It’s (Not) Over!

September 19, 2013September 17, 2014 Michael4 Comments

Being a Christian doesn’t exempt one from trouble. It comes to us all—trouble independent of our involvement, trouble seen and unforeseen, trouble simply unwanted. But we have to deal with it and in a manner that keeps us mindful of the Lord’s sufferings for us. Paul calls such a communion (Ph. 3:10).

Trouble is a product of life. Things and situations go wrong in a complex world for many reasons. Scripture agrees with this but explains that trouble is also used by God to produce quality faith in us. There is probably no better encouraging text on the purpose of trial in the Christian life than Hebrews 12:5-7 (NKJV):

And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: “My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.” If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten?

♦♦♦♦

God assures us of the value of handling trouble in a godly way. But let me tell you what really bothers me: when a sincere brother, sister, or preacher prays that a person’s trouble would end or declares that it is indeed over. I promise you that I’m not crazy. No one cares to have trouble, and sometimes I really want mine to go away. But I’ve watched myself grow more irritated and intolerant of those who lack insight about hardship.

Why does it rile me so? Sometimes people don’t have a wholesome biblical perspective on suffering, while others are plainly arrogant. Some people view all trouble as evil and from the Devil, but some things are just the kinks of life. Furthermore, if we can ascertain that trouble is from Satan, we can rightly resist it in Jesus’s name. But we’ll never be able resist trouble God permits in our lives.

♦♦♦♦

I think John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress gets it right: our way is a path to Heaven, and sometimes that path passes through difficult places. Life is not carefree or ideal. So do we fear or just run off the path or turn back when we encounter trouble? The people who see a devil behind every problem don’t discern that God has a plan with their trouble. They never learn how trouble draws them closer to God and enhances their trust in him. They fail to see that God tests the good in us.

Then there are those who make declarations and literally command God, Satan, or the trouble. They may know nothing about a person’s cares, except that in their pious, spiritual estimation they just need to behave or desist. But they don’t have a right to declare a person’s trouble finished and are truly insensitive (sometimes manipulative) and out of order to do so.

♦♦♦♦

When we’re submitted to God, our troubles will be over when God says they’re over and have achieved the purpose for which he designed them. We would do well to embrace the journey and the lessons it brings.

What we may be telling about ourselves is that we’re not resolved to take up our crosses for Jesus. We may be revealing how attached we’ve become to society and sanctify our covetousness at the expense of the trouble God allows to divest us of spiritual impurity. If we’re going to be like Jesus, let’s remember “a disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master” (Matt. 10:24, NKJV).

In Praise of the One Who Guides

September 16, 2013September 16, 2013 Michael4 Comments

The Lord will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore. (Ps. 121:7-8)

Have you ever known you had lost your way or fallen out of the will of God? Let me share that moment in my life and God’s providential yet strangely dramatic way of pulling me back on course.

I returned from work overseas in 2004 and started searching for a job. But the economy was tanking and my hopes shriveled into a horrendously long unemployment. Frustrated and determined to make something happen, I decided to return to retail management with the drugstore where I had worked eight years beginning in high school. But it would be somewhere away from my stagnant hometown region.

So I went hunting. I analyzed cities and matched them with a list of personal criteria. I finally settled on Indianapolis. This would be my life’s first throw-a-dart-at-the-map-and-go moment. I then emailed a district manager in the area about the possibility of a management position, and in one day I received a reply telling me to come and interview.

Well I got the job and things were mostly fine, except one unsettling thing. I would often walk out of my apartment headed to my car thinking, Michael, why are you here? Away from home on my own in the city of my choice, enjoying my independence, yet I sensed that I was out of the will of God.

Time passed until one momentous day—Thursday, June 8^th(2006), around 12:30 p.m. Let’s call it the “intervention.”

It was my day off. I still remember it: I was sitting on the couch watching the French Open tennis tournament. Someone knocked at the door, which was unusual; I opened it and greeted a professional plumber not part of the complex staff, even more unusual. He talked to me about the laundry room just a few feet away; it had been flooded for some time.

He explained that all signs pointed to a blockage most likely directly beneath my kitchen. And the only way to reach it was tear out the floor. Action needed to be taken immediately lest it led to further trouble.

