What is Your Faith in?

Who am I to say that any event or portion of my life is for me alone?  Maybe I’m enduring so another person can witness my faith in God, or His power in my life, or my struggle so they can see how another human who knows God is real still struggles.  The truth is I simply do not know.  Like I said, I don’t even know what’s best for me so how can I possibly know why I might have to endure or successfully manage little or a lot?

I am unqualified to judge.  I am unqualified to know right from wrong or good from evil.  As an unqualified creation and not the Creator, I need to decide what to have faith in or whether to have faith at all.  There are not many choices in this matter. 

One, you can have no faith.  You can decide that nothing can be trusted, that there is no authority, and that there is no determiner of good.  This decision puts all things on the table.  You are your own authority; you decide how you are going to live and what is best for you; you decide what is good for you by how it affects you.  Your experience is the one that matters.  Your knowledge is the knowledge that matters.  You worship your own intellect and live inside the definitions of right and wrong as you define them, until you change them, or they are changed for you by someone who is stronger.  I have never met a person who has no faith in anything.  I am not sure it is possible to exist in such a place.

Two, you can have faith in something that isn’t God.  You trust in whatever that is and it becomes your authority.  You view right and wrong or good and evil from that perspective and live accordingly.  There are many idols that can be gods.  It can be a single desire or a multitude of desires, it can be golden objects, it can be living things - anything and everything can become someone's god.  History is ripe with examples.

Three, you can have partial faith in God.  You can sort of believe but never believe fully.  You can think it’s a good idea and know somewhere inside that it’s probably right but decide you don’t want to give up your desires.  You willingly acknowledge God as authority over parts of your life but you are authority over other parts.  You are in a compromise all the time.  When you need Him you know you'll have faith then.

Four, you can have a full faith in God.  You can believe Him based solely on His Word and do your best to do what He says trusting that it is best for you.  God’s authority is the single authority.  There is no other.

Everyone of “the world” is at one of these faith locations or they are at a mix of them.  Maybe they have a partial faith in God and they have a faith in something that isn’t God.  Maybe they move at different times from one location to another.  Sometimes they have no faith and then have some faith in this or that at other times.

I believe everyone has faith in something, it might be themselves, it might be in their family, it might be in their friends, it might be in their career, it might be in their own resources, but it is in something or someone.  Where do you turn when you have a problem or when something great happens?  Who is the first person you tell?  Where do you get your purpose in living?  Why do you believe you are alive?  Does your life depend upon you and you alone?