Redeeming Your Story: Faith
This weekend we are beginning a three-part series called “Redeeming Your Story”. All of us have one. A history – that is. In that history is written the story of our lives. The pain and the joy. The laughter and the tears. There are parts of each of our story that we don’t like to tell. The words to the story are almost easier that the emotions that accompany them.
Yet, to believe in a Creator God who created with purpose and chooses to love rather than domineer, we must be able to find God in the story of our past.
Faith is simply the ability to remember the actions of a redemptive God and trust that this God will carry you into the future. Too often we think of faith as believing from scratch…nothing. That is not true for any of us. Faith in God did not come out of a vacuum. It came from experience and memory of things having taken place in the past.
For our discussion, can you remember your first memory of trust in God? It might seem like nothing to anyone else. It might be minute in scope to your faith today. It might have happened yesterday. All the same, share that first trigger that hit in your memory of a God that might be able to be trusted.
March 15th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
On a cold and wet December day I stood on a desolate sand dune, looked up, and spoke to the sky knowing others had said God lived there. Although I had been raised in the church and knew lots of stories, I didn’t know trust. I told the sky that if God was real he was going to have to prove it to me. He did that day (that’s a different story) but it still took 2-1/2 years for me to really trust. Now 20+ years later I’m realizing I’ve been living in fear not trust. My faith is so small and I’m wondering what it is I believe. I have spent much of my life trusting myself, church, people, and culture, and not trusting God. I need to change. With the same lost and broken heart as that 13 year old, I’m again asking God to help my unbelief and to show me who he really is because in many ways I still don’t understand or trust.
March 18th, 2007 at 12:48 am
Greetings.
Faith, to me, is far from the start, as I had been in a Catholic school living in a foster home. This home held no love, as I remember many children living there, and none of us ever being told of God or of being shown any form of love. This home was merely a business for the people who kept us. The school was a way to make us mind, not really about faith or love but a dictatorship in which I remember Sister Jude as the hand of authority and she ruled with a mighty fist and hardwood paddle, one that hung on her side next to a long shinny black rosary. Nestled in the folds of her habit, a long flowing grey and black one with a white frame about her face, the only flesh beside her hands one could visibly see.
On one side of this paddle there was this drawing of a Bambi deer, with the words, “For the cute little deer”, and the flip side a drawing of a Bear, and here it said, “For the bear behind!” And that is where if found its mark many a times.
The reason I lived in this home was my birth mother had left me with a baby sitter when I was a couple months of age and she never returned in my life again. My dad was a prisoner of war for 3.5 years of his life, and when he returned to his life outside the military he was very unstable. So I went to live with others who were tentative to the physical needs, like a roof and food, but not to the emotional or spiritual needs, especially important to the formative years.
I was in need of a friend and especially someone who could and would love me, just to love me for no reason. Thus purpose for the action I took. I remember clearly, so many years past now, my asking of Sister Jude and even Father Burke what the bible was about. The answer is still burnt in my mind as I was told it had nothing to do with me or for me. It was a prayer book and not to worry about it. So I apprehended one without permission and in the short time I had it in my procession I read of someone who did love and without motive or guile. I wanted to know more about this person. This was the beginning of my relationship to Jesus, as I asked Him into my life to love me and show me how to love. I still feel His embrace to this very day.
From here there are many stories and paths which create the life I have lived, but it was in the military boot camp (Army) as I was also in the Navy, where I dedicated my life completely to the pursuit of Jesus, this was at the age of 16. It was at this time I remember the beginning of my lifelong desire and prayer to God to become an evangelist. It was here where I was first, by submergence, baptized; as I understand as a baby I was dedicated by sprinkling of water on the forehead.
It has been a road of which I have no regrets in the walking, as I am assured it has lead to a better me. Of course, by the grace of God it has not yet ended, and someday I may even see a coming to life the hearts desire of almost a lifetime and prayer. In the meantime I am satisfied being loved by Jesus and having opportunity to love those He set before me. It brings to my memory this verse:
Titus 2:14
who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager unto good works.
May we all remember our first encounter with Jesus and hold fast His promise unto the end, as this is truly what it is all about.
Blessings to all.