Struggling with faith? How to get closer to God: 5 steps.
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Credit: IMBeggar
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Chapters:
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Introduction
It's All About God
Keep the Grace Flowing
Blocks to Grace
Not About A Feeling
Faith Is Knowing
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Introduction
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Faith is tough, especially now more than ever.
Probably the number one comment I get is something along the lines of I'm really struggling with my faith. I'm finding it so hard to believe, and I pray, but it just feels like I'm praying to nobody, and I read the Bible, but I don't really get anything out of it and have all these questions and doubts, and where's the evidence?
Are we all just trying to convince ourselves of something in our heads now? First of all, don't worry, we've all been here, and if we're not wrestling with it, we're not doing it, but the first question I usually ask is: If you knew God were real, do you think you could rely on him, or, in other words, if Jesus were standing right next to you right now, do you think you could trust him?
I think most of us would say 100% without a doubt. Yes. So this is where we got to get to, and faith is simply making the jump across that huge chasm from; I'm not really sure to, I know.
Now just some groundwork before we get started.
First faith is a choice. It's solid concrete, yes. It's not a maybe or we'll see or I'm not really sure. It's more like an I do, and it's not based on any evidence, an ideology, or a feeling; it's based on what a person does.
Do I trust this person or not, period, and it's not a blind yes; we have to do the homework and make an informed, reasonable choice.
Second, and this is the big one—we can't make that choice on our own. Jesus said it: You can't come to me unless the father draws you, and you can't believe in me through flesh and blood only if the father reveals me.
So we need help, and we call this help. Grace.
I picture it like this. If it were just my tiny intellect and God, then Grace is him shining himself onto our intellects; without this, we're not going anywhere in faith.
Finally, God gives us this grace freely all the time, even right now as we speak, but just because he gives it freely doesn't mean we receive it freely; we can block it, ignore it, cut it off, or worse, waste it, so we have to do something on our part to receive and respond to all that grace.
So to put this all in reverse, we have to open ourselves up to Grace in order to see him more clearly so we can make a firm choice for Faith piece of cake right, so here are five tips, ways, and guides to help us do them.
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It's All About Love.
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Have you ever seen those videos where it's a kid's birthday and he looks a little out of place? And the caption reads A boy finds out he's being adopted by new family on his birthday, and the family brings out this huge cake, and on the cake it says something like welcome home, our new son. We love you.
At first the kid can't really process it; it's disbelief, but then it hits him and his entire face wells up in tears, and he just flies across the room and grabs the dad, and it's one of those I'm never letting go hugs. The whole family comes together and just embraces him, and everyone is just sobbing. Okay, those kill me.
This is what happens on our baptism; we are 100% officially adopted by the god of the universe. Think about that for a second. We are born into his spirit. So listen to him saying this to you right now. You are my beloved son or daughter, of whom I am so pleased.
Do I accept that, and just as that little boy has to now come to accept and trust that he is a father who's going to look after him, provide for him, and love him for the rest of his life, so it is with us in our faith?
Do I really trust that? This isn't some human love; this is a powerful, life-giving eternal love that loves us from way deeper down inside than we've ever travelled before and will feed us through all of eternity, and the door to this love is not out there somewhere; it's inside us. He's waiting outside the door right now as we speak.
This is the absolute fundamental groundwork if we were to build any faith whatsoever.
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Grace
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So we're born into the spirit, and the spirit is born into us, and grace is God's life flowing through us; it's grace that enables us to see things we could never see, know things we could never know, and do things we could never do, but we got to stay connected to it and keep that grace flowing.
Now Grace isn't passive, like we're the spoilt little child and Daddy just gives us everything we want, and it's not something we earn or achieve by just trying harder. God gives it to us out of his own generosity.
I look at it more like a master-apprentice relationship. The master wants to give everything he knows and everything he is to the apprentice, and the more the apprentice participates with the master, the more the master is going to give.
The apprentice could be lazy; maybe he never shows up; maybe he doesn't care or thinks he knows better; or maybe he just never puts anything the master says into practice. Then what's the master going to do?
Grace takes two; it's in finding that harmony that resonance between the loyalty of the good apprentice and the gift of the Divine Master, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. Remember before Jesus left he said it's better that I'm leaving so you can have the divine spirit in you? Do I really grasp that?
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Keep the Grace Flowing
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So how do we keep the grace flowing? We'll try these three things every day.