The office offered me two options: place all my things in a provided storage pod and stay in a hotel for a few weeks or move out without penalty and receive my deposit back—oh, I needed to be decided today; the work needed to start tomorrow.

In previous weeks my sister had talked to me about returning home. My finances were slowing sliding into perdition. Bills were stacking up and the rent was now difficult to pay. My sister gladly offered to let me stay at her place and insisted that I come. But I resisted because I didn’t wish to be there and felt that I could get a handle on the situation.

For any normal person, moving, at all, would have certainly been an inconvenience, but they would have gone on and moved into the hotel. Who could possibly pack up and move without notice? But when the plumber left, I closed the door and thought, Could this be God giving me a way out? I seriously considered returning to Virginia.

I cannot express the stress I endured for the next 12 hours. This decision seemed to throw my world into a tailspin, and I was a basket case. The management nagged me about my decision. Then, I wondered how would I leave my job or haul away my belongings if I indeed decided to leave? Staying was the reasonable (and sane) thing to do. Any image of a nervous wreck you can come up with, I fit the bill that day. At one point, I sat in my car in tears, beaten merciless by a pressing decision.

(And why does it seem God isn’t speaking whenever you need to clearly hear him?)

By 4 p.m. or so I called the management and told them that I would move away. I could hear the stun in the woman’s silence. In fact, in the hours following the conversation with the plumber, I had a terribly difficult conversation with my boss and I borrowed money from home to rent a U-Haul and car hitch.

By 2 a.m. my entire apartment was packed in boxes; at 6 a.m. I loaded the truck; at 8 a.m. I dropped off the house key; then I had my car hitched to the truck and returned my work keys; and in 600 miles and about 24 hours after my decision to leave, my life had totally changed.

The Providence of God

I apologize for the details, but they mean so much to the process God used to teach me what I share now. I’m sure you understand.

Romans 8:28 explains that God works together with us to bring about his good purpose. But Paul also explains in the preceding verses that the Spirit helps us in our weakness; that we don’t always know how to pray as we should, so he helps us.

I knew I was on the fringes of God’s will just being in Indiana. Moreover, I experienced the worst spiritual slump of my life during that time, and vice grew like weeds. I didn’t like myself. Yes, I was weak, but thank God I was never lost to him.

Just maybe God was in the details of my bizarre departure, you think? I was out of place geophysically and spiritually. God knew that I would have never left Indianapolis without the rushed decision coupled with my growing financial burden.

I heard later that people at my workplace assumed I was running away from some type of trouble. No, I recognize it as divine providence, God’s guidance and preservation over his creation, including human life. It is his sovereignty over situations and even evil that ultimately results in the fulfillment of his will and good purpose. It is as much mysterious as it is pervasive and great.

The providence of God supplies us with confidence that when we veer off course, he watches over and steers us back into the right lane. But his way with us may not always be conventional.

Sometimes we get a glimpse of the value of his saving hand. Psalm 116:8 says, “For you, Lord, have delivered me from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.” Perhaps there was a financial collapse ahead of me or worse. Where in your life do you perceive God saved you? Some of us, by now, might have been in grave troubles or even dead, but God intervened. Is he not worthy of praise?

The psalmist continues (vv. 12-13):

What shall I return to the Lord for all his goodness to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.

Glorious Grace (and the Mad Defender)

September 12, 2013August 9, 2014 Michael2 Comments

I often browse the comments to online stories I’ve read. Others’ perspectives offer me a fuller picture of the topic and help me solidify what I feel about it. But I must confess that reading Comments sections is now against my better judgment.

People are mean and crude and vile. I mean, Whoa! I find myself reeling at folk who allow their deepest and worst reservations to boil out when it is entirely unnecessary (is it ever necessary?) and uncalled for.

But sadder is when I read Christian material, including on Facebook, and find comments of the same tone. No, they’re not lewd or evil, but biting and unloving.

What I discover about Christian people in these comment sections is the almost irresistible need to call people out—for a different thought or belief pattern; for doctrinal stance; for needed correction on a matter. And the arrogance! I’m convinced that Pharisees yet live.

I’m not sitting here donned in the cape and spandex shorts that I wear (ahem) when I’m online crusading against ungraciousness. But sometimes I really do feel like a caped crusader when I use my night vision goggles to pierce the darkness of smug remarks or my brass knuckles to beat the sense into—gosh, I apologize! I get a little carried away.

