My Faith Ain't Like Yours

My Faith Ain’t Like Yours

And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed the Lord; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:6)

Nothing can be more destructive to faith than to speak it out loud or act upon it before the faithless and watch people tear it apart like a pack of mad dogs when things get shaky.

After being ill, I knew by the Spirit that I had several unfinished tasks that I had not completed; the assignments were months behind schedule and I had consciously taken an attitude with God that I ain’t doing it because it won’t do any good anyway and I’m finished with all that mess; leave me alone about it; they’re crazy and sick as they want to be and my life is peaceful. Back up on my feet I was moved to complete the cycle of directives I was given. Needless to say the responses to some weren’t necessarily positive. I pissed some people off to say the least then I worried about it. Or should I say I worried about whether or not God had mislead and betrayed me and I’m left looking like Boo Boo the Clown.

Weeks later, I tortured myself worrying whether or not I looked like an idiot to a whole bunch of people who might decide I don’t know when to quit, need to be hospitalized or given a wide berth. He’s crazy, I could just hear them saying. God began to teach further.

The weekend approaching, I had gotten this sense that I needed to wash my car on Saturday (not any other day), which I had not washed in over a year and a half. I got up to a bright sunny spring-like day, but as I got my wash bucket and all things prepared gray clouds slowly drifted in. I was determined to wash the car anyway and I did with clouds looking like they’d burst above my head any minute. A neighbor came out and pointed up. We both laughed and I explained I was going to get the year and a half’s worth of dirt off and out of the car, rain or shine, if it killed me. We laughed again. My ego started to beat me up a little self conscious about how I looked. What would people think? I finished washing my car and it sparkled to the point that it actually looked silver again instead of a pale gold. It was clean! As the day went on, gray clouds came and went, and finally the sun returned full force. It did not rain that Saturday.

As if that weren’t enough, I have not worked full time in ten months. It’s been a hard road juggling car and insurance payments and all and it certainly didn’t help that I got ill recently and made $8000 worth of medical bills being uninsured. A few months back, I went through orientation with the Memphis City School system to be a substitute teacher, which I did not want to even do. I have no desire to teach school age kids. It’s just not my thing. I know that. I’d put it off for months and listening to others tell me how much I needed to work or if I took this lowly job then other doors would open for me, I decided that the following Monday I would go ahead and follow their well meaning advice. Believe me when I say the very thought of substitute teaching sent me reeling into a depression as if I didn’t have enough on my mind. I decided that I should override what I labeled “negative” feelings, be practical and get up Monday to go substitute, be a responsible man. I prayed about it before going to bed, told God I don’t want to do this but we’ll see in the morning. I woke up the next morning and didn’t move to go teach. I did not want to be there and told myself maybe Tuesday. Later I got up to go to the grocery and noticed children everywhere but school. I passed the local elementary school and there wasn’t a child or car in sight. I had to laugh at myself when I found out that they were on spring break. I had sent myself through hell for nothing!

A friend later commented that you’re addicted to pain and he’s right and it’s all because I won’t trust the very God who whispers in my ear intimate things about my life, who I am, the present and the future and I don’t trust it very well because the God I’m now learning is so opposite to the fire and brimstone, paternalistic, mean deity that I saw coming up and still see on religious television. I doubted my seeing because it wasn’t the God everybody else was claiming to see.

God’s directives aren’t always about seeing a blinding light on the road to Damascus. Sometimes, it’s just the “knowings” that come our way and sometimes God doesn’t have to say anything as it lets you choose, trusting that your intuitive stuff is of such working quality and in synch with a divine plan that you’ll either trust it or torture yourself with the lie that you didn’t hear what you heard or see what you saw. Sometimes what I don’t want to do is in accordance with a divine plan. Not wanting to do something isn’t necessarily a sign of disobedience or ego; sometimes it is trust.

Abraham and God had this intimacy going on that bubbled over into a trust that God turned around and labeled “righteousness”; in other words, he trusted God at face value without knowing the reasons why or how he’d give him the return on any promises made. That quality of faith has you doing the craziest things and not knowing why; you just don’t look sane or even practical to everyone else. Faith is the audacity to imagine another option in spite of what’s before your eyes; God then makes the imagined real before your very eyes. So you learn to trust God for yourself and maybe not speak about it too much because people just don’t get it or you; they point up to an overcast sky while you’re washing a car and only God knows the sun will be out later. You just know you’re washing the car for some deeper reason than just washing it. It was God’s teaching tool for Saturday, Faith 101. You sit up and worry yourself to death over a situation that’s not even coming to pass. It was God’s teaching tool for Sunday and Monday, Faith 102. And I’m still a little shaky with these oh so simple lessons still looking for lightning bolts and blinding revelations when all I got was these little intuitive taps on the shoulder, no earth shattering kick in the butt. I chose to believe and do. So begins an intimate level of trust that makes God and I some kind of intimate friends--amazingly simple. Uh-oh, now I might have to start worrying about what God’s going to direct me to do next. Will I feel like Boo Boo the Clown again? Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s the learning ground that comes with a lived faith, imagining more than what you can see with an intimate friend who will make it happen!

c. Raphael—God has healed
3/13/2006(#5)