“Do” Your Dream

Everyone has dreams.  We all have things we would like to see materialize in our lives.

But for most people, their dreams are elusive.  Their goals don’t seem to come together.  After all, it isn’t like the vast majority of people around us are all making a great impact.  And it’s not that high impact performance is “commonplace.”  Actually it’s quite rare. 

So what does it really take to “do our dream?” 

Personally, I think that (the variables of life notwithstanding) we can “do our dream” if we can learn to leverage the fulness of ourselves to that end.  After all, God has placed eternity in our hearts and has given us great potential.  And to the degree that we are willing to align ourselves to the pursuit of our dream, our goals begin to materialize.  Here’s how I think about it all…

 

To Do Your Dream, you must:

Fully Train or Focus Your Mind on Your Dream.   The size of your dream in your thinking affects nearly everything about how you respond to that dream.  If your dream is tiny, you stay unmotivated– because you’re playing small ball and you know it.  We simply can’t get really motivated for small dreams.  They don’t inspire us and they don’t pique our interest enough to invest our sustained energy in reaching them.  My advice is to ask God to expand your thinking and to grow your capacity to believe. As you nurture your dream, it feeds your imagination. 

Put Your Heart on the Line.  You’ll never reach your dream if it’s not IN you.  You need motivation.  You need conviction.  You need the burn.  You need to go “all in.”  You won’t change the world without this type of commitment.  Taking the “I’ll get emotionally involved when things start working out” approach isn’t going to cut it because seeing a big dream come to pass takes lots of emotional energy.  And that energy is needed right “NOW”– so you can’t hold out emotionally. 

Act with Resolve. Dreams scare us. Fear causes us to lock up.  That’s because big goals come with big price tags– they cost us a lot.  But action extinguishes fear.  The best way I know to overcome the threat of potential failure is by choosing not to fail and then doing something.  Sometimes the fear of failing is enough to give us the motivation we need to “not fail.”  So work like it all depends on you, and pray like it all depends on God. 

When we nurture our minds with the virtue of our dream, it inspires us to greatness. 

When we cultivate our hearts with the grandeur of our dream, it motivates us with the motivation to act.

And when we give ourselves completely to our dream and act with faithful abandon, that unleashed will of ours imposes itself on the forces that work against us, and that dream is powered forward toward completion. 

 

Why You Should Be Informed (And 8 Tips to Become Informed)

We live in the age of information.

Between 1750 and 1900, the total expanse of human knowledge had doubled .  At that time of pre-technology human history, it took 150 years.  Today, the growth of knowledge is occurring some 100 times faster.  It is said that the entire sum of all known information, i.e., human knowledge, doubles every 1.5 years.  By 2020 it is estimated that it will be doubling approximately every month and a half (72 days).  Think about that…

This Information Age is one in which the average illiterate person, one unable to read or write– but who can understand language and watch videos, can easily learn more about science than those towering figures of centuries past like Louis Pascal and Isaac Newton.  Another example: a 5 year old child holding a smart phone possess more technology than was required to send a man to the moon only 40+ years ago.

In a recent study by the University of California, San Diego, researchers found that we swim in a boundless sea of information, one in which the average person consumes 16 hard drives (3.6 zettabytes) of information every day– be it through TV, radio, the Internet/computer, reading, and other digital devices.  Ironically, with this enormous access to literally UNLIMITED data, one in which we can learn everything about everything, the average American is not very informed about the world in which we live.

Note that I’m not saying that Americans don’t know very much– because we do.  It’s just that the “average American” is simply uninformed to a large degree about the ultimate things that matter and that affect his or her life.  Whether this ignorance is apathy, indifference, or something else– I do not know, but it’s hard to believe such a high level of societal ignorance exists in this world awash in an infinity of information.

For example, while most people have instant recall on trivia like their friend’s speed dial numbers, their favorite TV shows’ times, nuances of their favorite wines, beers, coffee beans or marijuana strains (I live in California), most live without a working knowledge and, sometimes, only a vague familiarity about civics, economics, and politics– not to mention spiritual truth.