Jesus, Full of Grace and Truth

John describes Jesus this way: “and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (1:14, NASB). The splendor and renown of Jesus lay in his plenitude of grace and truth.

The people I encounter online always seem a little one-sided. They get the truth part; they know the Bible, its doctrines, the ins and outs of church, all necessary parts of the whole. But the missing element always seems to be graciousness—the kindness. It’s the problem of graceless Christians that Phil Yancey so lucidly describes in his What’s So Amazing About Grace?

Why is this so hard for some of us?

When I daydream about life on the scene with Jesus, I sometimes envy the disciples who got to watch Jesus model how human life should be lived. I’m sure the time wasn’t as meaningful to them in the moment as when they had the chance to look back on the three years spent with him. Still, they experienced a pinnacle moment in human history that I wish I could have now with Jesus, knowing what I do about his requirements for me.

I say that because I truly strive to live for God. I am blessed to have a stronger knowledge of theology and spirituality than many people around me. That’s no banner I wave but, in my opinion, just part of my devotion. And that is my point; I hope you don’t miss it. If I should say that I have truth, by which I live and that serves the kingdom, its ultimate purpose is fulfilled only when it humbly seats me before the God I love so that he can transform me, fellowship with me, and be glorified in me.

We forget that we still have to love people, and it is part of our worship to God.

So many people act like God’s bodyguards…um, that ain’t necessary. I think he gets along fine. Oh, let me fend off some of you: I understand the need for apologetics; I don’t forget that our God of love is a God who loves justice; so forth and so on. I GET IT. (Putting my boomerang down.)

But what would help our credibility as Christians in today’s society is getting Jesus’s words out of our heads and into our hearts: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). Christ-followers devouring one another is not an advertisement for Christianity; instead, it’s a warning to stay away.

Grace-Filled Religion

I’ll wrap this up by painting a picture of what graciousness looks like. You add your own illustration. Let’s begin this way: Being graceful is…

Living honestly toward God, oneself, and others.
Acting on the behalf of others without expecting anything in return.
Sincerely praying for people.
Guarding your tongue regarding others and matters.
Living toward people with service to God in mind.
Thinking well of others and offering them the benefit of doubt.
Truly loving people regardless of who or what they are.
Allowing the Word of God to alter our behavior.
Bearing the courage to tackle our prejudices and reservations head-on.
Knowledge of how to live decently toward others.
Refusing to be jaded and negative.
The choice to be good to people when they don’t deserve it.
Preferring others and genuinely caring for their wellbeing.
Doing to others as you would have them do to you.
Cultivating the fruit of the Spirit.

How well do you show grace to others?

“I am Square,” Said the Circle

September 3, 2013August 9, 2014 Michael4 Comments

(Look carefully) CC BY-NC, zorro013, Flickr — (Look carefully)
CC BY-NC, zorro013, Flickr

More commonly you’ll read in an article or hear someone on television say something like this: “I believe it’s important for you to unashamedly live your truth” or “I have become more successful as I’ve discovered what is real for me.” What is alarming is to hear Christian people pick up this notion.

The “live your truth” idea is a fashion of moral relativism, which purports that there is no absolute moral law that objectively applies to everyone everywhere at any time. It’s a “have it your way” philosophy for which there is no right way and belongs to a secular humanist worldview that shuts God out and elevates the value of humans and human contribution.

Apart from the impossibility of living strictly by relativist notions (what happens when my relativism conflicts with your relativism and whose is right?), live your truth people or “truthers” have to deceive themselves to believe that there do not exist moral and ethical boundaries regarding what they ought and ought not be or do. The argument is simply impossible to overcome logically. It becomes slightly easier, however, when God or a moral lawgiver is excised.

What the Ducklings Teach Us

In psychology the term imprinting is used to describe a period or stage in the life of a person or animal, generally young, when behavior is acquired from its parents or perceived parent. We’ve all learned how crucial it is for certain animals to be with their parents after birth and not with humans or inanimate objects that they could take to be their parent.

The young one’s identity and safety are at stake, so it’s important for it to grow up to live and act as it should and not as it might wrongly think of itself. A boy that would be raised by apes never becomes an ape and certainly no Tarzan; instead, he lives as a severely limited human.

