A fresh look at faith I ...

Thursday, Oct 1, 2015. Let us take a fresh look at faith. What is it? What can it mean and what can it do? I was drawn into the question some days ago, when I read the beginning of the Gospel of John. It talks about Jesus, about what he means and who he is … it talks about faith!

In the traffic jam …

Sitting in a traffic jam today, I decided not to let my anger take over, but to ask the Lord to take the lead. And it brought me back into faith immediately. It was faith - and it taught faith. And then, I experienced quite remarkable 30 minutes of stop and go with nearly zero speed, but with intense spiritual experience. God talked - no other way to summarize it. He talked about faith.

God gave me many keywords which are strongly linked ot faith. For example: to listen. Faith starts with listening, perhaps even with searching. How could you believe in God, when you are not searching God and when you are not listening. Faith starts with the “get-to-know”, with getting together, with opening eyes and ears. All that is a part of faith! And it is just one keyword: listen!

There is another keyword: decisions. That has many different meanings and layers. There is the decision at the beginning: I want to search. It starts the whole journey. There is the decision to learn, to listen. It opens our mind and our heart. It is a prerequisit - it is not yet full faith. But faith is on the way, like an unborn child. When we search and when we listen, we are on the way to birth!

Keywords on Faith …

There is the decision to trust! That is an important one, and we can repeat it again and again, every day, sometimes even every minute of our life. But trust has to start at some point. Perhaps it starts with simple things. And then there is the decision that HE should be the Lord of my life. To trust your life into the hands of God is the central decision. It is the big step, it is the birth! The bible talks about this new birth - in faith and through faith.

The keyword decision is so important. We decide with every single reaction in our life how we want to proceed. So often we are driven by our past, by other people, by failure, by all the things which hurt us. But we can be driven by the Holy Spirit. We can be driven by the living Lord. It just needs our small and large decisions, day by day.

It is part of Christian discipleship to learn how to make decisions. It is training to decide, first with small things, then with larger things. You do not run a marathon on the first day of your training! Decisions need to be learned, they need to be exercised and trained. God is so exciting - the gospel is truly “good news”! Open your heart and your mind … (RWEP) ... more texts