Monday, 07 July 2008

• Examining the Strength of Your Faith's Foundation

  from feathersanddown

  It’s been said that the relationship a person has with God during the most trying of times reveals the strength of the foundation their faith rests upon. If that’s true, and I believe it is, my foundation, up until a couple of years ago, was a shaky one indeed.

  As a child, it was mostly a matter of bargaining. You know, if ____ happens, I will or will not _____. As a teenager, it became much more serious. When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, I told God I’d commit suicide if she died…and I meant it. When my dad passed away from complications relating to alcoholism, I shut out the small still voice within and put God on the backburner. When my older sibling was diagnosed with schizophrenia, I kept all my feelings inside and allowed my heart to harden, which made me bitter and unable to share God’s love with anyone, much less experience it myself.

  I’m sure you get my point. Every time I experienced major loss or heartache, my relationship with God was the first thing I called into question.  Instead of examining my own beliefs, I became suspicious of God and did everything I could to shut Him out of my life without officially abandoning my faith.

  Then, in my late teens, my perception began to shift. Now whenever something bad happened, it wasn’t just that God didn’t love me-he was also trying to punish me for my multitude of sins! The concept of grace, despite sufficient head knowledge of it, was completely lost on me. When I was diagnosed with a chronic illness that altered my appearance and made me physically fragile, it was God’s way of punishing me for the actions of my stepfather. I truly believed that God was making me weak and unattractive so that I could never cause someone to “stumble” again. When my relationship with my mom was almost destroyed because of the issue with my step-father, God was punishing me for not keeping quiet and being a better daughter.

  I can’t even begin to adequately explain the havoc each of these perspectives wreaked on my life. The lies I accepted as truths during those times of deep personal pain continue to affect the way I live my life today, even though I no longer believe them.

  I’m not sharing these events because I think them especially unique or tragic. Everyone experiences hurt in their lives. I’m sharing them to illustrate a point:

  If you do not build your faith foundation on solid ground, you will struggle to keep it from stagnating, twisting, or disappearing altogether when you go through difficult times. It’s not enough to just believe-you have to know what you believe, inside and out. Only when I moved beyond the self-absorbed questions like “Why are you doing this to me?” was I able to get a glimpse of God’s character. The danger of waiting until you're in the middle of the storm to ask the tough questions is that the intensity of your emotions will prevent you from receiving anything that isn’t a quick fix or something to numb you until things subside. And once you get to that point, your belief either becomes something you yourself don’t even believe, or it crumbles under the weight of your pain.

  What types of questions do you ask God when you're going through a difficult time? How do trials affect your beliefs about God or His intentions for you?

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