Fear, Doubts and Faith

Don’t be afraid. Have faith. God loves you!

Now, I know we all claim to believe this stuff, but how many of us really believe in our heart of hearts that it’s God’s greatest desire to give each of us the kingdom? (Luke 12:32)  How many of us really believe that God knows, loves and cares about each of us individually, intimately, and passionately? (Ephesians 2:4-5; 1 John 4:9-11)   That he searches us out and knows us, our sitting down and our rising up, as the psalmist says? (Psalm 139; Romans 8:27)

See, it’s one thing to have the kind of naive, childlike faith with which many of us were raised, believing that God loves us because that’s what we were taught—a faith un-examined, unquestioned, untested by personal crisis. But it’s quite another thing to have the kind of mature faith we see modeled by Abraham—faith that’s been refined by holy struggles with dashed dreams and doubts. Faith that doesn’t just believe that God loves us, but knows it to the core. Faith that is rooted in an affective, felt experience of God’s love.

“Don’t be afraid,” God tells Abraham, “I am your shield, and your reward shall be very great.” (Gen 15:1)  Abraham’s not afraid, but he’s no paradigm of blind faith either. So he takes Abraham outside and whispers, “Look toward heaven and count the stars …” After that, Abraham “believed the Lord.” (Gen 15:5)

We don’t know exactly what happened out there to change Abraham’s mind. We can only imagine that he was so awe-filled by the magnificence of the night sky and the abundance of stars that he was overwhelmed by God’s loving presence. We can imagine that Abraham suddenly found himself feeling quite small as he took in the impossible enormity of infinity; that he was profoundly humbled by the realization that God is, after all God. “All this, and He cares about me?” he must have marveled. Abraham had a felt experience of God’s love.

That famous line from the letter to the Hebrews tells us that, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Heb 11:1)  Or as another translation has it, “Faith gives substance to our hopes and convinces us of the realities we can not see.”

For “thinking” Christians to have faith, we need to be really intentional about doing things to pry open our hearts for the experience of God’s love. We need to make space in the clutter of our lives for felt experiences of God’s love—heart felt experiences—that we can savor, recall, and relive, when we’re frightened by the inevitable doubts that sometimes seize us, by darkness, or by despair. And mind you, contrary to popular myth, you don’t have to be a mystic to have this kind of experience. This is God’s desire for all of us!