The Struggle with Faith

Why do we struggle with faith? When we are children we are open to so many possibilities and then it leaves us. There is a father on our street who walks every day at 11:30 to pick up his daughter from Kindergarten. She has no doubt that when she needs her father to show up that is what he will do. He guides her on the right path to home and is always by her side.

Who’s really behind this degeneration of faith? We call him Lucifer. Old saying like “the devil made me do it” ring truer than we think. To have faith in God is to truly surrender all that we are, all that we want and that we “think” is good for us. What we don't realize is that His plan for our lives is so much better than our own plans. In a society where we are taught that self is more important than anything, how can we possibly obtain this quest of giving over our lives to God? The self made millionaire, the self appointed man, the inner self, are all based in the flesh, in our carnal selves that has no true direction or understanding of the greater meaning in our lives. We spend so much time searching to  fill a void within us that can only be filled by God. Instead we put into this void what we ourselves think will appease the aching emptiness. We fill it with sex or drinking or drugs, we seek “love” from strangers who’s only need is self fulfillment. We walk further and further down an unstable road that is built by the opposer to God. We believe that these things are what we need and a shroud of deceit is pulled over our eyes and we wander blindly in a desolate plain. Some of us wander our entire lives and never seek redemption and the Heavens wail for this lost soul. When do we wake up and remove the veil of lies, what does it take for us to fall on our knees and seek His face. What is amazing for so many that do not believe in God is when tragedy strikes that is exactly where we find ourselves, on our knees praying, begging to God, a God we have never thanked, a God that we have no faith in and yet here we are on our knees before Him, because we have no where else to turn. Are we hypocrites? No, it is only in this moment of true release of our own agendas, in this moment of complete surrender that we release our spirit and our spirit knows exactly where to turn. If we could just move ourselves out of the way and let our spirit take over then we would find that being in the presence of the Almighty God a very natural thing. Your God given connection has always been there, only it is hidden from you by the one who doesn’t want you to realize who you really are. True daughters and sons of God.

Faith is a very hard concept for so many. We can all have faith when things are going well, me included. But when you are looking at your bank account and it has $1.01 in it and you have bills that need to be paid that is when your faith is challenged, that is where the enemy would have you crumble into a puddle of tears and let hopelessness permeate from your very being. To the deceiver this is a victory. The further he can remove you from your Faith in God and His provisions the stronger he becomes in your life. But that is when you say “Greater is He that is in me, than he that is in the world” and smile and know that God will provide for all your needs according to His riches and glory! For us the faith comes by knowing it will happen in His time, not ours. When my children were younger and I wanted them to clean their rooms or do their homework, I would always say to them “in my time”. I needed them to perform what I had asked them to do in a time frame that suited me, not when they felt it was a good time to do it. We are the same when we ask God to step in....we look up and say “God a miracle would be good right about now” with emphasis on the word “now”. We have no patience when it comes to God. I mean really, if I am finally here on my knees the least He could do is say Yeah! I have been waiting for you to come before me.. what can I do for you and *poof* our prayers are answered! I mean it is not like we ever make God wait? Right? We don’t make him wait days, weeks or even years to say hello and thanks for all you have done and are doing in my life. We don’t make him wait to acknowledge what He did for us on the Cross. If we even understand what that was. We don’t make Him wait until we think we are good enough to come before Him and ask Him into our lives. The interesting thing is that when we do finally get around to being obedient to His word, we discover that He was right there all along... just waiting.

Don’t get me wrong it isn’t that God wants to make us wait to answer our prayers, to punish us for only coming to Him when things are bad. My daughter phoned me one day in tears. She was having challenges in her life and needed some advise. I listened to what was going on and offered her the advise I felt led to give her. When we were nearing the end of our phone call she said she felt bad that she only called me when something was wrong in her life. I smiled and let her know that I did the same thing to my mum when I was her age. My mum always said that if she didn’t hear from me then she knew that things were going well. But do you think for one second that I love my daughter any less because she only calls when she needs me? No, I love her unconditionally no matter what. The same way that God loves you. He knows your heart, he knows that you have need of Him in your life. And when you call upon Him, He is always there, your true comforter because He loves you. As your Father I think He would just like to share the good things that go on in your life as well.

Faith needs to be cultivated, similar to a farmer who plants his seed and waits for the harvest. He knows that the seed will grow into a crop that will sustain his family and others. But he also knows that he must plant his seed in fertile soil in order to reap the harvest. The word of God is the seed and you are the ground in which it is sown.  In “The Parable of the Sower” Mark 4:4-8 “And it happened, as he sowed, that some of the seed fell by the wayside: and the birds of the air came and devoured it. Some fell on stony ground where it did not have much earth; and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up it was scorched, and because it had no root it withered away. And some seed fell among thorns; and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no crop. But other seed fell on good ground and yielded a crop that sprang up, increased and produced; some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred.” The Parable is explained further along in Mark 4:12 and we understand that the seed that fell by the wayside is sown in our hearts but Satan quickly comes and pulls it out. When the word is sewn on stony ground we can receive the word but our faith is rocky and has no roots so it soon shrivels and dies. When the seed is sown in amongst the thorns, the thorns represent the challenges in life. So when hardship strikes it chokes out the word and we do not rely on the promises of God but look at the thorns in the natural and our faith diminishes. But when the word is sown in fertile ground we are able to accept the word, stand on it in faith no matter what the circumstances and our bounty is multiplied.

How do we stay in faith mode? How do we not falter? The same way a runner can run and win a race. He trains hard, he eats the right food, he rests and he believes it to be true. This is a skill that must be cultivated in us. We do not live in the Matrix where we can plug in and download any skill that we wish we had, it takes dedication, time, energy and commitment. In this microwave age where all gratification is instant we have lost the skill to savour the journey of acquiring. You will falter, but Faith is built one step at a time so just keep putting one foot in front of the other. I have learnt that it is not instantaneous and it takes a commitment on my part to push in, to not believe all that is in the natural world as truth but to look to God for the answers. Seek Him first and see your faith grow.