A Believer

So much has happened in my life lately. There have been highs and there have been lows. For the most part it has seemed as though every time I think I have something figured out, something happens to show me I have nothing figured out at all. I have slowly yet increasingly gotten to a better place with the Lord and myself. My spiritual life is better. My eating and exercise habits have improved. Work has somewhat become more steady. I am better. But I have been pondering upon this lately: What does it mean to be better? Is being better having everything figured out? The more I walk this walk the less I think so.

We are called to live by faith.1 But do we even know what that means? For all of us, being better means having everything figured out; having control over our lives. But is that the life that Jesus called for us to live? A life without suffering? A comfortable life? A life that goes the way we want it to go? What exactly does it mean to embrace suffering? I am realizing that being better means embracing suffering. It means living solely by faith. Many people say that we cannot trust feelings, that feelings are too fickle to live by. I say we cannot live by reason either. Reason can drive the best of us mad. Our thought life can be just as unstable as our feeling life. For example, I could come up with 100 reasons why I should take a job, but I could also come up with 100 reasons why I shouldn't. I can't reason everything. In fact, many of the ways of God make absolutely no sense to us. I have been reading and meditating on the life of David lately. He is the one person in the Bible that God says is a man after his own heart.2 However, when you read the entirety of David's life, you find out his life was actually really terrible. I don't believe anyone worshiped more than David yet David had a terrible life. Why did he worship God so much? Why was he so grateful? It makes no sense, does it? Why would he choose Jacob, the one who cheated?3 God's reason is most definitely not our reason. Yet we tend to fall into two categories: we are either ruled by our feelings or ruled by our reason. This is also the state of most churches in our nation. We either have churches that are all about how we feel or we have churches that are all about what makes sense. Neither of those umbrellas understand the depth of the gospel.

When Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac,4 he could have said: "I love my son too much. I am going to follow my feelings and not sacrifice him." He could have also said to himself: "But God gave me this son through which the promise comes,5 it makes no sense for God to tell me to sacrifice him. I shouldn't sacrifice him." Instead, the Bible says that Abraham believed God.6 It says that he lived by faith.7 The Bible also says that we are justified by faith and that without faith it is impossible to please God.8,9 So I believe this is the great big lesson the Lord is teaching me. He is saying: 'Anel, stop living by your feelings. Stop reasoning it out. Believe me.' That's it. If I want to truly live for God. If I want to truly be a woman after God's own heart, I need to believe him.10 I need to embrace suffering. I need to find my delight in Him. I need to finally be who I am made to be: A believer. I need to believe.

In light of this post, I have been granted the opportunity to join a team in the Dominican Republic at the end of next month. It is one of the many steps in this new faith walk. Click here to learn more about it.

References:
1) 2 Corinthians 5:7
2) 1 Samuel 13:14
3) Genesis 27:36
4) Genesis 22
5) Genesis 17:19
6) Genesis 15:6
7) Hebrews 11:8
8) Romans 5:1
9) Hebrews 11:6
10) Proverbs 3:5