Enter: Faith

I appreciate all of you who are reading this blog.  It keeps me accountable to writing.  And I’m also thankful I have the opportunity to write since it is opening up great conversations with Kim and I as well as many of you.

As Kim and I have been journeying the past few weeks through some of these blog entries we’ve begun to realize the vast expanse of who we are versus who we want to be on a spiritual level.  We’ve known all along that we’re missing spiritual significance in our lives, but now as we sift through these questions, we’re getting the opportunity to question our faith in a healthy way.  We’re truly confronting our doubts and concerns about who God is compared to who everyone else thinks he is. 

Most of you know that Kim and I come from opposite ends of the spectrum of Christian households.  I grew Baptist while Kim grew up Catholic.  Our families both had us attend church as we grew up and so we were exposed to many of the customs, traditions, and beliefs of these religions.  Unfortunately, for both of us not much time or attention was spent on why we believe these things or do things this way.  No matter how much faith was emphasized as a personal relationship with God, we find that we still now are out of touch.  It’s still about traditional beliefs, ideology, and theology.  Where is the relationship with God on a personal level?

From our point of view, there is no obvious bridge between what we read in scripture and the church as we see it today.  The songs we sing, the sermons we here, the small groups we participate in…it’s like we’re all grasping for a faith that doesn’t exist yet we keep on believing, keep on attending, and ignore the obvious question: WHAT THE HECK ARE WE DOING? 

Seriously, have I missed something?  Because the God of Joshua who destroyed the wall which separated His people from the promised land, or of Moses who parted the red sea, or Jesus who healed and fed thousands and made wine from water and caused an earthquake and dead people to come alive when He died...I don’t see THAT God on Sunday morning.

So where is God?  And what does active faith really look like in our lives?  Both of our families have been involved in church, serving in some way or another, maybe volunteering in some form or fashion, had fathers that worked to bring in the earnings for the family…but for the most part, looking back, we can’t really see a difference between the families we grew up in and the families of any other good American family, regardless of faith.  And we don’t see a difference in ourselves either.  We like to think we’re different, but are we really?

So, we’re on a mission to understand what living out of faith means.  Does it mean that we have the usual American lifestyle but pray before meals?  Does it mean that we think about God more?  Or are there SIGNFICANT differences in our actions? 

We think it should be the latter.  But we’re only beginning to understand what this means.  Our prayer is that we hear God, and that He teaches us to live a life out of faith.  We pray that we would dare enough to ask God for the impossible in our lives and the lives of others.  And we pray that God truly is the God we’ve hoped for, prayed for, longed for, and much much more than we have ever imagined.  I pray He’s not the God of Sunday morning but the Lord Most High.  Lord, please may we know You as You truly are.  Amen.