Faith is not a hypothetical.

So I’ve recently been learning a lot about faith. Thousands of Christians worldwide are mid-way through Lent- a time of seeking God, sacrifice, and prayerful submission. And for my church this month of March is especially a time of believing for miracles- sacrificing a meal a day and replacing it with prayer to increase faith and see revelation and transformation in our lives. And I must admit it’s been harder than I expected. No, not the going without food, the other bit. The faith bit. The month of fasting has coincided with teaching on faith and I had a few misconceptions or attitudes that have rightly been changed.

Christians I believe, have a tendency to think they have got the whole faith thing down. That once the whole initial barrier to belief is pushed through and faith in God becomes realised that that’s it. But that’s far from all faith is. I seem to have been operating in a sort of ‘No faith please we’re Christians’ type bubble. How much my lifestyle requires faith and how I interweave faith with my everyday life is one of those inconvenient nitty gritty type subjects I just never got round to unpacking. There was just too much else to be concerning myself with right?

I know what you’re thinking how could I have got this far right? Well I do have faith. Faith for the big things- healing for my sister, and father etc. but it’s the everyday faith that I lack. It strikes me now that I may have missed the point. That waiting for the big things to come along before I realise I need faith and then somehow trying and muster it on the spot may be a slightly backwards way of doing things. I am prompted now by the uncomfortable truth that complete dependency on God may rely on the implementation of faith daily. Those little steps of faith. I have already seen a change in my prayer life since I’ve changed my attitude to faith.

I have realised also the importance of preparation for those big things, those sticky situations where you really need to have faith. I’ve learnt that faith and preparation are not mutually exclusive but entirely interwoven and intrinsically linked. I’ve been encouraged by the steps of faith I took last year that have led to great blessing, exposed me to opportunities to extend my passion and awakened the talent that flowed from it. It was God’s prompting and my bravery in putting myself out that started all of this.

This whole faith things clearly requires a lot more thought than I initially anticipated. Rather excitingly it requires action. It is not something that is flat, dead, and cannot be contained on paper or defined in a blog post. It demands attention and exploration. I cannot study it abstractly. To know anything about faith I must act. It is not hypothetical rather it is organic, dynamic.

I have no doubt that I have a lot more to learn about faith. But learn I will.