What of it?

What of this thing called faith? There are no words to convey the full meaning, simply because language does not offer them. A life in Christ is one of continually exploring one’s faith.

Faith is unexplainable until you start walking into the unseen. We can liken it to a house you have strolled past many times before yet never stopped. When you finally decide to enter, the rooms are dark. To bring in light, you must pull back the curtains, and as your eyes adjust, you begin to see the room you’re in—the colors, the carpet, the molding, the fixtures, and the furniture. The room is unfamiliar at first because you have only seen this house from the outside. After spending some time in the room, the setting becomes more familiar, comfortable and warm. And then, you notice a hallway and a door. Curious, you wish to know where the door leads and what the next room reveals. You follow this passageway to the next room, and after a time, you discover there are more rooms. You soon realize this is a very large house. Each room grants you what you are allowed to see. Every room provides a delight in something not before seen, a place to rest, to know the room, and an invitation to keep walking, to pass through the next door.

Walking into faith is not easy. Questions remain. With every unknown, we question everything. Some answers come, while others wait. God, the God we come to know, cannot be submitted to the intellect. This would be too formulaic, though this is often what we wish Him to be. To prove Him reduces Him.

Consternation pledges to accompany us. There is much we still do not understand, but grace teaches reliance. To remain obedient, to seek to know His nature, to do His will in discovery of that nature, these bring the peace and joy He promises. There is delight in the aha’s on this walk.

One of the problems on this walk through the house is that there is a mirror in every room. Every time God reveals a little more of Himself, we face a little more of ourself, things we do not wish to admit, what we wish to remain unseen. The least obvious good, the one separating us from God, from getting on with doing His will, is the belief in our own good. This is the first truth with which we must contend.

There is more. If there is a way back to God (and there is), the path is not in our being right, but in the sense of knowing God as He reveals himself through His word and the life experiences challenging our notions about Him. Being right is not the goal; being better is. Not better than the person beside us but better than the person we saw in the mirror this morning, the change God is working in us. Every step toward better is a step toward God, and better comes from God’s workshop, not man’s.