Over the past few weeks I’ve been throwing the word “trust” around in my head, but it makes my mind swirl.
I’ve been busy with difficult classes and work and Bible studies and friends and God, trying to figure out how it all fits together.
And the truth is, I don’t know.
But what’s been striking me the most is the way that my faith increases as I understand less. It’s a form of wishful thinking, I suppose. Wishful thinking with expectation.
What causes me to pause in all of this is the thought that we, as students and people and adults alike, have at least one thing in common: the notion that it is easy to have faith in things that we can predict.
I have underlying faith that I’ll eat dinner tonight, that my homework will be complete, that I’ll have clothes to wear for tomorrow. But that’s not the life that God is calling us into.
He’s not calling us to have a predictable faith. He’s not calling us to know.
He’s calling us to have confidence in the things we cannot yet see; the things we cannot yet fathom, the things we don’t understand.
He’s calling us to trust. Trust is faith.
And I keep thinking about the verses that say, “if you have faith the size of a mustard seed” – the ones about trees and mountains being thrown into the sea and telling mountains to move – and I realize my faith is so small, smaller than a mustard seed.
If Jesus is talking in reference to a physical mountain, I’d love to have faith the size of a mustard seed so that I can see what He says take place.
It amazes me to see Him continue to move and rearrange my life to make me be the person He created me to be to do the things He created me to do. But what’s even more amazing is that He provides me with the grace to be able to change.
With all that He has done already, I have full confidence He will continue. In the midst of my schoolwork, studying, cleaning my room, doing my laundry, driving my car, walking to class, I will persevere. I will have patience. They are indications of faith and they lead to more faith.
I flipped open my Bible last night to find a verse that comes from James 1:4:
“Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
And because perseverance leads to faith and faith leads me closer to God, it is true; at that time, I will be lacking in nothing. Because the cross was enough. Jesus was enough. He always is and will always be enough.
That’s what I know. But it’s not all that I know. Because even at the end of today, I will have grown another half-inch on the ruler of my faith. And I will persevere to the finish.