Can you have faith... (part 2)

...without a need?

I'm reading this book on the will of God, in which the author argues that God's *specific* will for an individual is only revealed as life moves along, one door, one turn at a time - visible in its entirety only in hindsight. It's a good book, and makes me feel less anxiety about missing His willl by not making "the correct decision" right now on job, school, location. He argues that, when we look back on life, we will see that we *have* followed God's will for us, though we didn't explicitly choose it every time we had a choice to make - He just worked it out for us. :)

But he also says that for us to exercise faith at all, we must have a need - a need that we will admit we can't meet without outside help. It's a precondition for exercising faith. He says:

"Faith acknowledges need. Self-possessed people do not feel the need to live by faith because they are confident in themselves and their own human powers. In my mind such confidence is vain and foolish, for people are by nature dependent - on the natural world for food, air, water, and heat; on the social world for education, support, and love; and on the spiritual world for forgiveness, meaning and purpose. Evelyn Underhill comments on this dependence: 'I cannot by myself handle and purify the confusing energy of my half-evolved nature. I cannot really keep my resolutions, really govern my desires, set my life in order, cleanse my memory of all self-pity and all resentments, or kill self-love, self-interest, and self-will by myself. I acknowledge my need of help far beyond myself.' "

-----Jerry Sittser, "The Will of God as a Way of Life"



Need? Oh, yeah. That I have. Only some of which is material. Much is emotional and spiritual. Yup. Lots of need all right. But faith? That's not in such great supply. And yet I know that I don't need much faith, just a little will do. It's the *object* of my faith that matters, not the amount of my faith. So I regularly cry out (with the father in Mark 9:24, whose child was ill): "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!"



How about you, dear reader? Do you have (and admit to) needs in your life that you can't meet by yourself?

If you don't, how can you exercise faith in *anything* (anything other than yourself, that is)? Do you believe instead in your own sufficiency for handling whatever comes your way without help (including some overwhelming situation you have not yet faced - but surely will)?

If you do have needs and can admit them, do you have faith in Something or Someone larger than yourself, Who is able (and desires) to come to your aid? If so, do you then act on that faith and request that aid, trusting that it will come?

Or do you struggle vainly on your own, as if you were someone who didn't need outside help, but all the while knowing that you do?



Boy, that last sounds way too much like me. :(

So, blog author.. hear yourself! Have faith in a God of grace:

"Grace is the action of God bringing to pass in our lives good things that we neither deserve nor can accomplish on our own."

----- Richard Foster