A few thoughts on faith.

I drove by this oil refinery once. Have you ever seen these things? They are insane.

So many gadgets and valves and filters and pipes and inner-workings and pulleys and things I have never heard of and, and even more so, things I have no idea what they do.

These places blow my mind. They make me think about the people who build them, and I want to know those people; they know more about stuff than I do. Those are the people to be around: the ones who know more.

A brother of mine and I were chatting on the tele a bit ago. “Faith is a hard thing,” he said. He works in the ministry. He knows how much faith life takes.

The honesty of his comment struck me and I found myself thinking, “And boy am I glad that is all God asks for.”
So often in my life I find myself grasping for more straws than I am supposed to. I want to propel things forward, I want to see conclusions, outcomes, resolutions, peace. All of the struggling and hardships can just go away in my opinion, to be beat out by victories and “the way it was supposed to be.” But God never asked me for the outcome. He never asked me how things will progress to the finish.

All he asked was that I have faith.

Do you see the difference? I falsely believe a lot of the time that I am to have faith UNTO something. Faith unto a healing of a situation, faith unto money in the bank, faith unto something just being over and done with and put away.
The problem is that’s not really what God has asked me.
He asked me, he asks you, to have faith unto HIM. Sure he may bring healing to a situation and faith unto money in the bank and faith unto whatever being done, giving us the ability to wash our hands of it.
Or he may not.
Regardless, we are called to have faith unto him, not unto something we think he will do.
How he handles something is not our business.

As humans, we keep trying to do things that he has never asked us to.

And why do we fall into that? Because we want to see results. See them Tomorrow. See them Today. See them Yesterday. And pretty much because we think we can work everything out, not only faster (for surely we would have dealt with it yesterday), but better.
Be honest…we all think that. We all think if it had gone slightly different or majorly different everyone would be better off.
But he didn’t ask us to change its course. He asked us to trust that he knows how to drive.
And that’s the way it is with many things! We think we are more responsible than we actually are. But here are some things that the Bible has called us to be responsible to. The list might surprise you:

Jesus never asked us to save anyone. He asks us to plant seeds and water seeds (I Corinthians 3:5-8)

Jesus never asked us to never get hurt. He asks us to love (I Cor. 13)
Jesus never asked us to make a situation go away. He asks that we know he holds all things together (Col. 1:17).
Jesus never asked us to be perfect. He asks us to be committed to him (I Kings 8:61).
Jesus never asked how we are going to afford to tithe. He asks that we be generous (II Cor 8 & 9).
Jesus never asked us to be eloquent. He asks us to preach the Word (II Timothy 4:2).
Jesus never asked us to only help those we deem worthy of help. He asks us to go the extra mile (Matthew 5:41).
Jesus never asked us to protect ourselves. He asks us to put on the full armor of God (Ephesians 6).
Jesus never asked us to change someone’s heart. He asks us to pray (I Thess 5:17, Eph. 1:17-20).
Jesus never asked us to do things alone. He gave us his Holy Spirit (John 14:25-27).
Jesus never asked us to have all the plans. He asks us to have faith (Literally all over the Bible).

Look at all of those! None of those have anything to do with outcomes. Not a single one. I could go on and on. But don’t trust me, search your Bibles. You will never find a time, scenario, situation, or command where God says, “Do xyz, and then finish it, too. Ok? Great.”

Never. He never says that.
Results are never our job.
Faith is our job.

Isn’t that great to know?! There is so much pressure we put on ourselves, and so much ensuing failure we feel when we aren’t seeing what we think should come, for no good reason! We are attempting to do more than we have ever been asked to do. We are attempting to see more than we have ever been told we would see.

I love when Jesus talks to people and he says to them “Oh you of little faith.” It’s reassuring. Why? Because he didn’t say “Oh you of BAD faith,” as if trusting in him wasn’t the most profitable thing for us. As if there was something better to believe in. As if he wasn’t the answer. As if he wasn’t enough. As if he had ran out of good ideas. As if he didn’t know where all of this was going.

He said “Oh you of LITTLE faith,” implying that the only answer to the situation is to believe him MORE. Implying that he is worthy of it. Implying that we are on the right track, we need to just keep pressing on. Implying that he is the only one capable of handling more trust put on him. Implying that he has it all covered. Implying that in his plan it is all going the way he knew it would; and implying that it’s all figured out already. Implying that he knows what the end looks like. Implying that in the perspective of eternity it really will all be ok. Implying that he is God, we are not, and that is how it should be.

When I was driving by that oil refinery I looked at it and thought that building something like that would be impossible. And what if I had been asked to build the thing, and build it completely by myself?
My hands start sweating just thinking about it.
I wouldn’t know where to start. I have no idea what pieces go where, let alone what pieces I would need to order in the first place! I wouldn’t have enough time in my whole life to accomplish that and, even if I could somehow get it done, the odds that it would work properly are roughly zero-to-none.
I would be defeated before I even began.
And sometimes, if I am thinking about results I want to see rather than the process I am called to, I can feel defeated as well. But when I was thinking about all of this, Jesus just said to me, “Chill out, Bethany. Living a life for me isn’t that hard. I’m calling you to believe. I’m not asking you to build an oil refinery.”
What a grand thought! Obvious, but more impactful than most:
Jesus asks us to trust him. He doesn’t ask us to do what only he can do.