Dear Reader,
As of January of 2018, I began a commitment to using my blog as a medium for sharing about my faith in Jesus Christ. It was, in my way, a means of ministry as well as exercise for spiritual growth. So each month since then I have published two posts each month. One being my regular musings on life, society and whatever else is on my mind, and the other being an ‘About my Faith’ post.
Recently, however, I’ve been going through ‘some stuff’. Stuff that has put me in a position where I have neither the desire nor the conviction to share my faith as I’d felt called to when I first started this exercise. While I have felt this before, the lack of conviction, the self and faith doubt, I have yet to have this season drag on so long. Suffice it to say I feel like I’ve depleted my hope reserves and at the moment I’m not the Christian anyone can be proud of, let alone share.
But perhaps this is why I feel I must share this, share what I have noted here in this ‘sunken place’. For one, I’ve found that very few Christians make good counselors. We listen to respond rather than to understand and empathize with the person. We have been trained to see God as some stern African parent who would be offended by our doubts and frailty in faith. We rebuke the person questioning, and wrestling with issues [especially if we can’t understand why they feel what they do]. We have been taught that we must always be joyful, always be faithful, always be anchored in prayer, always be firm in faith. We have been taught to hurl scriptures at the person who is down- as if they didn’t know said scripture verse before falling.
In recent discussions with Christian friends (of varying degrees of faith and genuine friendship) I have found myself respecting the Christians who admit that they do not know. They who admit to their struggle, who admit that they have fallen too often to hold your own struggle against you- who do not expect you to overcome what they have yet to experience, what they cannot understand, or what they themselves succumbed to when they ‘were younger and not yet saved’. Ugh! The last group is the worse!
The video above is culled from my favorite message by @priscillashirer (check out the full video
HERE) and I feel more Christians should hear it. In this message, Priscilla reminds us that God has given us permission to doubt, that Christ did not rebuke John when he questioned and that this battle is ultimately God’s. It is HE who enables our faith, we could not on our own, hold this belief with must conviction. Please do watch the full video, it is a truly poignant message.
Next, the more I have been told to ‘get over myself’ (in more polite/patronizing ways of course), the more I have decided to settle right down in this ‘sunken place’. This sounds retrogressive, but I mean it all the same. I have become weary of the people who expect you thriving round the clock- or at least pretending that you are. The people who preach using only certain seasons in our favorite Bible characters.
These people will give you the verse of Job praising God in adversity, but not that of him wishing he was dead or not born. Like we can’t do both ????????♀
They will preach using the woman at the well, as if she would be that woman without having had four husbands and no damns left to give. If she wasn’t the woman she is she may not even have spoken to Jesus in that context, she’d have been too ‘well-bred’.
These people praise the David who could stand up to Goliath without acknowledging how he would later be unable to stand up to his own self when it came to greed and lust…
Nearly all biblical characters displayed flaws we would write off church members for in this day and age. Nearly everyone we would claim the blessings of had struggled. The seasons shaped and made them. It is those seasons of their human frailty, and their failure to be ‘holy’ that justifies Christ’s sacrifice…
So why is it that we reject our own human frailness, we expect that we would be forever full of faith. At what point are we to be empty for Christ to fill us?
I do not suggest that we glorify the seasons of depression, of failure and backsliding. Not at all. What I propose is that we be more understanding, that we stop thinking so narrowly. That we appreciate that ALL SEASONS MATTER. That we recognize that telling someone who is backsliding to lift themselves up with the word is okay, but asking God – who being God is far more powerful- to meet them in their sunken place and lift them out is actually how this thing works.
And if you’re like me; going through some stuff, questioning and on the brink of failing. I pray that you learn (as I am slowly acknowledging) that there’s no way to fall so far that God- being supreme- cannot lift you out. And I hope we soon see the reason for this season.
Amen.
P.S
I still whisper to myself “this too shall pass”, but now I equally think “this too may be part of His plan”
