Faith

As usual, I prayed for a word for this year. It was rather (I felt) last minute and I couldn’t see where or how it was applicable when it arrived. 

Last year was “Rest”, and how appropriate that turned out to be.

This year? Faith.

This year has been an exercise and a half in faith. Not in the ways I anticipated.

I have rarely felt more alone and separated from God and unsure of what I believe or why. I have questioned my salvation more in the past year than in my lifetime as a Christian. I have been going through this alone since I haven’t been back at church since March last year, and I’m soul-hungry and lonely for fellowship or to have a good heart conversation about spiritual things.

I’m watching God move in many lives around me and wondering why it seems He’s stopped working in mine.

Why all the heart wracking tears, prayers and face to the floor is left in the silence of God.

Why my health and mental health continue to decline, leaving me unable to care for the basics of those around me and increasingly, myself.

My family is still broken beyond repair, despite hours of soul-wracking tears and prayers. Despite every new year’s prayer that this will be the year that heals.

My immediate family nearly fell apart this year. I was forced to give up politics. Singing became more difficult. Trying to explain what was going on in my life to those close to me became impossible - either they disagreed, or didn’t understand, or had their own problems and couldn’t cope.

Words cannot describe what I went through this year when every time I opened social media, I was confronted with another baby celebration, announcements, births. People who were married three or four years after me on their second child or third pregnancy. Even miscarriages. Selfish, I know. I resent it. I resent the cause of it. I’m left angry and yelling and self-blaming for what’s beyond my control, and spending a great deal of energy on trying to live around it.

I wake up late in depression and go to sleep to face nightmares. 

Where is God in all of this? 

I’ve been given words every year. Love. Trust. Hope. Rest. Now faith.

It’s been the year where I’ve really tried to understand the essence of what faith is, and I keep coming back to Hebrews 11:1.

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. / Now faith is the assurance of what we hope for and the certainty of what we do not see.”

Faith is not the flimsy grasp of a wispy mythology. It’s not a hope or a wish.

It’s a certainty, a substance, a confidence, a knowledge. It’s an evidence of what we do not see.

Faith is not just reaching out in the darkness and hoping; faith is reaching out in the darkness in trust and grasping the unseen hand of God.

Faith is not based on my feelings. Faith is based on a reality far beyond me.

Faith is knowing that in the face of God’s silence, He is there and there is a purpose beyond what I can see - even if I struggle to believe it any more.

Faith is a journey and a gift, a fruit of the Spirit. If you’re struggling right now, reach out and touch His hand, and know that He is there despite your feelings.

The battles I’m fighting are unseen, and I can’t share them. I want to run from them back into my old broken patterns and habits, but I can’t. Loyalty to an ideal helped the mentally broken part - the Hand of God is holding me.

There was a saying my mom used to quote: “God never calls us to happiness; He calls us to faithfulness.”

It’s true. 

But in the unhappiness, in the loneliness, in the confusion of the silence of God and the outstanding prayers - He brings peace. He brings joy unspeakable and full of glory. There are literally no words to describe it. Some days He lifts the curtain and I see the joy of the cross, so very slightly. The veil thins between this world and the next and, in my lonely way, He reminds me why I must keep on. 

No, God doesn’t call us to happiness, but He gives us joy. Joy in ways we can hardly understand. Glimpses of eternity in a world of pain. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit, and, like peace, it can enter your heart when your tears are raining down.

I don’t know where I’m going or where He’s taking me next. I don’t know how much longer life will be this way, but I know He is with me.

There is joy in the journey. 

Light in the darkness.

Peace in the pain.

He is with you. 

And of that, I am certain.

https://youtu.be/P3CVlv2dz3w