"Blind" Faith

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the concept of faith. Where does it come from, and how does it manifest?

This summer I engaged in a lot of exercises of faith, and through those experiences I learned a lot about my own faith and faith in general. Here are some of the thoughts that I've been having about faith.

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1. Faith is not a feeling.

   I used to find it hard to pray for things that I couldn't imagine actually happening because to me, it seemed like I didn't have enough faith to even be requesting something I couldn't fully grasp. I finally started to ask myself this question: what would happen if I just kept praying through my discouragement? Prayer becomes so much easier when I can just come to God with my problems without having to first convince myself that I have enough faith to approach Him. I've realized that for most of my life, I've been relating to faith like it's a feeling I need to have. But I'm beginning to realize that faith goes deeper than the inconsistency of emotion. It's when my emotions are lowest that I need the most to reach out to God in faith.

2. Faith is not about me.

   This one really should be a no-brainer, but sometimes it takes me a while to get the point, and Jesus loves me anyway so it's okay.

   This summer, in addition to praying through my discouragement instead of around it, I started to pray over situations even when I couldn't conceive of a solution on my own. This actually led to a deeper faith than I've ever known before - instead of having faith that God would do what I was asking, I had faith in God's goodness no matter the outcome. Before this, my faith had mostly been centered around me - what I would pray for, how much faith I had, and whether I had asked God for the "right" thing. But having faith in God regardless of the situation opens me up to ask for Him to do something bigger than I can even imagine. Instead of being limited to whatever I can think to ask God for, I can place my faith in Him knowing that He will blow my mind every time. Now, my faith is much less about me and far more about God.

3. Faith is not "blind."

   I never understood how people could have faith in God when they didn't even know what was going to happen - I always assumed that God expects His followers to have blind faith in Him. But now, I think that God expects exactly the opposite of "blind faith." God's not some random guy in a polo and khakis ringing doorbells and saying, "Pleased to meet you, I'm the Lord. You should try believing in Me." He's more like a professional chef at a restaurant you've never been to before. You haven't tasted the food yet, but you have faith that it'll be really good because all the online reviews have at least 4.5 stars and one of your best friends told you that you would absolutely love every dish.

   To put it in a more biblical way, I like to think of the story of John the Baptist in relation to faith. John was in prison and having a lot of discouraging thoughts about his purpose and Jesus' role. So he sent some friends to God and ask Jesus if He was really the Messiah. Jesus' reaction to this question wasn't, "Well, tough luck if you don't even know the answer, John. I thought you had more faith in me than that."

   Instead, Jesus told John's friends, "Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: the blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them" (Matthew 11:4, 5 | NKJV). When John needed encouraging, Jesus immediately pointed him to specific evidence to support his faith.

   We don't have faith in God because of nothing - we have faith in God because He has proved Himself in so many ways before. Like the chef at the restaurant, God has given us so many reasons to trust His credibility. The Bible is full of stories of other followers of His who faced so many struggles of their own. It didn't always turn out the way they thought it would, but God's goodness always shone through.

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I know that I still have a long way to go with my faith. There's a lot of room for me to continue to grow. But I don't want to forget what I've learned already, so I'm writing it down here. Revelation 12:11 says that we overcome "by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of [our] testimony," and since this is part of my testimony of God's goodness, I figure it's probably a pretty important thing to remember.