The Wonder of Faith

If we are not living with wonder, we are not living with faith.

Our relationship with and trust in Jesus Christ is a dynamic which the Bible repeatedly claims is founded upon faith. Confident in what we hope for, trusting what we cannot see. Sometimes we like to think this applies to us only because Jesus no longer walks the earth. If only he were still around I would have perfect belief! A brief look at the interactions he had with the masses to whom he came unexpectedly, the religious zealots to whom he came exactly as expected, and even his disciples to whom he came intimately reveals to us that his physical presence did not create airtight faith.

Jesus came proclaiming a kingdom which had come and was still coming. It was one people largely could not see, though, paradoxically, had the ability to manifest in their treatment of one another.

He came displaying miracles which had absolutely no logical or scientific explanation. And though he did them repeatedly, the people surrounding him still had a difficult time believing in God for a fresh miracle today, or tomorrow, or the day after.

So even his physical presence is not a panacea, promising perfect confidence and trust in the power and work of God.

This is where faith bridges the gap.

The concept of faith has become so westernized that we actually believe we can calculate it, tabulate it, monitor and track it, and objectively evaluate the levels of faith in ourselves and the church. This must be scrapped entirely if we have any hope of being gifted the eyes to see and ears to hear the activity of God’s kingdom among us.

Faith contains mystery. It is not something which can be subjected to our small-minded scientific method, nor can it be limited to our strategies in the hopes of securing some semblance of predictability and control. This is terrifying, especially to those in power in the church, because if we can not reliably increase your faith, or force God to act, or provide a three step plan for your healing, then how will we keep you at our church?

And again, the western influence upon the church is fueled. If quantitative metrics are the highest good in the church, then we will do whatever it takes to keep your butts in our pews and your dollars in our offering plates. And that then, ”obviously” we think, displays your level of faith, because it is a measurable that we attach meaning to, like attendance equates to obedience to God and tithing means your priorities are shaped by the kingdom.

I can think of many words to describe this popular way of running a church.

Shallow.

Warped.

Manipulative.

Sad.

Secular.

I believe this approach is born out of two sides of the same coin: the fear of man (failure, irrelevance, unimportance) and the poverty mindset of an adopted child (lacking love, safety, comfort, affection). Both are manifestations of the same lie: that God’s love fails me at some step in the transfer of Christ’s blood and resurrection to my everyday life.

I also believe that the way to reclaim faith within the church is to reclaim wonder.

This is the conscious choice of the follower of Christ to wake up in the morning NOT to business as usual and a world they think they know and have some semblance of control over, but to wake up every day to a world of possibilities.

We must take God at his Word, that he is the Lord over all creation, that everything was created and is sustained by his breath, and that he knows absolutely everything, from the death of a sparrow to the exact number of hairs on our heads. We must believe he is active and alive in the presence of the Holy Spirit, moving in power in and through his church, with the ability to shape and bend “reality” as we know it to accomplish his purposes. We must also understand that he created the order of things in such a way that, rather than having to “bend” reality every time he wants something done, created things acting according to their created purpose accomplish the will of God, because he designed it that way at the beginning and planned every good work for it to do before it existed.

As that goes for us humans, we must understand, believe, and act out of our identity as God originally intended it, which is made possible by the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Then God can use and work through our relationships, our words, our creative acts, our vocations, our families, truly every aspect of our lives that has been submitted to him.

It is when we daily submerge ourselves in the unending ocean of God’s love for us that every aspect of our lives becomes infused with the supernatural.

And when we understand that everything is supernatural, we wake up every morning in wonder.