You might say– “Who really cares?”  It may seem that not knowing virtually ANYTHING about the stock market, the strength of US currency, trade deficits, political processes, the separation of power, representation and taxation, and things like that “makes no difference.”  Some think that ignorance is bliss because, they reason, we can’t do anything about it anyway.

My response is many-fold, but if I were to reply, I would use these three brief answers.

1. Christians shouldn’t be ignorant about the world, because Jesus wasn’t.  For Christians, we should keep in mind that (of all people) Jesus himself had a working knowledge of those things, and he informed His disciples about them.  He spoke more about money than he did “heaven!”  In the gospels, Jesus shows familiarity with the Roman Empire and its government, the geo-political set up present in Judea and greater Jerusalem, and a deep familiarity with law, justice, economics, and even taxes.  If Jesus did that– and frequently taught his own disciples on issues of those sorts, it can be argued that we must do the same as Christians.

2. Being Uninformed Leaves You Open to Exploitation and Victimization.  Second, ignorance of the primary currents of our culture leaves us vulnerable to those things. Being unaware and disengaged of what is happening in any given area (say, government spending) is a sure-fire way for those who have authority in those areas to act with impunity.  An informed populace means that people can rise up and protest, shape public opinion (through free speech such as this blog), communicate with their senator, hold rallies, organize political movements, or a host of other things as a response.  If we are ignorant, we don’t respond because we are, well, ignorant.  We should keep in mind that an INFORMED MINORITY is always more powerful than an apathetic majority.  For example, in the former Soviet Union, only 24% of citizens were Communist, but they controlled approximately 1/5 of the world.  Informed minorities are always stronger than apathetic majorities.  What is funny is that some people say “I can’t do anything, so why bother?” I say that we can do more than we think– but even if that were true… even if we were powerless subjects being acted upon by the powers that be, at least by understanding what is going on we can play defense and perhaps be better off than if we didn’t.  Let me give an example.  If I were to be an 85 year old man and have to face a 23 year old Mike Tyson in a boxing ring– I may not be capable of successfully fighting him, but the fact that I couldn’t win by playing offense doesn’t mean that I would lower my arms and take a merciless beating… instead, I would AT LEAST put up my gloves and pull in my elbows and try to protect my vital organs and my face, head, and chest.  Then, even if I didn’t WIN, I might at least survive.  Similarly, when we don’t know much about our world, we are defenseless because of our indifference.

3. Be Informed Because You Are Greatly Affected By These Forces, Simply Because You Are a Living Citizen. Third, we need to be informed about the world– because we are citizens in that world.  It is where we live.  It is where we exist.  The condition of the world affects our lives.  The things happening in our world affect our families.  These things affect our children’s children and loved ones, friends, relatives, acquaintances and neighbors. And when I say that these things (civics, politics, economics, and so on) affect our lives– I mean that decisions made by people having authority who are not held accountable by informed, thoughtful, engaged people, affect you nearly every moment of the day.  So while we live in an apathetic state being brainwashed by time-wasting novelties, decisions and actions in the stock market, bond market, futures, congress, judiciary, by the President, governmental agencies creating regulations, and on and on and on– while those things are going on, together they affect EVERYTHING in life: gas taxes raise your gas prices, Standard & Poor’s downgrade makes loans for a car or school harder to get or to pay, new regulations on coal means higher prices for air conditioning at home, OPEC trade imbalances means it costs more for trucks to bring products to your favorite stores, raising the price of Mac & Cheese– do you see what I mean? All of that to say that being uninformed doesn’t make you invulnerable to these bad things– it makes you and your family and everyone you care about MORE vulnerable and, yes, victims.

Being Uninformed Always Makes Us Gullible. 

