Leaning Forward

I recently returned from vacation in the Smoky Mountains with my mom, sister, and her three children. Go-karts, swimming, amusement parks, picnics. You name it we did it. The three  kids (7, 5, & 3) get to choose at least one activity that they want to do. Emily likes ice skating. Connor wanted to see an Old West gunfight, and Rachel she wants to swim. She LOVES the water. She wanted to go swimming in the streams with the dolphins, but I had to tell her that wasn’t possible. One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. She, Rachel, has such a sense of humor. She laughs at everything, which makes me laugh at everything, and my soul needs that! The worst part about spending time with the kids is that I eventually have to come back to LA. Each time I leave, Rachel will ask me, if I would come live with her forever? To which I respond, “I wish I could but I have to go to work and take care of Caesar (my Sheltie), but I’ll live in your heart forever” to which she replies, “that’s not good enough.”  

I love the honesty in her answer. I think that she speaks for a lot of us when it comes to our hang up with God and the  moments when we’re called to walk by faith and not by sight. We want tangible, verifiable, concrete evidence from God, and if it doesn’t happen then faith is just not good enough. The Scriptures tell us, and we may even quote it from time to time “without faith it is impossible please God”, and “we walk by faith not by sight”; yet, in the very next breath we ask God for proof in the form of signs.

When we talk about faith it’s a lot of times in the context of facts, dates, and events, and that’s not really what faith is. Faith is about connecting to the Creator of the universe in a way that cannot be perceived by the five senses. Faith, as the Scriptures talk about, gives us insight to the unlimited possibilities of God that are all around us. Faith allows us, like Moses, to see the invisible God and when we see God; we begin to see everything differently. We begin to see the beauty and wonder of life. We begin to experience what it means to be spiritually alive. I believe this is along the lines of the conversation Jesus was having with Nicodemus (John 3), when he said that you must be born again. “Nicodemus (paraphrasing here) you know the Scriptures, you’re a keeper of the law but it’s all about rules, tradition, and denominations, and at your core you’ve never come alive spiritually through faith.”

… Faith unlocks the realities of what it means to be alive! 

I know it would be easier if we had visible evidence of what God was doing around us, or even an explanation from God Himself would seem to make the journey less stressful, but God does not work like that in our time and space.  Why? We see the world through our eyes, but we see God through our soul, and it is our soul that must connect with Him.  When we do that, a spiritual rebirth takes place and we begin to see ALL of life from His perspective.