Faith

FAITH

April 11, 2016
Jeff Lampl

“faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.  This is what the ancients were commended for.”   Hebrews 11:1-2 (NIV2011)

My college roommate was planning to . .  . 

enter seminary after graduation and become a Presbyterian minister.   I was not a believer at the time so one night I asked him something like, “why do you believe in God?  How do you know there is a God?”   His answer was immediate and straightforward.   He said, “it’s faith”.

I can’t remember if I said this to him or not, but I do remember thinking “that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

To me his answer sounded like nothing, like an answer without content, an answer that was completely meaningless.   How could anyone believe something simply because he decided to believe it?   I reasoned that I could do that with bigfoot, or space aliens or the tooth fairy.

As an aside my roommate did go on to become a Presbyterian Pastor.   I went on to marry a believer, who later divorced me at least in part because I wasn’t a believer.

All these years later, now as confident believer, I still struggle with the meaning of the word faith.

According to Hebrews 11:1 faith is confidence in God, assurance that my hope in God will be rewarded, even though I can’t see what will come of it.   But where does my confidence in God come from?   Here’s how it has happened for me.

Divorce caused me pain, which drove me to God.  So, yes I took a leap of faith without any rational basis for that faith other than the thought that if there is no God then life is simply idiotic, hopeless and meaningless.  That was first.  

Next I made a commitment to Christ.  I felt nothing emotionally, but I did have this sense that the decision was irrevocable.   I did not sense that it was irrevocable because of the strength of my commitment, rather it felt irrevocable because I sensed that even I couldn’t revoke it.

  

Over the next 8 years in a singles group I discovered a joy with other people I had never experienced before.  That provided some evidence that God might actually be doing something.

As the years passed something else really great happened.   It seemed as if the entire world opened up to me in a new way.  I could see everything as God’s world and from this perspective I could understand in a new way science, politics, history, theology, world religions, philosophy, psychology, nature, and more . . . it now all began to make sense.  It’s like the world had begun to become intelligible, as if I was beginning to see it as it is.

As these things began to take place it became patently obvious and logical to me that I must give myself over to the reality of God.

Then I began to get it, really get it.  I finally began to understand the Bible, the Big Story of the universe, who we human beings are, how we and all of nature are written into the story and how the story works.   I get it that God created a good world, that it went wrong, and that God is making all of it new and that each of us is written into this Big Story of God-making-all-things-right for a purpose.

There’s one more thing.   I’m not convinced that I have had anything to do with any of this.  I can’t prove this, but it feels like God has simply carried and directed me every step of the way from before conception to this moment, even and especially when I was and am a rebel.  I look back and nothing is clearer to me than that anything good was all God.  Alternatively, when I look ahead I know that freely choosing to align my will with God’s is my responsibility.

How would you describe “faith” in your life?


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