The irony of being a victim, however, is that those who are both victims and who are uniformed OFTEN (almost always) blame the wrong people for their problems.  Instead of kicking themselves for being willfully ignorant– and instead of holding the right people accountable– those who actually caused the problems– their ignorance typically makes them unable to discern what actually happened.  When this happens, we become gullible.  That gullibility makes us vulnerable to slick slogans and simplistic explanations, where we are more likely to believe someone because they speak with passion or eloquence, and we begin to believe certain things because the person is “speaking loudly” or pounding his or her fist.  Gullible people are defenseless to these things because they are ignorant– and since they don’t know the facts, they fall for rhetoric and emotion instead of believing things because they are actually TRUE.  Does that make sense?

The Challenge

We all have areas of ignorance– I know I do.  But the key is to do something rather than nothing.  My advice to those who feel unable to discern what is happening in our world and who are at a loss to understand what to do is this:

1. Read God’s Word and ask for Wisdom (James 1:5)
2. Reserve judgment, avoid giving opinions, and stop yourself from assigning blame until you know what you’re talking about
3. Begin to be informed by trustworthy sources (people and institutions who, by having a long track record of being fair and informed, have earned and kept your trust
4. Build your knowledge solidly in a number of areas, as they are all interconnected (the areas all influence one another)
5. Check your thinking against others of like-mind and who disagree, then reassess your thinking
6. Be sure to evaluate ideas based on their underlying assumptions (the basic commitments and beliefs that led them to reason a certain way and come to certain conclusions), then evaluate whether your assumptions about things are correct or need adjusting
7. Test your ideas with both scripture (does it agree with God’s Word/truth) and reality itself (if it doesn’t work in real life, there’s something wrong with what you’re thinking)
8. Be slow to come to final conclusions prematurely.  But when you know that you have finally discovered what is true, become unshakeable in your convictions.

America in Shambles & Shame

Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach (disgrace) to any people.  Proverbs 14:34 (KJV). 

Things have gone too far.

America in 2011 stands in shambles and shame.  The once-bright beacon we know as Lady Liberty, is now tarnished.

The Statue of Liberty is a representation of American idealism.  But more than that– it wasn’t just the “ideals” themselves, but the fact that those grand and audacious commitments had, in fact, come true.  The American Experiment had worked!!   America was a success.  And due to the fact that our nation embodied those ideals, she captured the imagination of the world and her peoples.

This led France to create and to offer Lady Liberty as a gift to the United States on her centennial (1876).  This was done at great national cost to France.  It was a love offering to our government and our people, at least partially paid for by individual French citizens because of their respect for what we had become as a nation.

Back then, France had just suffered the Franco-Prussian War, and the nation lie in tatters.  In 1871, Paris had suffered a bad defeat at the hands of the Germans who left the burned-out and battered city in ruins.  As that was happening, America was soon to celebrate her 100th birthday, and France was looking for hope and inspiration.  A disillusioned French artist named Bartholdi sailed to the U.S. that same year, and upon entering New York harbor, wrote:

“The picture that is presented to the view when one arrives in New York is marvelous, when, after some days of voyaging, in the pearly radiance of a beautiful morning is revealed the magnificent spectacle of those immense cities [Brooklyn and Manhattan], of those rivers extending as far as the eye can reach, festooned with masts and flags; when one awakes, so to speak, in the midst of that interior sea covered with vessels… it is thrilling. It is, indeed, the New World, which appears in its majestic expanse, with the ardor of its glowing life.”

He later led the effort to construct the statue so France could offer it to the American people as a token of thanks for inspiring them in their darkest hour.  Sadly, though France wanted to become like us– today some Americans want us to become like France.   But that is not the answer.

America Feels Like a Foreign Land

For many Americans, the America they knew now feels like a foreign land.  We have been exiled from our own nation.  Our freedom of religion has been profaned.  Our freedom of speech has been threatened with silence.  The right to bear arms is under fire.  The list goes on.

