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The real, messy faith.

So, here I am, stuck in an airport, awaiting six hours to board my rebooked flight. Soon, I will get on a plane and fly back to where it all started: Atlanta. So, while I am waiting, I have decided use this time for good, and share a little bit about my month that I was to busy to actually update people on. 

So what exactly have I learned within the last month? I mean, I can’t really pin down every single thing I did learn, but I can tell you that I have learned a lot. How to listen. How to follow. But most importantly, how to really have faith. Because faith is a word that  gets so lost in the mix of things. In its true raw self, faith is simple. It’s believing without seeing. Or hearing. Or feeling. It is putting your trust in God in everything you do. It cannot be forced. It can’t be defined by a spiritual high. It’s solely dependent on your willingness to go to god, especially when times are bound, low, and silent. It is in these moments that faith seems so hard to do, that you grow the most in it, and you really can appreciate it in its messy beauty.

One of my favorite characters in the Bible is David. David is a unique character because he is such a mess of a man. Yet, despite whate sin or struggle David faced, he would always come back to the father. Yes, sometimes it was out of anger, loneliness, sadness, guilt, or even heartbreak, but that doesn’t matter. David was a man who was real with god. And that is where I think we all get it wrong. We think that our relationship with God has to be romanticized, but it doesn’t. 

Over the last month, I have gotten the chance to take part in several different churches throughout Costa Rica, and what is interesting to see was that each church was different. They all had imperfections; both phy and spiritually. Some didn’t even have four walls, but what was evident in all of the churches I visited was that they were all solely reliant on faith in god. Even when things were falling apart, even when there was not much left . They cried out to god and he was there. These churches were so powerful because of their faith. 

So, in today’s era of Megachurches, fancy lights and technology, I realized that we get caught up in so many different things, that we never get the chance to pursue our faith. Yes, we get times to rejoice, but we need to remember that faith is more than a high, but  our faithfulness to talk and listen to god, even in those tough times. 

Faith in god is real. It’s messy , emotional, and hard, but it is when we have faith in him that we cry out and we are tuned in to see and hear him move in the once closed places.

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