The Greatest Thing We Own
No, it’s not our new BMW or our summer home by the lake. It’s not even our wife or kids. Our FAITH is the greatest thing we possess.
Don’t we have faith in all kinds of things? Truth is, we live by faith in a regularly mindless way. When we come to a red or green traffic light, we extend faith in drivers all around us. At our favorite café, we routinely trust that our waitress (the single Mom with the fiery, red-dyed hair) hasn’t put arsenic in our tea. When we flip a light switch on, we very unthinkingly believe that light will fill our dark kitchen and we won’t stumble over the dog, yet we don’t have a clue how the intricacies of electric current work.
Where is our faith in God as Designer and Architect of the World, as Master, King and Unconquerable Lord of the Universe? The Word says our faith pleases God (Heb 11:6.) And that it’s only by faith in Jesus—there’s nothing we can do or earn—that we are saved from our ugliness. He is the only key opening the doors of Heaven. Simply put, faith is required in this life and, even more with God, it’s foundationally essential.
If this is all true and faith IS our greatest possession, should not GROWING MY FAITH be our greatest daily desire? Might the most utterly urgent daily question be, how today can we develop, guard and extend our faith?
Aligning myself with this truth, I am compelled to look at ALL OF LIFE through this “lens of faith” perspective and live radically differently. It follows as well, the enemy of our soul would know this, too, and then (wouldn’t it make sense) he would of course, with gusto, persistence and malice, do all he could to weaken, wound or wash out our STRENGTH OF FAITH moving us towards a world of doubts and shadows, of murky unbelief, confused apathy, and tiring hopelessness.
In response, I like what one artist sings: faith becomes “a willingness to surrender our desire to understand.” Faith can grow into an okay-ness with mystery and “not knowing” in this life, a contented peace no matter the strange things we would never have expected to happen to us, and a soothing confidence that we are anchored in a most sure way.
Faith is, by far, my traveling-with-God-friends, the greatest thing we own. And HOPE springs from the soil of FAITH: the greatest result from our greatest possession.
- Chris