But more than challenges to constitutional rights, I am primarily talking about the overall state of our country.  It has changed, and not always for the better.  And as these changes have occurred, Americans can literally FEEL our nation unravel.  We can feel our Union being uncomfortably stretched out of shape.  We are expected to stand down, accept, and EVEN CELEBRATE any and every idea, teaching, behavior, practice, and ethic… regardless of how absurd they may be and despite the fact that we groan and convulse from within at what we are seeing and experiencing.

To boot, there is also a profound and concerted effort among many to undermine the rule of law– to treat it with impunity.  This spirit of the age is so profoundly strong that it’s palpable.  One can almost feel a type of antinomianism or a spirit of anarchy seething beneath the surface of a thin and shallow civility.  Our nation is in trouble.

Many– a great host of Americans– know this to be true.

The Silent Majority Feels This Way

I am not alone in this evaluation of the American psyche.

Many thinking and decent Americans have thought the same thoughts.  But few have said it aloud.  These fears have remained largely unvoiced because of the tremendous pressure that rests on the general public to remain silent in order to spare themselves the vitriol and spite heaped on any dissenter who dare question or challenge the Spirit of the Age.  Even to have a conviction is to be the target of spite– and those who would disagree with the direction of our country quickly feel the resolute and seething displeasure and scalding anger that rests just beneath the surface of those who have banded together to produce what is beginning to feel like the birth pangs of a new socio-moral revolution.

This band of cultural radicals have largely been successful in silencing what is becoming a spineless populace.  Most Americans who would disagree with what America is becoming and with the direction she is taking have been conditioned and brainwashed with the idea that the only “unpardonable sin” is to actually have convictions.  Those convictions have given way to the Ethic of Politeness where the greatest offense in our culture is actually disagreeing with someone.  Many Americans have acquiesced to the point that they have almost no sense of ethics other than a painless personal morality.  This personal morality is one that governs the individual who holds it, but is one that assumes there are no universal or absolute standards at all for anyone else.

It reminds one of Judges 17:6 in the Old Testament of the Bible when we were told about a society who had no king, so they did what was right “in their own eyes.”  That type of near-anarchy leads to the deterioration of the moral fiber of a country that, at last, leads to corruption of society, weakening of government, lawlessness, cultural decay, broken families, and then the breakdown of that civilization.  I fear that America in 2011 is, itself, slouching toward Gomorrah in ways that will lead to irreparable national damage.

Shambles and Shame

That damage has already begun. Our nation is seeing visible examples of this profound rebellion that is occurring in our time.  This “rebellion” as I have called it, is a spirit of our age.   It is a rejection and repudiation of good.  It is a collective rejection of truth and morality that is leading to our nation in the wrong direction.  It is a disregard for principles of good.  And we see this damage when we look at what America is becoming before our very eyes.   Nearly every sector of society is compromised.  And while there is a shred of hope left, I hope Americans will, in ways big and small, begin to take back their country that has fallen and can’t seem to get up.

What Should Be Done

Remember that old truth: All that it takes for evil to triumph is for good men (people) to do nothing.

So what can we do?  What can you do?

Answer: Do something rather than nothing.  Take back yourself.  Take back your family.  Take back your church.  Take back your street.  Take back your neighborhood. Take back your country– and restore her to the beauty she once was.

Practical Tips on Expressing Faith

Whatever is not of faith is not pleasing to God.

–Hebrews 11:6–

 

To conclude this series on the psychology of faith, I have some practicable ideas on putting your faith and your life together.

