When Faith is Lost

Lord, I cannot help but feel so frustrated right now.  

I sat on the floor, the guitar strings ringing through the speakers, people scattered throughout room, singing and sharing this joyful moment.   

The music was great.  The people were passionate.  And as I sang, as I took in the inspirational scripture read by the leader, I felt nothing. 

It wasn't that I was stubborn to believe, or scared to.  I've heard these messages before, I sang like I was into it, but it reached the point where it may have hit the mind and emotions, but not the heart.  

Being a Christian my whole life definitely was a blessing.  There was never a wrestle to believe in God, no rebellion, no troublesome phase.  I willingly went to church and I loved it.  But even a person with the strongest foundation can easily fall into a heap of complacency and weakness.

I always knew God was there, but after awhile, for any Christian really, God's word can easily become routine and ordinary.  

God sent his son to die for you.  God sent his son to die for me.

The blood shed on the cross for you.  The blood shed on the cross for me.

The body broken and torn for you.  The body broken and torn for me.  

By grace you have been saved.  By grace I have been saved.  

For most born-Christians, there's basically two ways a person receives the gospel: It is fed and received with gratitude and praise, or stuffed down the throat, tasting nothing new or great, until the stomach is too full to ask for another bite.    

I've definitely experienced both.

There are times I surrender myself, offering my life as a living sacrifice, making God the center of my true self, but is it real? Is it genuine?  

There are days when I feel so full of the spirit, so renewed and so thankful to be broken and redeemed again. And then there are days when I have to fight and battle myself to remember that God's actually there.

Because honestly, how do you appreciate such a valuable gift if you've never lived without it?  To give the gospel and the gift of grace the same appreciation as one whom never knew it but found it is the hardest thing any born-Christian has to do. Growing up knowing only one perspective of life made it much harder to make my faith that much more significant, and for what it's worth, my own.  I yearned to experience what it felt like to be a broken person, to fall down to my knees, break down and cry, and be filled with a passionate, emotional, all consuming fire.  I needed the reminder that all I believed was real and true.  

So there I was, sitting in this dim lit room, asking God to let me feel just anything, to revive this passion in me that I once had before.  I could hear the singing voices of other believers, and I prayed and prayed, while opening the bible to see if He would speak.  Nothing hit me.  I was forcing God to give me an answer, but we all know, He doesn't work that way.

It was to the point where I felt like giving up, because this faith of mine became so dry and immune to growth. But I knew there had to be something God was showing me, somewhere, somehow, he was using His perfect timing and perfect plan to reveal something to me.  And being in the highest state of vulnerability and openness, willing to search for what I truly believe in, I challenged myself at that moment to find my own faith. 

And in my sheer irritation of not being able to receive this gift as emotionally and passionately as all these people around me, God called to me, in a way that He never did before.

Gracie, why do you have such little faith?  Don't you know I have big plans for you? Keep the faith, and run the race.  I'm using you to show my love to the world.  

As I heard that, I sank down.  Wow, God.  It was such a test to everything I believed in.  

What it takes to be a believer is more than just lifting your arms and crying with full force passion and fire. It takes hardship, it takes perseverance, it takes faith to believe in something so out of this world yet something so valuable and worth more than life in its entirety.

The Christian life isn't always this glamorous, emotional experience. For 90% of the time, it'll be the life we live every ordinary day.  There will be times when the gospel seems so dry, and a choice has to be made.  Either give up on God, or thrive on the challenge to grow and seek this relationship with God again.  

Throughout my temporary life, this fight to keep my faith alive will surely never end, but we all must make choices that reveal how much God really means to us in our lives.  

When faith is lost, it will be found again.  When faith is dead, God gives you the strength to rise up again.  You fight until you fall, but God will never let you fall.  I know God loves to see this passion of belief rise in me, but it's not always that easy, and he shows me that's exactly the point. 

There are plenty of times I feel so unattached to the single most important thing the world needs - the gospel.  Sometimes I feel like I've been living a lie, putting on this mask of doing the right thing, being a good person, pretending to be fueled by a passion that didn't exist in me and a gospel that I didn't believe with all my heart. But somehow, God's always there to show me he is real and he means business.  He does it all in his perfect time; He uses the most valuable and most vulnerable moments to make redemption so much more significant.  

When I feel my faith dying, when my hope is slowly fading, I fight to remind myself of this grace God has given me, this free gift that I've never deserved, this love that He has shown me even though I'm a broken and messy person.  He has given me life, and has made it clear that he can take the dirtiest things and make them clean again.  

And as many times as that has been drilled into my brain, forced down my system, and repeated thousands of times, I can only fight to find a new perspective, remembering that God has a will and a way for everyone and everything.  No story should go untold, no testimony is not interesting enough.  We all struggle to keep this faith and passion alive, and yes, this struggle will never end, but believe me when I say this - it will always, always be worth it, and it will never compare to the sacrifice Christ made for us.