Faith Well Grounded

Today, I thought I’d expand on the theme of yesterday’s blog, “How Much Does God Have to Do?” The subject in question for today is belief, and more specifically the essence of the knowledge. This is perhaps the heart of the discussion as to whether God can actually be known, and I’ll compare the knowledge of God with that of light-- an appropriate comparison in my humble opinion.

Light is an experiential knowledge. You must allow it access to know it. Or, to phrase it in a more easily understood manner—you must experience light to understand it. Can you understand light without a context of experience? Can the blind man truly understand light through explanation? How would you go about explaining it to the blind? It’s bright? Well, now explain bright to those is constant darkness.

Just because the blind man has no context or knowledge of light doesn’t make it any less real, does it? If the blind man disbelieves the existence of light, does that forfeit your absolute and complete experiential trust in light?

Exactly.

God exists. Those of us who have experienced Him have complete and utter trust in that experiential truth. And our experience with Him came when we let down our guard and came to Him with the smallest of faith that He may reveal Himself. This exchange is acted out for our benefit in the gospel of Mark, chapter 9. We see there a man whose son was afflicted by a demon. He asks the Lord to help him and the Lord responds, questioning his belief. Note in verse 24 the man’s response:

“With tears flowing, the child's father at once cried out, ‘I do believe! Help my unbelief!’"

This is the key to beginning an experience with God. For those of us with just enough faith to ask for more, we will be given the knowledge of Him. It is an experiential knowledge of Him working in our lives, and the very core of our person. If we allow a relationship with Him, we will begin to see the changes in ourselves that we know we could never have worked. We will recognize His thoughts in our heads and His intentions in our hearts.

I’m becoming a better person. And I know myself well enough—my frailties, selfishness, and failures—to know that I could not have made the changes. I was too messed up to even want to.

He’s proving Himself to me every day, in these ways and more. I invite you to approach Him with whatever faith you can muster; even the smallest bit will do. He’ll take it from there.

Blessings…

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