 

1. Don’t insult God with small requests. God is able to do great things. Ask Him to do great things; expect Him to do amazing things, and He will do things that are much greater than what you ask and much greater even than your wildest imaginings. (Ephesians 3:20-21)

2. Don’t assume without asking. Faith is not the assumption that God will fulill all of your requests. You must understand how God works and seek His will before acting in faith. You must have faith in something, not just faith in the strength of your own faith. (James 4:2)

3. Ask only for things that God can bless. Do not ask selfishly, merely to suit your own convenience and desires. God does not bless your selfish requests, when you ask only to suit yourself. (James 4:3)

4. Believe that God will grant your requests and goals. Do not ask God without believing that He is capable of fulfilling your requests. God hears all that you ask and all that you do not ask. He knows your faith and your unbelief. He hears you. He is capable. (1 John 5:15-15; Matthew 9:27-30a)

5. Ask God to give you greater faith. As the apostles asked of Jesus, God can supernaturally increase your faith in Him. God can work to bring you into greater faith in Him. (Luke 17:5)

 

I hope this seven week series has helped you to understand faith and the importance of integrating your faith in your mind, your emotions, and your will. Faith doesn’t always work how we’d expect, but God does work and we are to have full faith in Him above all else.

Faith and the Will

He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus.

–Matthew 14:29–

 

Faith involves the entirety of the soul, including the will. We must choose to believe, to have faith. It is an intentional act. You do not passively decide to have faith. You do not passively trust in God’s provision. You must intentionally act in faith.

Faith that influences our wills is not just “any old faith.” It does not come easily and is not present in all Christians. Jesus calls us to have God-sized faith. God wants to deliberate choose to have God-sized faith. God-sized faith exhausts the full resources of the human soul, which is evidence that we expect God to show up. It is deliberately choosing to believe God, and to act in a way that shows that belief. As the old adage says, “actions speak louder than words.” Saying that you believe God, but continuing to act in a way that relies only on you – your time, your money, your abilities – is NOT God-sized.

Jesus says in Matthew 17:20 that faith the size of a mustard seed is enough to move mountains. A mustard seed, if you don’t know, is tiny. It looks in significant. The mustard plant, however, is a large tree, big enough that many birds will live in its branches. Faith is played in our actions, in what we choose and what we do.

God-sized faith is one’s utter resignation to the fact that, unless supernatural activity takes place, there is no possibility that a given goal could ever be realized. Setting goals that can be accomplished by you alone does not show your faith in a sovereign, omnipotent God. We must choose to rely on God’s provision in our lives and act on that intentional choice. This is the only type of faith that gives God great glory – because only these types of things actually require God to act.

 

Our choice: DELIBEATE DECISION AND ACTION or INDECISION AND INACTION

 

WHAT WILL YOU CHOOSE TO THINK, TO BELIEVE, TO DO?

Faith and Emotions

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.

–Hebrews 11:6–

 

Your soul’s emotions aren’t merely feelings. In their fullest sense, human emotions have to do with our feelings, sentiments, affections, attitudes, beliefs, and convictions. Feelings are fleeting and should be limited in their influence on our lives and decisions. Emotions are broader and are instrumental in our lives. Feelings can develop into beliefs and convictions and so influence our soul and our faith, but our emotions are more than feelings.

Before your emotions can help you express Biblical faith, each area must be Spirit-controlled. The Holy Spirit should lead and direct your decisions and your emotions. Take time now to think about how the Spirit can influence and control your feelings, your sentiments, your affections, your attitudes, your beliefs, and your convictions. Think about the role of each of these in your faith. How has or how can the Spirit direct your affections? Do your attitudes come from your flesh or does the Spirit control them? What are your strongest convictions and do they come from God?

As such, what happens in our emotions in the moment of truth dictates whether or not we please God, because feelings and convictions are critical elements of a Biblical psychology of faith. Our faith is firmly rooted in our emotions, in our belief, but faith isn’t only belief alone. Faith has to do with the object of belief or it is merely faith in faith. You must have faith in something. To believe in something, you must understand it. If you really believe something, you will act on that belief. We should seek to increase the degree of our faith, to have enough to step out of a boat and in to the waves.

 

Our choice: CONVICTION – strong, unshakable belief in God or INDIFFERENCE, APATHY, AND FEAR

 

Your cry should be the same as the father with a demon-possessed son in Mark 9: “I believe; help my unbelief!”

