions overwhelm me sometimes I begin to question my faith and thus I am being disobedient because in those moments I am denying the divinity and omnipotence of my creator.

So how can we know that we are being obedient?  How can we truly please the Father?  What happens when our hearts seem to have a fog covering them and faith almost seems to be forced?  What do we do when we just don’t feel like following Jesus anymore?

 Jesus has something to say about this in the Gospel of Matthew.  He says in chapter 6 verse 33 “ But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”  At the end of the day the only thing that matters is doing the Father’s business, having the faith to carry it out and allowing Him to richly bless our hearts by our acts of service as well as adoration for Him.  My bet is that if you’re like me and you start to spiral down into the land of self-destruction you’re just spending too much time being “me-focused” and not enough time seeking the kingdom of God.  I’ve definitely learned in my short walk with Jesus that the moments where I’ve felt the most alive I have had the least in regards to possessions and the most in regards to purposeful engagement with the father and His church.

What am I trying to say in this blog?  Have faith, just believe!  It’s not always going to be easy but Jesus finishes what he starts and if he began a good work in you He will see it out to completion.  When you start to doubt, do as Peter did and reach your hand out to Jesus and let Him pull you out of the storm.  Stop worrying and start walking by faith.  Jesus loves you!