When faith hurts!

            If there’s one thing I’ve learned over these past depressing years, it’s that faith is messy sometimes.  Faith hurts sometimes.  And we might get upset with “faith” because it’s not doing what we want it to do.

            But the thing is … we don’t have faith in God because it’s fun or because it gives us an emotional high or because it makes life the way we want it to be.  We have faith in God because He is real.  Because He is good and faithful, even when life is messy and it hurts and when prayers don’t work. 

            And I think our faith becomes more real and strong as we face the hard times and trials. 

            It’s easy to “have faith” when life is going like we want it to.  But that’s not really faith, now is it?  It’s gratitude that life is good.  It’s happiness because we are getting what we want.  (And many times, it’s idolatry in disguise.) 

            But when the trials come, we have to struggle with our views of God and ourselves and life and faith.  Heartbreaking trials gradually, painfully move us from a naïve, untested, “gimme” faith in a version of God that we created in our minds … to a genuine, hard-won faith in God as He is - a God who is mysterious, who can’t be manipulated by us, who is far above us, who has His own plans and timing, and who is sovereign over all, knowing when to say “Yes” and when to say “No.”  Through the trials, we learn who we really are and we learn to have faith in Him for the God that He really is.  And that is a faith that helps us cling through the hard times.

            If we can’t say “Blessed be Your name” during the hardest trials then we don’t really mean it during the easier times either. 

            If we won’t follow Him when the road gets rough - if we turn our backs on Him when we get hurt or things don't go our way - then we were never really following Him to begin with.  

            (An excerpt from other posts - something I need to be reminded of often.)