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You know how I was going through A Mom like you? Well… the next two chapters caused me to say NOPE not going to do this book, so I’ve moved on to The Faith Shaped Life by Ian Hamilton. My Mom-in-law gave me this book for Christmas this year and I promised her I’d read it so here we go. 43 chapters in this book so if I do one chapter a week, I’ll be doing this book for most of the coming year.
I do want to assure you that there’s nothing really wrong with A Mom Like You, but it’s just not the book I need to read at this stage in my life. I’m post the child having years of my life so some of the topics just don’t suit my life. Ergo when I was searching for something more suitable I was reminded of mom’s Christmas present to me.
The Faith Shaped Life
I love the opening line of Chapter one… “The Christian life is a faith-shaped life”. I think part of the reason I love that line is it keeps popping up in the devotional on the Heidelberg Catechism I am reading with the lad, it comes up in my devotions on John, and just my every day living. Seeing how faith is a daily choice you know? This is why that first sentence resonates with me so.
“The fundamental principle at the heart of the Christian life is that, like Moses, we persevere because we see him who is invisible”. Faith is sight for believing eyes. It is, isn’t it? The Holy Spirit opens our eyes to see him doesn’t he? He’s the one who reminds of us God through the storms in our life when it is so easy to forget that God is God and we adore him for all of who he is. For faith is easy when life is easy isn’t it? So easy to pray and talk and study the things of the Lord when life is easy. When storms are hard though, when times are tough, it is SO easy to get side-tracked, to get lost in the moments of grief, pain, confusion, loss and more. The bible is full of psalms crying out to God for relief and help, to no longer feel forgotten.
Why this happens:
The question this raises for me is, why does this happen? Why do hard times makes our faith seem so tenuous? Is it because we stop seeing God so clearly? Or because we feel abandoned by God? Or is it that where we are looking changes? Do we stop looking by faith and only see the circumstances of our life? So the physical jumps into focus and the spiritual, the looking at the unseen that only by faith we can truly see, grows dimmer? I’m thinking that is what it is, what say you? We just lose our proper focus unless we work to keep it where it should be.
What does it mean to live by Faith?
It means we trust God, no matter what happens in life. We trust God, we keep our eyes fixed on him. It means we keep trusting God and to ACT like we are trusting him. It’s not an easy thing, you know, living the life of a Christian. We face trials, we have an adversary in the devil, and we’ll find ourselves in a battle.
So what do we do? AH… we remember… oh we remember to, moment by moment, trust God. To trust in him, to trust in his word, in his goodness, in his purposes and his unfailing love. This we need to do.
This book’s aim is help us to flesh out what it means to live by faith and to point us relentlessly to Jesus Christ who is the founder and protector of our faith. Should be an interesting journey eh? 🙂
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