Faith and the Mind

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine [think], according to His power that is at work within us

–Ephesians 3:20–

What happens in your mind is one of the most important factors in your faith capacity. Rational study and understanding is sometimes forgotten in Christianity today. Our focus has been more on connecting our beliefs with the heart and less on discipline and conscientiously studying God’s Word or logically understanding our faith and beliefs.

An important foundation to understanding the role of faith in the mind is realizing the difference between the brain and the mind. The brain is a part of the body. It is physical, material, and visible. It can be seen and touched (although you probably wouldn’t want to!). The brain works through electrical and chemical means, through interactions of chemicals and synapses. It receives information from the physical senses and from your self-embedded memory. The mind, however, is a part of the soul, as we discussed last week. It is immaterial and invisible; it cannot be seen or touched. The mind, contrary to the brain, works through psychic and spiritual means. It receives information from the brain, as well as from the emotions and Spirit.

Faith works in and with the mind and the brain. When you disbelieve or doubt that something is possible, the brain immediately slows its workload and reduces its “firing capacity,” which short-circuits faith. As a result, the mind’s ability to believe is immediately reduced, resulting in unfaithfulness. When your mind is not being controlled by the Spirit, it stops thinking supernaturally and downsizes what God can do. As a result, it begins to be “pressed into the mold” of thinking, which shrinks your capacity to believe God (Romans 12:2).

Our choice: To BELIEVE God – to trust fully in Him, His promises, His ways, and His purposes or DISBELIEF – our refusal to accept something as true.

WHAT WILL YOU CHOOSE TO THINK?

Faith: How does it Work?

This week we’ll begin the main discussion on the psychology of faith, the interaction of our faith with our minds and emotions. In discussing this, it’s important to consider three key truths first.

First, faith doesn’t work how we think it works or how we would like it to work. Faith doesn’t work perfectly, as God originally intended, but it does work. It is to have a significant role in our lives. Secondly, faith only works as God ordained it to work. We cannot manipulate how faith works; we cannot manipulate how God works and make things work how we want them to. We must seek to discover how it works. Understanding faith and understanding God are vitally important in our Christian lives. Thirdly, our ignorance of Biblical faith greatly minimizes God’s work in and through our lives. A lack of understanding may limit how God can work in us, to transform us, and through us, to carry out His will in the world.

Forming a psychology of faith first requires that we understand the field of psychology. ‘Psychology’ comes from the Greek word psyche, which means soul. In our Biblical understanding of personhood, the soul is the center of each human being. A person is made up of a body, a spirit, and a soul. The soul itself is then made up of the mind, the will, and emotions. Psychology seeks to study the soul of a person, to understand how the mind, will, and emotions interact and make a person into who they are.

Much psychology is fundamentally flawed and ungodly because it miscalculates human nature and, as a result, the human condition. Those who seek the services of such well-intentioned people tend to fall deeper into the morass of hopelessness and addiction because they are being treated in ways inconsistent with how God made us.

What happens in the soul tells us whether or not faith is Biblical. Biblical faith involves the whole soul and is played out through the mind, will and emotions. Faith must be logically understood, connect with your feelings and your heart, and it must be lived out in your actions. ‘Feeling’ spiritual or connected to God matters little if you do not truly and deeply understand God and faith. Logical study and understanding is insignificant if you don’t connect with your emotional, affective side or show through your actions. In the same way, the right behaviors show nothing without the beliefs and convictions to back them up.

In the next four weeks, we’ll look at how faith plays out in our mind, emotions, and will as well as practical ideas to put together this knowledge with our lives.

Five Facts about Faith

In seeking to understand faith, which is vital as we discussed last week, there are some foundational ideas to understand and apply. I’m going to introduce and explain five realities of faith which must be understood.

 

1. Your belief that God will act does not obligate Him to do so. In 2 Corinthians 12:8-10, Paul describes his affliction, his “thorn in the flesh.” He writes that he asked God three times to remove this hardship, but that God told him instead that, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” God does hear your prayers and requests, but even a firm belief that God can and does heal, does not mean that He has to because you ask Him to. God’s purposes are not our own and His will may differ from ours.

