Skip to main content

Both Directions Require Faith

             Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1)

Today’s verse was chosen by Biblegateway.com, and I think it worthwhile to consider what Henry Blackabee said in Experiencing God. Summarizing a large part of the book, he said that God reveals Himself where He is working and in His work. This produces in us a crisis of faith. Will we join Him? What can we do? The crisis calls on us to make adjustments to our lives. What this looks like precisely differs from person to person and example to example. In other words, it’s deeply personal, spiritual, and situational.

The eleventh chapter of Hebrews is about giants of faith who did great things because of their faith. Sometimes they received what they wanted. Sometimes, they didn’t. But sometimes, I think we honor them for their faith because they’re in the “Hall of Faith” without really thinking about them, and that can lead to bad thinking about faith and about ourselves. Sometimes, I think we get the idea that we’re supposed to walk through life without any crises of faith, without any adjustments in our lives. It’s all supposed to be easy - not a cloud on the horizon of our faith in any direction. But that’s not what I’ve found as a general rule. I’ve found what Mr. Blackabee and Viktor Frankl described in Man’s Search for Meaning. There is a gap between incident and response. Mr. Frankl called it reaction. That is when we have a crisis of faith. Adjustment is our response, and as C. S. Lewis pointed out, it’s either toward becoming “a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.” (Weight of Glory) Both directions require faith, but only one is wise.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

Listen To Him

              The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him . (Deuteronomy 18:15)           Today, we switch from Jesus’ claims of “I am” to prophecies made about Him. My Bible platform is starting in Deuteronomy. I’d start in Genesis, where we would learn that the one who would save us would be a descendant of Eve (Genesis 3:15), of Noah (by default), Abram and Sara(Genesis 12:1-3). Isaac (Genesis 17:19), Jacob (Genesis 25:23), Judah (Genesis 29:8), and David (II Samuel 7:12-16). There were also references to a new covenant (Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:22-32). In addition, there were prophecies about when and where the prophet/Messiah would be born and what would happen to him.           Of course, naysayers will claim that Jesus’ life was retrofitted or reverse enginee...
Post a Comment
Read more