Christian people who sincerely pose as truthers are confused. To start, Christians believe in an open system where God is real and acts providentially in the world and for human life. Christians also believe that God is the only moral lawgiver and that his ways are essentially “written in the wind” and apply equally to all humanity and always have. Humanity, although ingenious and capable of great good, is morally fallen and gains spiritual significance as it adheres to God’s moral and ethical duties.

God has never told us to discover what is right for us but to learn his ways, understand his truth, know his will. We are to be holy as he is and lovingly do his bidding. He stands as the rightful imprint of our lives, for we bear his moral image. We walk the way he walks, exactly how he walks, and no further than where he walks. There is no place for “our truth” because we have none to offer. The Battle Hymn of the Republic has it right—“His truth is marching on!”

Further, it’s inadvisable to define ourselves by things we discover about ourselves—what if it is unbecoming or antagonistic to God’s will for us? This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t learn more about who we are, our strengths and weaknesses or the issues or vices that operate in our lives. But it does mean that what we discover is placed under the lordship of Christ and either serves his will for us or is diligently eliminated from our hearts.

Why Being Good Doesn’t Cut It

August 30, 2013August 30, 2013 Michael8 Comments

Segovia Castle, Segovia Spain
CC BY-NC, ktran_wz, Flickr

The following poignant words belong to Dietrich Bonhoeffer from his classic, The Cost of Discipleship. He details the believer’s righteousness:

The source of the disciple’s life lies exclusively in his fellowship with Jesus Christ. He possesses his righteousness only within that association, never outside it. That is why his righteousness can never become an objective criterion to be applied at will. He is a disciple not because he possesses a new standard, but only because of Jesus Christ, the Mediator and very Son of God. That is to say, his righteousness is hidden from himself in fellowship with Jesus. He cannot, as he could once, be a detached observer of himself and judge himself, for he can only see Jesus, and be seen by Him, judged by Him, and reprieved by Him. It is not an approved standard of righteous living that separates a follower of Christ from the unbeliever, but it is Christ who stands between them.

What I hope you gather from these words is the difference between salvation and human goodness. Expounding upon this quote in my “Reflections On Evangelism,” I stated and restate here, “This is why merely good people don’t get to Heaven. Our best efforts and supreme moral good is worthless to make any difference for our salvation (Isa. 64:6)—and so is a righteousness given by God should we ever try to divorce it from Jesus. The righteousness which is from God ceases to be when we try to take credit for it. Jesus is everything in the ongoing conversion process, for even our confession is by the Holy Spirit.”

Ascending the Hill of the Lord

The rich young ruler (Matt. 19) approached Jesus with an epithet—Good Teacher—and Jesus checked him on the spot. Jesus challenged his reference to him being good, the word used conveying essential goodness or goodness by nature and only in relation to God. “Why do you speak to me in glowing, divine terms but view me as a mere mortal?” Jesus wasn’t trying to vindicate his deity but reprove the man’s flattery and high-mindedness and underscore his need for simplicity.

The more sobering aspect of Jesus’s challenge and expressed humility is the glance we get at the incredibly steep climb to God’s righteousness. God is utterly right (morally pure) and distinct from every other thing (holy); his perfection is the ground of human morality and ethics. Objective moral values exist and they proceed from the character of God.

Furthermore, only God is intrinsically good and of inherent worth. Every other thing derives its value from him. He created the cosmos and deemed it good because it, as it could only be, proceeded from his plenitude of perfect goodness.

One who says “Well I’m a good person” and claims his or her goodness to be deserving of God’s favor…his Heaven…asserts a personal righteousness that even Jesus dared not avow—and he came to fulfill the law of God. In effect, these (prideful) people argue that they have breached the high walls of God’s moral standards, satisfy a compendium of requirements for humankind, and are so entitled to his fellowship.

Really? Just like that? People approach human royalty with some trepidation; God is infinitely beyond their worth. Is there no reverence? Even the angels terrify humans! God is holy. This position makes me think of insects flying into the zapper! Good people just don’t understand their moral trespass and God’s holiness.

