Faith, Grace, Hope

Faith: Have you ever had a time in your spiritual journey where you stopped and thought: is this whole thing real? God…creating the world, redeeming humankind through sending His Son to be born of a virgin and die on a cross and rise again?

Where does this God—the One Who created all things, sees all things, leads all things, controls all things, and redeems all people—where does He reign in my life? Do I matter to Him? Is He someone we all fashioned to make ourselves feel better about life? To blame things on when life gets tough? Have you ever had a million questions about God and yet you came to the same simple answer: my faith produces a hope in You.

Grace: His grace is too deep…too strong…too overwhelming. This grace is too incomprehensible to be made up by men or women. This God is too merciful and glorious to be thought up in the minds of creation. His character goes again human nature—against what we see as righteous, justice, and magnificent.

Humans could not design this God—we would never think of His redemption to be a proportional response to the crime we committed. We would never think to send a lowly carpenter’s child through the lineage of faithless wanderers, ignorant questioners, and continual sinners such as His. We would never think of a redemption story so beautifully crafted that it can in no way rely on the actions, words, or thoughts of the ones being redeemed.

It goes against who we are in our sin nature. We, who want to be the heroes, were created to be the rescued. And all He asks in return is a simple, “Come, follow Me.” It brings us back to His perfection. It brings us back to Him. And His story is one in which only He can get glory. Amen?

Hope: And our hope is found in Him. This God—Who seems so mysterious at times, yet so personable and intricately woven into our inner beings. This God—the One we long for, cry out to, need, want, crave, worship, and love—is a part of our story. He is the Author and Perfecter of our faith, which brings us back to that word—faith. If He is the Author of our faith, then He is the One Who makes our faith possible. And if He is the Perfecter of our faith, then He is the only One Who can sustain us and redeem us back to Him. Our role? Follow Him. Follow Him when times are good and when times are bad. Follow Him when we think we have nothing else to give and no reasoning in this world that would make sense to choose Him. Follow Him when life gives us uncontrollable situations that thwart our plans and our joy. Follow Him because He is the Author and Perfecter of our faith. And this faith will never fail us.

To learn more about God’s character, check out the myGod: a study on the attributes of God.