As we embrace the warmth of these summer months, I decided to share with you what I learned this Spring.  I adopted this idea to do some serious introspection and soul-inventory from my favorite author, Emily P. Freeman, and share my lessons in hopes you will join me too!

This one is an odd one as I’m getting extremely personal.

I’m not sharing a list of things I learned, rather a spiritual lesson I am currently processing. 

Belief is fundamental to our Christian faith, but read along as I explore what it means to believe in midst of absence of evidence and spiritual comfort.

“Absence of Evidence IS NOT Evidence of Absence.”

We love spiritual comfort.

(it’s easiest to believe when our faith is rooted in it).

I want to partake on the trendiest bible studies along with an easy to read Bible to make my daily devotionals a lot more convenient.

I am attracted to the lights in the sanctuary as worship goes on, you’d think I’m a cat attempting to track a laser pointer.

I like my chairs to be nice and cushion-y and ever since I married into a family who specializes in installing carpet, you bet I also look at that too!

Now that we have a child, the children’s ministry better be on fleek!

I secretly hope the pastor delivers a little humor in his sermon to keep everyone entertained.  Or that his words are, at the very least, memorable enough for me to be enlightened.

Also, coffee, please?  Discipleship requires it so!  What is a church without a cup of HOT coffee brewed with the holiest beans ever harvested in all eternity to be consumed at its own coffee bar these days?… or a nearby Starbucks…

(All it needs is a restaurant now… oh wait… I’ll just go to a church with one, never mind).

Perhaps I’m exaggerating a bit, but I’ve thought some myself and heard them all and more.

The bottom line is this:

We tend to want to pursue a life of comfort, when our faith prompts us time and time again that pain is inevitable as we inhabit a broken world.

There’s no technology or luxury that could ever heal our wounds, yet we insist on it because it makes us comfortable and frankly we, the Church, can behave like an entitled group sometimes.

At some point in our lives,

we will grieve– and we will cause grief

we will be betrayed– and we will betray

we will be wronged– and we will wrong

we will be disappointed– and we will disappoint

we will suffer– and we will cause suffering

our bodies will slowly, but surely, decay.

Unfortunately, all in different stages.  Therefore, let us not boast in our current state of stability and contentment; but most importantly, let us not forget our past trials.

“I am the bread of life”, Jesus told them, “No one who comes to me will ever be hungry, and no one who believes in him will ever be thirsty again.”

-John 6:35, CSB

And there’s no cup of coffee that can prevent this from happening or cure our afflictions.  Jesus repeatedly states the reason of His human existence is for us to believe in Him.  There’s nothing we, the Church, can do except set our eyes on Jesus and provide empathy to one another as we point each other to the Ultimate Healer in our darkest nights.  We shall always remember our scars because without them, we are incapable to exhibit compassion.  And if we have little to no scars, just know that these temporary vessels are meant to be blemished.

Church, be ready to exhale grace.

We are not born to last forever as we know it.

I truly hate having to start this on a sour note, but lately I’ve been hungrier and thirstier for true and permanent belief.  Belief that isn’t found in comfort or in the things I feel like I deserve, aka entitlement.  For the first time in a long time, I’m reading these words in the Bible that once brought me such pleasure because some of them sounded pretty to me.  We quote them to show our eloquence and spiritual maturity, but we keep them far away from piercing our hearts and penetrating our souls.  When they do, they no longer seem attractive as they expose a part of us that we refuse to share with each other– our ugly sinful nature.

Our culture heavily embraces privacy.

Sin worships privacy, it keeps us in isolation and in darkness.

Jesus spoke to them again: “I am the light of the world.  Anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.”

-John 8:12, CSB

I personally like my privacy merely because I feel protected from those who only deem to abuse it.  This lack of trust has made us extra cautious of each other on a personal level oddly juxtaposed with our tendencies to want to lay it all out there on our social media accounts.  We are a generation who is more comfortable behind the computer or phone screen than one-on-one fellowship.

I’m not exonerating myself from this; in fact, I write this as a confession.

Truthfully, belief has taken a toll on me.

Belief dictates us to recklessly abandon how we feel about our circumstances and still trust, especially when all odds are against us.

Belief demands me to do so in the absence of evidence in a God I must choose to follow EVERY SINGLE DAY but don’t feel like it all the time.

I can’t think of a better picture than this.  During the holocaust, there was once a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp in Cologne, Germany who wrote these words on a cellar wall:

I believe in the sun, even when it’s not shining,

And I believe in love, even when there’s no one there,

And I believe in God, even when He is silent. 

-Unknown

These words have always resonated with me in my most difficult trials. When I first heard them, I was going through a silly break up.  It didn’t feel silly then, I really thought my life was over.  I actually feel guilty now associating these words to what I thought was love then.  I wasn’t painfully-in-love, I was just embittered-in-rejection. 

Alas, these words soothed my then sore heart.

But as my faith evolves and the trials grow in degrees of difficulty, these words challenge me to believe ESPECIALLY when I’m most inconvenienced. 

I may have never felt my life to be threatened nor have I experienced such agony and lived under similar inequity as the author of this poem.

Oh, but we’ve all heard this deafening silence.

Haven’t you?

If you feel God is ignoring you and doesn’t care about you as much as the other person.  Can I just tell you this?

You are not alone.  The other person probably feels the same way towards you.

Jesus told him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”

-John 4:48, CSB

Those moments of silence are the ones that could propel us to seek Him without expecting anything in return.  We have everything to gain and we have nothing to lose, yet it takes everything out of us to disregard what we feel like doing and embrace what is essentially best for us– the Source of our belief.  We surrender as we come to Him with nothing to offer but our tears and our broken voices praising who He is despite of what He’s doing (or not doing) in our lives.  Mostly, I can testify this is ALL He wants of us, our undivided devotion.

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you continue in my word, you really are my disciples.  You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

-John 8:31-32, CSB

Belief requires us to keep feeding our broken spirit with words of TRUTH.  But like the verse above, we must be persistent in our pursuit of God, ESPECIALLY when we don’t get what we desired out of a situation and even when all goes beyond our comprehension.

Throughout the Book of John, which I like to call the Book of Belief, the word “believe” is written 60 times.  In fact, the purpose of John writing this is so that we may believe:

Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book.  But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

-John 20:30-31, CSB

Jesus performs numerous miracles and that’s all people want to see– a show monkey.  They want to see the “signs” with their own eyes before they can place their utmost trust in Him.  They want to follow the guy who performs the coolest tricks in town, such as turning water into wine, restoring sight to the blind, feeding 5,000 men–not including the women and the children– with just five loaves of bread and two fish!

Then the Pharisees?  They want to catch Him breaking the Law so they can condemn Him to death.

When Jesus refused to perform a miracle or when He made some outrageous claims about Himself, His own disciples deserted him.  But Jesus looked at the remaining group and asked, “You don’t want to go away too, do you?”

Simon Peter answered, “Lord, to whom will we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

-John 6:68, CSB

I don’t know about you, but I long to be like Peter in times of confusion and division. 

Do we choose to remain with the twelve disciples or do we follow the crowd in pursuit of the latest trends and gimmicks?

May He bless us with revelation of our innermost parts of our hearts, where our intentions reside, when we ask Him to perform a miracle in our lives.