It seems like an easy question. One that comes with presuppositions.
“How dare you ask me where my faith is! I know I have faith and I know where it is!”
“Hold on….Do I have faith? It sure doesn’t feel like it sometimes. I may have it but it doesn’t feel like it does any good.”
“What do I believe?”
“Why do I believe what I believe?”
It “seemed” like an easy question.
It does not matter your age, experiences, gender, or race. When you are asked this question it hits to your core.
You see, I am not asking the question, “Where’s your faith?,” meaning I don’t believe you have any. Nor am I asking the question insinuating I thought you had faith but due to recent actions on your part, I am wondering if you still do. I am asking the question for a completely different reason.
As mentioned in another post of mine, I am quite observant. Yes, you will find me texting and aimlessly looking up basketball scores and random tweets on my iPhone while around others, yet, I still have the capacity (somehow) to hear almost everything that is being said around me. I see things that people probably do not know I am seeing (which can be a curse sometimes).
With that being said, as I study the world around me I am not one to proclaim any of the following:
“The world is going to Hell faster than a speeding bullet!”
“Jesus will come back any second so get saved before it’s too late!”
“You know, if you don’t accept Christ right now, you will die later and go to Hell!”
“Will you JUST accept Christ before it’s too late?!?”
I am of the belief many people are being misled on a daily basis. Many people are making terrible choices regularly and are being judged, criticized, and talked about as if it’s all their doing. While I whole-heartedly believe in people taking responsibly for their actions, there are others at fault here.
We have all witnessed it. Someone we thought was of a certain, let’s say, high character, slam into a wall and fall straight on their face. We have all seen someone we thought was as good as it gets morally, ethically, spiritually even, do something or say something that seemingly erased whatever “good” they had lived.
Why?
You could say, “we are all human and nobody is perfect.”
True. Let’s be honest: is that a real excuse to do some of the things you perhaps just thought of when I mentioned we all know someone whom we thought was near perfect do whatever they did?
You may say, “sure it is.” Come on now, I thought we were being honest.
Because that’s how this stuff gets avoided: honesty! I am not sure about you, but I am so tired of good things and good people being ruined because of one terrible decision. If we are just honest with ourselves, I am not even talking about everyone else, we could believe in something that would keep us from doing and/or saying things that are so detrimental.
Where’s your faith? What is it built on? Will it stand when things around you are crumbling?
What happened to others’ faith when things around them crumbled—so then they crumbled? Was the faith not there? Or was it really perhaps the faith wasn’t built correctly?
Think about it: How often does something appear perfectly fine on the outside but something terribly wrong is happening on the inside?
Take this simple example: If a balloon is filled with carbon dioxide it still looks like a balloon. It just will not float. It falls straight to the ground. When you fill the balloon with helium—it floats like a balloon is supposed to. Both look exactly the same—they look perfect actually. The problem: one is filled with the right stuff, the other with the wrong stuff. One balloon is filled so that it can do what it was created to do and the other is filled to look fine, but not function correctly.
There are literally billions of us in this world. There are literally billions of us searching for something to hold on to when things that aren’t planned happen. What’s amazing is we search for that same thing when success happens, as well. Some of us can be on top of the mountain, so to speak—everything is going great. But on the inside, we are like a balloon filled with carbon dioxide.
I am not here to tell you who or what to put your faith in. That’s your decision. What I am saying is we are in a world where it’s becoming increasingly more popular to just do what you want to do, whenever you want to do it, with no regard for anyone else. What does that lead to? People not liking you. You don’t care that people don’t like you? What are you going to do when you really, really need someone…but nobody is there? There is nobody to call. Nobody to come.
Our faith must be built the right way. A faith that will not fail. A faith that will not be shaken. A faith that will not be broken.
There is so much more to this…
Where’s your faith?