You see, Jesus came to tell us that there is nothing we can do about our moral shortcoming. We simply won’t scale that wall, even with our best effort. But Jesus can get to God and get us to God—and make any goodness of ours a servant of God’s holiness.

This is about spiritual transformation, not degrees of right and wrong and ticking off our moral checklists. We have a sin problem and salvation is the answer. Salvation is the flood of God’s holiness and goodness—all that we lack—surging into us, renovating us body, soul, and spirit. Mere goodness cannot achieve that.

John the Baptist

August 27, 2013January 26, 2014 Michael7 Comments

John the Baptist—the more I think of him the more I consider how his peculiar upbringing must have resembled Jesus’s.

The archangel Gabriel had detailed John’s life and purpose to his father Zechariah in the temple. John would be great and greatly used by God. Certainly Zechariah and Elizabeth were proud to know this, declared by the chief emissary of Heaven. “He will be a joy and delight to you,” Gabriel had promised.

But I wonder what became of their mood as John grew. This son of the priest bore a deep spirituality, but did it look like it was going off the rails as it evolved? Did his attitude toward Israel, fierce message of repentance, and uncustomary baptism of Jews seem radical to his parents? And were they maxed out and questioning God when John left the comfort of home for the wilderness, a preaching ascetic and possible embarrassment to his father?

I don’t know. Perhaps Zechariah had learned well from his first bout of unbelief and muteness and fully trusted despite his concerns. Furthermore, how do we respond to our relatives and acquaintances when their pattern of life or spirituality takes turns that throw our minds into tailspins? It can be scary to watch.

Everything’s Gonna Be All Right

Most of us haven’t had the assurance of an angel that our Johnny was gonna be okay. It would be great if there were a way to be certain that the people we love would turn out all right in their emotional and spiritual development. Since there isn’t, we have to do the next best things, which I will explain.

Concerns or problems do not exist in vacuums; people are involved. We must remember that dealing with potential issues is necessarily relational. We must avail ourselves to people about whom we have concerns. No one appreciates being viewed as a problem or problematic. Even mentally ill people deserve the respect of being treated as persons.

True care for people makes it easier for us to hear them, see the issue fully or discern whether there really is one, and offer our knowledge and counsel. We cannot help people we do not love.

Moreover, we must sometimes release people to discover their own way. This can be hard but none of us like hearing stories about folk hard-pressed by religious rearing who rebel. We would never want to create haters of God.

Freedom grants a person the ability to detach from all he or she knows to rummage through the piles of acquired wisdom and decide for themselves what they believe—and we should respect a person’s right to think and choose for themselves. Joshua expresses this marvelously: “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served…or the gods…in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (24:15).

We should not view this negatively, as though we release a person to their doom. This is to forget the providence of God. Sometimes people go through periods of questioning, conflict, or gloom like stages in birth without which we would never see the light of greatness within them. No, we never give up on others but can be certain that God will control what we cannot.

The process may not always feel good or look glamorous, but just because it doesn’t look like what we expected doesn’t mean God isn’t in it. We just have to trust him.

Now, Back to John…

We see the full picture of John the Baptist and know that he was among the greatest Hebrew prophets. He must have owned a deep spirituality and interaction with God, for he sensed a profound call and exercised astute spiritual discipline.

I can imagine that John would have been viewed as uncouth by many of his society when, in fact, he was spiritually avant-garde. But he was what he was—by some an assumed religious quack roaming the back country—because of what was inside of him. John’s process was the only way for his greatness to come forth.

John’s testimony of Jesus (John 1:29-34) is pretty revealing to me of God’s power and reality in his life. John and Jesus didn’t know one another, and John had no reason to know that Jesus was the Messiah until he baptized him. But it wasn’t merely the baptism that pointed out Christ to John; Jesus already existed in John’s pronounced spiritual aptitude. Look and ponder carefully:

I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit’ (1:32-33).

If Zechariah and Elizabeth could have only seen how their boy turned out.

More on this topic: God, Our Contender

Morning Train

August 23, 2013August 23, 2013 Michael5 Comments

The Shinkansen of Japan
CC BY-NC, Home for Good, Flickr

The number of friends and co-workers that came to see me off that morning overwhelmed me. I never figured I mattered as much. The occasion effervesced with cheer, but it was also awkward. Nobody wished to see the elephant in the room. A year of good memories collected in this final moment slowly infecting with sadness.

