When faith comes hard
There are reasons why faith comes hard for us. If you have a practical, logical mind, faith feels like a quantum leap outside of all that can be measured and proven scientifically. This seems unacceptable and foolish.
If you’ve been steeped in religion, faith can feel like a “must do.” Again, that “doing” in order to achieve grace, or help, or favor. You know that God requires faith, and you scrap hard to feel it, to find it, to grow it.
If you’ve been hurt, faith feels like too big of an ask. If humans can disappoint and betray, why would you trust a being you can’t see? Someone who, as far as you can figure it, let it happen? It’s so hard.
What I’m saying is that some of our difficulty with faith is rank unbelief, but not all. We are born, wired to live our own lives and do our own thing. We do need divine intervention. God does require our faith.
God, I think, is thrilled when a human being who is tethered to this world by his/her five senses chooses faith. Chooses to believe in something that can’t be experienced that way. Even if it’s a tiny scrap, just the littlest bit, He is drawn to that faith. He knows exactly why faith can be hard, and so His mercy abounds.
Just as your children learned to walk with feeble, bumbling steps and wobbly legs, so it is with us. We’re learning to walk by faith and not by sight, aren’t we? And walking, like anything, takes practice.
Just as you watched over every step, bent low to catch and restore your fallen toddler to his feet, God watches over your every step. He bends low to catch and restore a fallen faith-walker to her feet. And just as you rejoiced over every advancement? That’s how He feels about you and me
You didn’t berate your child for its weakness. God doesn’t berate you for yours. He keeps working with you, helping you, guiding you, teaching you, and His end goal is a confident, strong you. Running, no longer walking, in His ways.
Keep your eyes on Him. Stop looking down at your stumbling feet and fix your eyes on the One Who is teaching you to walk.
The finish line, my friend, will be worth it.