Confident faith not for me...
I was sitting in front of the television watching a special about the tsunami survivors and heard the Lord speaking to me. As my own faith was filtered, challenged, and changed by the story of Petra, I felt as though that purifying of my faith seldom happens in my spiritual journey. I began to look back on the times when if I had heard of someone wearing a Buddhist necklace, I would have discarded their opinion and even their worth because they were not Christian, not allowing myself to befriend them or learn from them. This made me realize that believers often become too confident in their faith. We strive to have unshakable faith, faith that others see at church and praise us for having. However, at the very same time, we grow even more distant from true faith, true tested faith. We become confident in our salvation and by so doing, we void all other views, all other people, and all other possibilities. Not necessarily possibilities that we are serving the wrong god, but how much better we could have known our savior if we had let ourselves linger on the fringes of doubt, rather than deny it altogether. The denial of doubt corrupts faith. Regular doubt has never produced anything in me but stronger faith, yet I still seek to be the "strong" one. Don't let your faith grow stagnant by the so-called comfort of confidence. Struggle with the word, struggle with the verses you have known since a child, struggle with that revelation you had last year that you just knew would change your life forever, even though you still seem to fall into the same old habits. I am not saying doubt everyone and everything, just think about how our overconfidence can hinder our faith from growing. It is during these times of overconfidence that we are sure we don’t need any help, don’t need to doubt, decide we’d be best to just suck it up, that faith has missed the opportunity to grow. Faith can’t grow in a place that is immovable and impenetrable, and that place is all too often my heart.