When the time came to move to the platform, the sadness became palpable. Some could hold their tears no longer, and I was pressed to see everyone to say goodbye. Then, the train, a bullet train, arrived, as much an interruption to its own arrival. The guys helped me load my bags.

I took my seat and gazed at my friends, refusing to take my eyes off of them. There was no guarantee that I’d ever see them again. The women wept sorely. I mouthed words and made faces, fighting my own tears. I loved these people and never had an earlier time done more to convince me of this than this moment.

I ached at their grief and finally turned my face and wept. After several minutes, the departure bell sounded and, in seconds that would wait no longer, I was whisked away to be all but standing at my destination.

Isn’t this what death is, the unbearable parting with one love for the long awaited greeting of another?

I always remember this overseas farewell scene when I ponder death. My questions about the life to come are settled, and I have no fear of death or dying, as I did when I was young. I do wonder how my end will occur. I imagine the moment to be like the shock of an off-guard punch leaving me to heave celestial winds that renew my every fiber with the life of God.

Who will be the angel that greets me? Is my journey direct? Who will be in my greeting party? How long until I stand before God? And will Christ embrace me and, in that glorious moment, make me everlastingly holy? Just some of my endless questions…

Death is often my pillow thought, but I get excited when I consider it. There is no hopeless sadness about it, and neither do I have a morbid fascination or longing to die. Instead, I will live heartily and joyfully until it is my turn to wonder no more.

Getting Faith Right

August 22, 2013August 9, 2014 Michael7 Comments

Inspiration is oftentimes gradual, but it is a gratifying moment to fully see it. Moreover, it is sometimes the negation of a subject that best instructs—“A is not ___; A is ___.” The path of discovery, in some cases, is just as great as the discovery.

I have partly learned what faith is by understanding what it is not. I know what Hebrews 11 tells about faith, but reading about faith and living it are two drastically different sides of the same coin. One is theory, the other is praxis. Our reading stands to gain immeasurable depth when we’ve had to live out principles we’ve only read about.

Hebrews 11:6 always baffled me: “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” I could never unconvince myself that God exists, but was this all faith required? I sensed that I was merely scratching the surface.

Thank You, Josh Groban

Josh Groban was on my radio one day crooning his very moving song Believe: “You’ll have everything you need if you just believe.” No, I retorted, first mentally then aloud. It couldn’t be true: believe what? The reaction wouldn’t subside, and a lesson on real Christian spirituality came into sharper focus.

The song verse chalked up so much that I have witnessed with some Christians that makes me shudder. Permit me to explain it in the negative. It pains me in my heart to watch Christians who see faith only as a cure to life’s ills or as a last resort in circumstance. Faith is cliché for them. All we can hope to do is pray. God is merely our way out when there is no way. Faith is a name-it-and-claim-it gimmick. Romans 8:28 is a helpful analgesic.

Please hear me: Christ spread a message that centered profoundly on his Father and a kingdom proclamation of privileged righteousness. To see him, by his own admission, was to be introduced to his Father and to understand life—God-enriched life—fully offered, the same life enjoyed eternally in the Godhead. Christian faith and holiness that embodies this message is surely not an opiate or a trite superstition that passes for spiritual gravitas.

The Groban song was but a proxy for all those I had occasioned over the years whose roots hadn’t gone this deep to know any better.

I and Thou, O Lord

The unveiling was gloriously simple: there is no magical formula, no incantation. Though faith is the “assurance of things hoped for…the conviction of things not seen,” it is never an easy-button. And before faith is any of the scriptural and theological definitions we know it by, it is FIRST relational and personal. This is what I was not seeing in Hebrews 11:6.

“Anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists.” I knew God was there, but I didn’t understand that before all the great possibilities of his power and my obedience was our relationship and that it is the touchstone to everything. He wants me more than anything he desires for me or that I desire from him, and by transformation I should more and more want him above all things. It is a living relationship that marks the division between real faith and mere magic.

“And that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” We don’t “just believe,” apart from spiritual orientation or purpose…believing for belief’s sake. Christian faith is exclusive and incompatible with other ideological patterns of conviction. In our faith endeavors, whether the resolution we seek comes or not, God is who we desire, the very end of all our longing. He is the reward.