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When I was a child, I believed in many things I couldn’t see, with all my heart, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Ghosts, my mind was fertile and my imagination was strong.
Part of this was just being a child, before I had too many things happen in my life, and part of it was growing up in a world almost free from technology. Don’t get me wrong, I love technology, it is useful, but so many kids are losing the ability to tap in and use their imagination to its fullest potential because they are being ‘entertained’ constantly.
I am grateful for this childhood, because I know what it felt like to play like that, imagine like that and believe like that. It is easy to ‘tap back in’.
Regardless of our upbringing, somewhere along the path from childhood to adulthood, we start to rationalise things, experience things, search for meaning in things, try to explain things, search for more meaning in life, our purpose and more.
We evolve as meaning making machines, we make everything mean something, even if it doesn't.
Throw in the evolution of society, social media and the speed in which we can be sent and consume information, and ‘what to believe in’ can become a minefield of epic proportions.
Beliefs are fundamentally formed from experiences, or if some beliefs were strongly held by parents or other significant adults as we grew up, we just adopt those without ever questioning why or if the belief of another person is helping us navigate life better or not.
If we have a bad experience with something then we are at risk of believing that every time ‘this or that’ happens, it will be bad.
Those with pessimistic natures will almost always take this view faster than those with optimistic natures.
Believing in a loving God who gave me life, is a choice, and not a one time choice either, it's often a daily one.
Choosing to believe in this loving God, versus the world started as an explosion by itself, I think takes LESS faith.
“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” – Hebrews 1:11, NIV
My own view - It takes more faith to be an atheist.
People often argue their reason for not believing fully in God or at all, is that they can’t see him, so he can't be real.
Yet there are many things we all believe in that sustain our physical life, gravity, the air we breathe, we can’t see those things yet we have 100% faith in their ability to keep us alive and stuck to this planet.
Sometimes I have heard people say ‘ If God is all powerful then why doesn’t he just make us all love him, see him and know him?’
God gave us the freedom of choice, he wants us to love him out of choice, why?
This becomes a relationship, and moves us out of religion to a relationship with a God who cares. The same God who created our very lives.
The downside of this is, the modern world gives us so many choices and promotes "happiness and freedom " as commodities you can buy.
The idea of magic lamps is an ancient one, not something new. It's something humans have always bought into. Take this, you get that, rub this and make a wish.
When we do wish for something and get it, we are offered so many explanations as to why that happened.
The cynical person says "it's coincidence "
The new ager says " thanks universe "
The practical person " its providence "
Those more on the fence of believing in a God "oh wow that was meant to be"
Stepping over that line and committing to belief in one God, a God who created us, seems to be so hard for humans to do.
When the world is screaming, you can have choices about everything and anything you want, even now, you can even choose your gender - let's not get into that debate but just a point we are all acutely aware of, regardless of our views on this, it is yet another choice we can make.
There is a modern thing called ‘Decision fatigue’ the more choices we have at our fingertips, the more tired we become of making them.
If you have spent any time in other places around our planet where people barely survive, which is a huge number in the wider world, you will have an understanding of the simplicity of their daily lives, because they have little, they have fewer choices to make, and their hearts just seem more open to the simpler things, including beliefs.
You only have to spend some time around some cultures who have very little in terms of material possessions, where they have an undying faith in God, to see that when they have little choice and its actually the reason for their faith, they may have fewer conflicting messages, or invitations to believe in something more ‘modern, faster, better, cooler’, the power is amazing.
Some observations about groups of people like this:
The whole community believes, strength and hope in numbers
No internet to search a million options to make your life better
Hope is a requirement for human survival
They have experienced something that people can't argue with, an encounter with the Holy spirit,
When you tap in and experience the fullness of an encounter with God's Holy spirit often, you can never go back to where you were in your faith journey.
No one can tell you he's not real, because you felt him and have no other explanation of what happened. This now becomes evidence you can build faith upon, should you choose to.
When he moves in our lives in a tangible way, that is a blessing and an opportunity to build our portfolio of his goodness and grace in our lives.
When the world around us, or just other people try to tell us he doesn't exist, we know that he does. I accept that everyone has a right to believe what they do, and never try to push or convince people to believe.
The invitation is to everyone with or without my input, because our very lives exist as one of the greatest ongoing miracles in the world, the formation and birth of a human child.
If you haven't had a moment or enough moments like this, I pray you find a way to seek more of them.
“He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” – Matthew 18:2-5, NIV
Personally, I can never get enough
FAITH - defined in the dictionary
“complete trust or confidence in someone or something.”
If we don’t have that faith, trust or total confidence in God, our question to ourselves should be ‘how can I build that?’
Tap into your inner child today my friends, reconnect with that ability to believe in something magical, like a loving God who loves us all unconditionally and wants us to do life with him in the mix.
You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
What we feed grows and thrives, so I choose daily to feed my faith, water it, nurture it, focus on it.
Things I do to feed my faith
Hang out wherever and whenever possible with others on a faith journey, where I can have open conversations about it, ask questions, get prayer and pray for others
Read, watch and share things online that feed my faith
Serve my community in many ways alongside others
Pray often, sing often, and try to become the best version of myself I can while I am on this planet.
Practise gratitude and share with others when I see God move in my life, big and small moments, there is power in speaking these things out for you and for others.
I believe I will go to heaven, but I also believe I have things to do here on this earth, I believe everyone does, I would rather do it with an undying faith in God than alone and adrift from what that gives me.
PS: I too have had times where I have prayed hard, in faith for God to move in a certain way, and it appears at first that he didn’t answer that prayer in the way I wanted or thought he should. But when the dust settles I always see where he was in the mix, walking with me through what I was going through.
God doesn’t promise us if we believe we will have a sweet life with no pain, death, suffering, those things are part of human life as we know it.
What he does promise us that no matter what, we will never go through those things alone again.
The things people blame God for, humans are actually responsible for, going back to my earlier point of the freedom of choice, humans choose to do bad things to themselves and others, they can choose differently if they know there is a choice.
Death is part of being human, God cannot and will not exempt us from losing people in our lives, our human bodies are complex and miraculous, which means there is a huge potential for things to break down or go wrong.
Whether you believe in God or not, death still happens. Bad stuff still happens, if I am to navigate this world the way it is, and is heading, I would much rather do it with the support of my faith in God and the community around me of faith, than alone.
I began to build my own portfolio of evidence 20 years ago, and have not stopped. One of the reasons I started this blog, apart from God prompting me to share and encourage others, was to document his goodness in my life along a regular human journey with all of its ups and downs.
Arohanui
Jen xxxx
A couple of favourite songs from the week around this topic - Turn the sound up and just soak in his presence
Quiet - By Elevation Rhythm
Graves into gardens - Elevation worship - Brandon Lake
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