We always seem to have plenty of faith right up until the moment we actually need it. Have you noticed this in your own life? We feel confident in God, trusting deeply, filled with the sense that we know and can rely on God’s power and strength, and aware of God’s love and protection.
Then something happens. It does not have to be a great struggle, maybe even a relatively small trial or disappointment. Suddenly, we are gripped by uncertainty, questioning the love and presence of God, and fearfully desperate for reassurance. What seemed like a fortress of faith was a morning mist that evaporated in the heat of the day. Is this a common experience, or a sign that our faith is deficient and unlike the “heroes” of scripture and the church?
Let me suggest that we may easily confuse faith in God with an inner sense of self-assurance, self-confidence, and invulnerability. True faith knows our own weakness and does not naively think we are protected from disaster because we trust in God. Real, every-day faith, is trusting God while feeling like we can hardly make it through. Faith does not extinguish the fears of life but keeps us from being utterly overcome by those anxious thoughts. Under pressure, we become aware of how fragile our faith is.
Consider Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, in the wilderness being tempted, and often going off by himself to pray. Why does he hear the voice of reassurance at his baptism and mount of transfiguration, except that Jesus himself needed encouragement? He trusted his Father, and yet that trust needed to be constantly sustained. If Jesus was tempted in all ways like us (Hebrews 4:15), then he had doubts, fears, worries, and unbelieving thoughts. Experience of God’s faithfulness may help us to no longer be distressed by certain trials which at one time caused us to despair, but we all still may face struggles which expose our faith to be fragile. Jesus was unafraid in the midst of the storm on the sea, but sweating blood in the garden.
Faith is a spiritual antidote to fear, not a vaccine against ever being afraid. We can be simultaneously fearful, knowing the gravity of a situation and our own powerlessness, while also striving to depend on God’s faithful love. When assailed by desperate situations, we cry out for some sign of God’s faithfulness and reason to believe.
In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety. Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. Hebrews 5:7-8
Obedience is the practice of faith, so to say Jesus learned obedience by the things that he suffered means that he learned to trust his Father through the struggles he experienced. This is reassuring for us! Jesus grew in faith, and so must we. Everyone’s faith is shaken in the hard times and sustained through looking constantly to God who holds us dear to himself.
Traveler's Journal 