Faith

It's been so long since I've posted anything, it's so hard to find time to do everything that I want to do here on project- spending time with God, developing relationships with people on project, getting sleep to prepare for a long day on the pirate ship :P - much less doing things outside of those 3! I want to post more of an update, but first I want to post what's been on my mind lately.

I talked with Kevin and Ryan last night about faith, and why the miracles and lives of the apostles don't happen today. We concluded it was because of our lack of faith; we limit God's power to what we think He can do, based on our own reason and what society/culture/science tells us is possible and impossible. God is independent of matter and space, of time and motion. God and His greatness and power are infinite! They cannot be fully comprehended by our minds, nor can we pretend to understand and decide what is possible for God and what is impossible--ALL is possible! Trying to size God down to something our minds can manage is idolatrous, unworthy of God, and keeps us from having faith in what He can really do. In Matthew 14, Jesus and Peter both walk on water! However, Peter had enough faith, even though he was scared, to actually step out onto liquid water and expect to be able to walk on it since Christ commanded him to. In Acts 3, Peter commands a lame beggar to get up and walk, and he does! Would we have the faith today to walk up to somebody and actually believe that God would heal them on the spot? Both of these things would be considered impossible in today's society because we say they are outside of science, the laws of physics, essentially they are things that we "know" can't happen.

As for the faith itself, in Acts 2, believers are living such lives devoted and consumed by Christ that numbers were being added to them daily! It seems like a huge deal even here on summer project when a single person comes to Christ! The faith to live this way and trust so wholeheartedly comes by stepping out in faith as Peter did in Matthew 14, but also by living a life consumed by Christ, as paul writes in Galatians 2:20-- "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." When we are so devoted to Christ that ever action is for Christ, every desire is for Christ, when we have that insatiable desire to know God, for a very poor example, like we do a new girl that we like--getting to know God at all costs, sacrificing time, sleep, money, other plans, when all our attention is focus on getting to know Him more--that is when we will experience Christ's power to move, work, and live through us, because we will be surrendering every bit of control to Christ, so that Christ controls all aspects of our lives, like Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:14, "The love of Christ controls us," because Jesus Christ died for every sin of Paul's and the entire world, that Paul loves Christ so much for that sacrifice and is indebted so much to Christ that he is controlled by Christ's love, that every decision he makes is for Christ, to know Christ more, and reaching out to others with Christ's love.

All that being said, I feel like the lives of most Christians today, certainly including myself, are SO far away from the way Christ desires us to live, such as how the apostles lived. We can't be Christians and have the Gospel in our lives, our lives need to BE the Gospel, lived out daily! Personally, I don't feel like my life is fully controlled and consumed by Christ. I don't feel like I'm taking up my cross and following Christ, I feel like I'm inviting Christ to come influence my life where I am and what I'm doing right now, instead of leaving behind what I know and following after Christ, not thinking twice, not looking back on what I want to be doing for my own fun and interests.

All that being said, my prayer is still that every day God would continue to draw myself to Him, that I would be consumed with Him, amazed by His love, trusting in His power, and that I would step out and act on my faith in such a great God. How different would our lives look if we were truly trusting in the full power of God and being consumed by Him daily?

And a last sidenote, a little thing to think about: I laughed when I first thought about it, but what if my goal for the summer was to have faith enough to walk on water? It sounds ridiculous at first, but I think it is just an example of how we immediately limit God's power and our access to it through our faith to what we think is physically possible by what we know. It would disobey our "laws" of science, but then again, didn't raising Jesus from the dead on the third day disobey them also?

"Ah, Sovereign LORD, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for You." -Jeremiah 32:17