Growing in Faith
Our Senior Minister, Dr. James Howell, is sending some great emails out to start the new year about how to “grow’ in your faith. This one really struck a cord with me and I had to share it with you:
It is not merely that we are at a good faith place and might wish to step up a little higher. Because we live in this world, and in a vapid, self-centered, craziness obsessed culture, we suffer setbacks, attrition, even injury between Sundays and devotional times.
Years ago, a friend of mine was in a car crash, surviving multiple fractures to her hip, legs and feet. The bones healed, but she had to battle through months of physical therapy before she could actually walk. Not only had her muscles atrophied for lack of use; the doctor suggested the neurological linkage between her brain and muscles had fallen asleep.
You were made in God’s image, intended for beauty, goodness and holiness. But repeated collisions with a culture that thinks nothing about God (not to mention your sinful nature) wreck your God-given beauty. You get flabby. In your laziness you adjust to the mess of your life. The delicate fibers tying soul, heart and spirit into real life shut down. If you care about God and the life of faith, you have to get in shape, and climb up and out of the old life via the regimen of worship, prayer, Bible reading - not just “nice” activities, but the difference between languishing flat on your back and being able to run and dance.
Or maybe the Christian life is akin to a foreign language. I wish I could just start speaking and comprehending Spanish. Listen to a single Russian tape, drop by an Arabic class twice, and your confusion will be dizzying. A language demands an investment of time, study, gradual improvement, embarrassing failures, toddling steps of progress, commitment; eventually you begin to understand, the grammar sinks in, you communicate. Even if you learned French once upon a time, you lose it if you don’t use it. Christianity doesn’t “take” in childhood Sunday School, without lifelong persistence.
Faith will never assume lovely shape as long as you worship when it’s convenient, if your relationship with God is limited to a seventeen second prayer here and reading Howell’s email there. Jesus called “disciples” - a word meaning both “students” and “discipline.” The antidote to a bumbling, lackluster faith is discipline, regularity, a re-carved schedule, so prayer is not a quickie, so the Bible isn’t something I “ought” to read, so getting involved in mission isn’t a nice idea I’m glad the teenager down the street is doing. The disciplines of the faith are the divine origami whereby our mis-shapen souls are revamped into God’s image.
Christianity isn’t merely like a language or exercise. Faith is something you do with your body: reaching out, serving, sweating, refraining, touching, hammering, kneeling, smiling; new skills and literal muscles are required. Faith really is another language, with a peculiar vocabulary, a grammar alien to the way the rest of the world thinks. So lift that Bible, fall on your knees, open that tight fist, and use that open hand to be generous, to welcome a stranger, or just to signal to God that you’re available.
Tags: faith, james howell
July 8th, 2010 at 7:38 am
Just one single question though. Perhaps you have made creating this blog as your occupation or do you do this in your spare time? Simply curious..
July 13th, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Learn to study,
As a Christian strength coach, in a way this blog is my occupation, but primarily I use it as a medium to share information with my clients and friends.
Thanks for posting!
Jason