First, at the beginning of the day, read a little scripture or a good spiritual book. Just a paragraph or two, but approach it now as I'm sitting here with the Divine teacher of the very same Grace that inspired all these words in the first place, and before you read it, ask.
What is it you want to show me today?
Read it a few times and let Him unlock the words, and some phrase or thought will stick out; that's your message; chew on it the rest of the day.
Prayer, prayer is the breathing of faith, but look at it now as if I'm just sitting here alive in the Holy Spirit who wants to share himself with me and let go of everything else. Shut off your brain and just sit there. You don't have to say a word and don't expect results or a feeling; am I doing this right? Just let go.
Finally, at the end of the day, take a mental inventory of all your thoughts and actions throughout the day. Where was I more like him and where was I less like him, and what opportunities were missed?
Go over it with the Spirit, but not in a guilty judgemental kind of way, but in a loving, encouraging way, and come up with a game plan. What am I going to do better tomorrow?
Let's be disciplined with at least this and obedient to what we learn and not to some doctrine or ideas or a bunch of rules and regulations but to a person.
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Blocks to Grace
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Okay, now the Divine Life is flowing through us, but picture it like arteries; there's a lot we can do to block, obstruct, and clog our arteries. We call this sin; sin and grace don't mix so well.
If we want to go deeper in faith, we have to clean up the sin as best we can. How? Just keep going to his mercy and confessing all our sins at His feet humbly, no matter what it is or how many times. God is merciful, and he can't resist a humble and contrite heart.
When the prodigal son was out blowing all his father's cash on booze and women. Imagine him at that point, saying, Where are you, Dad? Give me more money, Dad. Do you even exist, Dad? No. It wasn't until he returned, fell down on his knee, and confessed. Father, I've sinned against heaven, and I've sinned against you; then he was instantly restored, and everything the father had was once again his.
Now I just want to say something quick about doubt.
Doubt comes from two places; it could be an intellectual thing, and if that's the case, find the answers; they're out there; there's over 2,000 years of this stuff.
This second place is from the enemy; he's going to sprinkle his little doubts everywhere, and the closer we get to real faith, the more he's going to hit us with heavy doubts. If we're dealing with these types of doubts, just ignore them and see them for what they are. Temptation.
Just throw them out, and some of these attacks can be serious and really bring us to our knees, and we'll think I just don't have the strength, but he does, and God's going to allow it. Not so he can see how strong our faith is; he already knows, but so we can.
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Not About A Feeling
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If I could literally scream one thing off the rooftop, it would be that this faith is not about a feeling; ask yourself. Do you really think faith, which is purely spiritual, has anything to do with human emotions?
Some chemicals firing off in my body. Do you think any of the earliest disciples, the thousands of saints who shed their blood for Christ, did it because of a feeling? Mother Teresa used to say I feel nothing, but she did it anyway.
Now I get it; we all want to feel his presence to confirm our faith, but that's not really faith. Feelings are deceitful, fleeting up and down; they come and go and could just depend on what we ate that day. Faith has to be grounded in something much deeper than our shifting feelings and hit that bedrock of our soul.
Now feelings are powerful. God knows it; he gave them to us, but the enemy knows it too, and he wants to keep us away. Now feelings aren't bad, and they may or may not follow faith, but never the other way around, and really they're meant to enhance our faith but never confirm it.
It's when we can say, I don't really feel you, God, but I know you're there, that our faith is the strongest. So the question should not be, Am I feeling it, but Am I doing it, and it's far better to know his presence than to merely feel it.
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Faith is knowing.
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Eventually we just got to make the choice and say yes and don't look back; it's really that simple.
It's no longer well. I'm not really sure; I know God is real and is in the room. Just as I know this phone is in the room, I know God is closer to me than I could ever even be to myself. I know he hears even my smallest prayers, and he'll answer them however he sees fit.
I know His Spirit and His life are alive in me even right now as we speak, and I know he forgives me no matter all the stupid stuff I do all the time, and I know he loves me in the same way he loves his only son. Imagine that, and how do you know?
Because he says so, and I trust him more than I trust anyone else in this entire universe and beyond. That is faith. Not waiting for some sign or a feeling or evidence that's not faith. Sorry.
Blessed is he or she who believes without seeing, hearing, feeling, or touching, but by trusting. Faith is based on a person; do I trust this person or not? Period.
Thank you so much for making it this far. I am so very grateful for every one of you, and I literally pray for anyone who reads these guides that His message gets through, and I don't screw it up.
So God bless you. I know God loves you, and so do I.
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