2. God sometimes acts apart from your exercise of faith. God may act and heal those who do not have faith in Him. As stated in the past point, God’s ways of acting and His purposes may be different than what we expect and different than what we want. In Matthew 8:16 and in many other instances, Jesus healed many who were brought to Him, without considering the faith of those whom He was healing. God can have compassion on those who don’t have faith in Him as well as those who do.

3. Sometimes God does require us to exercise faith before He acts. In other stories in the Gospels, Jesus heals people because of their faith. For example, He heals the woman in Matthew 9:21-22 because she had enough faith to reach out and touch Jesus’ cloak. She believed that touching His cloak would heal her and it did; His power ‘went out’ without Him being aware of it. He knows, of course, but it was her strong faith in the power of Christ that healed her.

4. Sometimes God wants to act, but our lack of faith keeps it from happening. When teaching in His hometown, many people doubted Jesus’ power and saw Him only as a carpenter’s son. Matthew 13:58 says that “he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.” While God can act apart from faith, sometimes He does not act because we lack faith.

5. Whether or not God requires us to exercise faith before He acts is His business. How God chooses to act is an essential part of His divine prerogative as God. If God was dependent upon us to have faith, He would not be an omnipotent sovereign God. If He needed us for anything, He would not be our divine Creator. God needs humans for nothing; it is up to Him to choose to act or to choose not to act. We can be sure that His ways and His purposes are above ours, that they are for our best, but we do not dictate the plans of God. Our faith can change God’s mind, as Moses’ plea for the Israelites did in Exodus 3211ff, or allow Him to act in our lives differently than if we did not have faith, but we are not in charge.

 

Human faith plays a central role in our Christian lives. Understanding these five realities of faith is also vital to a correct understanding of the role of faith. God can act in spite of our lack of faith or He may require our faith in order to act. It’s up to God to act or nor; it’s up to us to have faith and to trust in His ways and His purposes.

Thinking About Faith…

Have you ever ‘believed’ God would do something but still been disappointed when you didn’t receive what you hoped for?  Have you ever shown half-hearted faith and, somehow, still saw God work?  Why did faith work one time and not the other? Is it possible that God’s Will is for something to happen but our lack of faith keeps it from happening? Are there times when God works apart from our faith– meaning, times when our faith isn’t required for God to act? And does that mean that God is completely unpredictable and arbitrary in how He acts?  Is the Christian life a complete “wild card?” Does God want us to be completely confused about one of the most important issues in the Christian life or are there things we can know?

It’s not that faith always makes sense, but nor is it that faith never makes sense…it’s that it sometimes makes sense.

Faith in the Christian life requires that we think about these issues. We should live out the Christian life, but we also need to reflect on it, to think deeply about issues of faith. Metacognition is thinking about how you think, the mind reflecting upon itself, being aware of your cognitive processes, and understanding one’s own thought patterns.

As humans, created in God’s image, we are capable of personal reflection and analysis. As Socrates taught, we should know ourselves. Failing to think about faith and about ourselves doesn’t mean that there are not issues we need to understand. Just as being ignorant of scientific laws, like the law of gravity, doesn’t mean that they don’t apply to us. Likewise, failing to understand how the laws of faith work doesn’t exempt us from understanding them either.

Generally, does God want me to understand how He works? Yes! God “made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel” (Psalm 103:7).

God wants you and I to think about our faith, to deeply ponder and contemplate issues and laws of our faith. To better understand the role and importance of faith, I encourage you to read Hebrews 11 this week. Read about faith in the lives of the ‘heroes’ of the Old Testament, and how the law of faith applies to us here and now.

I’m going to spend the next six weeks discussing faith, studying five foundational facts about faith, a psychology of faith, and how faith interacts with our mind and with our emotions. Faith is foundational and vital in our Christian lives and is something that all Christians should take the time to think about.