Choose

So what do we do when the faith that we have isn't big enough? 

For most of recent Christian history, this was considered a fundamental flaw in a believing person. If you admit that your faith isn't strong enough, then what you're really saying is that you don't believe thoroughly enough. That you don't have what it takes to cut it. 

After all, God is still as big, as loving, as omnipotent, as omnipresent, as good, as everything as God has always been. So if there's a season in which your faith is failing you, it's not because God isn't up to the task; it's because you are. 

I don't believe this is the real truth. 

First of all, it's not helpful. I don't know a single person who has ever been able to believe more because they were shamed into thinking they weren't believing enough. I know plenty of folks who have tried to fake it, but none who have actually pulled it off. 

But more importantly than that, I think it diminishes the reality of our human experience. We are fallen creatures in broken flesh in a failing world in desperate need of a Savior. We have a limited capacity to understand and engage in anything, let alone something so beyond our wildest imagination as God Himself. The Bible tells us there are things about Him we will never understand on this side of eternity, which means there are things we simply don't comprehend about faith. And without a perfectly full faith, we should not expect that our faith would ever be perfect. 

That is, if we know there are things about faith that are bigger than us, we should understand there are things about the challenges of this world that require faith that are bigger than the faith we can muster. 

There is a point for all of us where believing the things we believe simply isn't enough. Not because of some personal failure, but simply by the finite nature of our being. 

I think God wants it to be this way. Because it always brings us to a point of evaluating what we believe. 

And having to make a choice. 

When my faith isn't big enough for the moment I'm facing, when the things I know and the things I believe and the things that I know I believe don't seem to matter to the challenge I'm facing, then I have a choice. I can throw in the towel, say that faith is worthless, look for something else to make meaning of my life...or I can choose to keep believing the things I believe, loving the God I love, trusting the God I trust. 

This is not a contradiction. I can tell you in the very same breath that I love God with all my heart, mind, and soul, and that right now, that's not enough. Both things can be true at the same time. Not because my God is too small or my faith is too small, but because my being is simply limited. 

So I think that's the first step - in a moment when we are faced with something that seems bigger than our faith, we have to choose, then, what we do with our faith. We have to choose to keep believing. We have to choose to keep affirming. We have to choose to keep saying yes, this is what I know. 

But we also have to choose to be honest and say that our knowing right now is simply not enough. That we need something more. That we need some kind of bridge to help us get back to that place where our faith is big enough, where it fills those spaces in our life that we most desperately need it to. 

Thankfully, our faith - the things we already know - help us to build that bridge when we need it.