Previous essays in an ongoing series on grace in Christianity:
Romans 5 : 1 – 3
A man plans to walk across Niagara Falls on a tightrope, pushing a wheelbarrow. Before he starts, he asks an observer: “Do you believe I can cross the Falls on a tightrope with a wheelbarrow?” The man responds, “Yes of course!” The tightrope walker then responds: “Then get in the wheelbarrow!”
There are many misconceptions about faith. The secular skeptic describes it as “believing in something that is not real, that doesn’t exist.” The spiritually oriented or religious tend to understand faith as intellectual certainty.
So what is this thing called faith, if not intellectual conviction? Of course, mental certainty does not preclude real faith, and may well coincide with it, but it is almost incidental. So the heart of genuine faith is this: it is about trust.
For true faith requires action. There is, in any act of faith, a cost — and this sacrifice of the self is the first step in moving toward the goal of a relationship with God, one based on trust and dependence.
For underlying this trust in God is a certainty, weak as it may be at first, that God is in fact dependable; that He is wise and all-knowing — and the basis of our relationship with Him is His infinite love for each of us, manifested in the sacrifice of His Son on the cross for our sin and salvation.
Ideally this growing trust is best fostered in relationships with other Christians. When we begin to trust others, engendered by transparency and honesty (which leads to humility), and we learn the outcome of others who have trusted and experienced His goodness and faithfulness in their brokenness, we become more willing, with their encouragement and testimony, to start trusting God ourselves, initiated often in small, daily decisions.
So we pray about lost keys, or parking spaces, or a difficult meeting, and find the outcome surprising (that insight conveyed by the Holy Spirit within), it is confirmation of the goodness and compassion of a God who loves us beyond measure and cares about the smallest aspects of our lives. From these small experiences, we enlarge our faith, trusting in ever greater and weightier matters.
There are pitfalls which can befall us, however. Ultimately the key to growth in faith is submission to His will, the surrender of our wills to His. When we accept Christ, we accept the lordship of Christ — to wit, we subject and surrender our wills to His, trusting in His wisdom and perfect plan for us and for the world around us.
But there is no small peril that we demand of God that which is really our own will. So we pray that we or a loved one be healed of cancer; or for world peace; or for a restored marriage after divorce, and so on. These are good things; but if we do not accept that in God’s perfect wisdom and sovereign plan He may allow an outcome which is contrary — and indeed far deeper and wiser — than that which we have so earnestly sought, then we will be angry, resentful and confused at God’s failure to our requests
So the key to faith is first and foremost trust, empowered by submission to the will of our Father, who means us no ill but loves us beyond measure, and desires that we draw ever closer to Him.
So dip your toe in the water of faith, and hop in that wheelbarrow. You will find the tightrope vastly wider than you can know, and begin to experience the balance, power, peace and joy that only He can provide.
