When I began to pray with intent for my boys, my pregnancy, the crisis we were going through and actually felt like I had been given a clear answer to prayers from God at times my faith began to change. It started as the tiniest of mustard seeds and slowly began to grow but it took a crisis in my marriage, a rock bottom hit for my husband that lead him to accepting Jesus into his life and our subsequent change to more living faith for me to begin to grasp the trinity, to grasp that Jesus was God and the holy spirit was their voice inside my head and heart.
Exploring that has not been easy and many times I come across something that really makes me think, really rips what I believe apart or at least makes me work to come to terms with it.
I recently read a christian fiction novel called Self Incrimination by Randy Singer. The main character in the book, surprise surprise, goes through a personal crisis which forces her to explore her faith and beliefs and eventually give her heart to Jesus. She, herself, is reading 'Mere Christianity' by C.S. Lewis and as she digs deep in to her belief that Jesus was a great teacher and God was all the all powerful being she explores this quote in the book.
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
Now if you are like me, wrapping your head around what Lewis is saying there takes some time, brain power and deep thinking. Thankfully I had the author of the book, the character in the book, to help me process it with this part being key....
You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.
You must make a choice. Either Christ as God or Christ as lunatic. It's that simple. If Jesus came and did all that he did and said all that he did then he's either crazy a jaybird, as evil as the devil or he's not just merely a teacher about God but He IS God! It's that simple! Jesus was so much more than just a teacher, he did so much more than just come to teach.
As the character analyzed her view on why she had resisted Christ as God and not as only 'the good teacher', I realized that I definitely had my own resistance to overcome in fully trusting God too.
You see the character had lost her first husband at a very young age to cancer. At the time she had been attending church faithfully and prayed often. She prayed for her husband to be healed and she believed that God had not answered her prayers, that God had allowed her husband to die. So if Christ was God then Christ, Jesus the good teacher, had allowed her husband to die. He had heard her prayers and allowed him to die.
And as I read that part I felt myself go back in time to a hospital room, a woman who looked an awful lot like me holding and rubbing her pregnant belly and praying for the two baby boys inside of her. Praying to God to heal those babies and to keep them safe. And then finding out 36 hours later than one of them was gone. And losing bits of her faith, questioning a God that could make her pregnant with two babies only to take one of them away.
I realized that I definitely struggled with loving Jesus and God as the same because I couldn't sort out 'the good teacher' from the 'all powerful God'. Jesus has always been 'good' to me and I've never really thought of him as a being who had the power to give and to take away. He was here to give, to serve, to teach....right??? Right??? But when I look at it from the perspective of an all powerful being who willingly came here to teach God's people, to model what God wants from us, to serve us all the time knowing that he was going to die, that he was going to be the passover lamb who would be a sacrifice for our sins then I know he was so much more than a good teacher and that he was, is and forever shall be, God. And if He is God then He is just as responsible for answering my prayers in a way that was not what I wanted. He is just as 'responsible' for my son's death as God is.
Jesus allowed my son's death.
Wow! When I say it that way it does kind of hurt and it brings me to a place where I realize that there are times when I still feel anger about this, to a place where I just don't understand the why. It brings me to a place of questions...still, even now, 11+ years later.
Just last night we talked about facing a wall in our faith and how we have to overcome the wall, go over the wall, or we just will move to a different place and hit the wall again. My friend actually moved me as an example when talking about how hard it is to overcome the wall and how easy it is to get stuck in the 'why'. I've talked about this before in this blog post and this message still rings true to me....
I don’t know why my son died. I don’t know why my twins didn’t get to grow up together. I don’t know why this is the path of my life. What I do know is that God is walking it with me, that Jesus came and met me in a few different ways, in a few different places and brought me stories, people and information out of nowhere….all of which gave me hope. What I do know is that God has given me a gift to write and the Holy Spirit breathes words into me that I can share that may help others find that hope too. And what I also know is that someday we will all be reunited again. Someday the answers to the why’s will be clear….or perhaps clearer. For now I will focus on what….what I can do with what I know, what I experienced, what I see, what I sense and what I feel. For now the what is all that matters.
That's what got me over the wall of my journey but it certainly wasn't found in the moment, in the days, weeks or months afterwards either. It was part of a life journey, a choice I had to make to move my head and heart in that direction and still has many unanswered questions. And that's ok. It's natural and it's a human response to spirit filled moments and to every day moments too. The important part to me is that I have given it to God and I've accepted that Jesus came to set me free. I'm working to continue to trust Him and am exploring what that really means for me in my life.
I've made a choice to believe, to trust and to follow.
Jesus allowed my son's death.
Wow! When I say it that way it does kind of hurt and it brings me to a place where I realize that there are times when I still feel anger about this, to a place where I just don't understand the why. It brings me to a place of questions...still, even now, 11+ years later.
Just last night we talked about facing a wall in our faith and how we have to overcome the wall, go over the wall, or we just will move to a different place and hit the wall again. My friend actually moved me as an example when talking about how hard it is to overcome the wall and how easy it is to get stuck in the 'why'. I've talked about this before in this blog post and this message still rings true to me....
I don’t know why my son died. I don’t know why my twins didn’t get to grow up together. I don’t know why this is the path of my life. What I do know is that God is walking it with me, that Jesus came and met me in a few different ways, in a few different places and brought me stories, people and information out of nowhere….all of which gave me hope. What I do know is that God has given me a gift to write and the Holy Spirit breathes words into me that I can share that may help others find that hope too. And what I also know is that someday we will all be reunited again. Someday the answers to the why’s will be clear….or perhaps clearer. For now I will focus on what….what I can do with what I know, what I experienced, what I see, what I sense and what I feel. For now the what is all that matters.
That's what got me over the wall of my journey but it certainly wasn't found in the moment, in the days, weeks or months afterwards either. It was part of a life journey, a choice I had to make to move my head and heart in that direction and still has many unanswered questions. And that's ok. It's natural and it's a human response to spirit filled moments and to every day moments too. The important part to me is that I have given it to God and I've accepted that Jesus came to set me free. I'm working to continue to trust Him and am exploring what that really means for me in my life.
I've made a choice to believe, to trust and to follow.
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