Having
Faith: You Do It Every Day
Guest Article
Written by Briana Rumley
Faith
is at the center of every religion. For whatever you believe you must have
faith that what you are believing is true. The interesting thing about faith,
particularly amongst the unbelievers I have met, is they don’t realize they
have faith every day!
I
have often heard, from those who don’t believe, that God is a coping mechanism
for mankind; He was made up because, as humans, we don’t want to believe that
there is nothing bigger than ourselves. To that, I say, hooey. Then they like
to counter with, “How can you believe in something you’ve never seen, heard, or
felt?” Well, to that I say, “How do
you?” Every one of us has faith in something every day!
Think
about it for a second, what do you have faith in every day? I expect most of us
have faith we will wake up in the morning, although we are not promised a
tomorrow. I suppose most of us have faith that when we do wake up we will be
breathing and there will still be a healthy supply of oxygen to breathe.
Oxygen, by the way, is invisible, you can neither see, hear, nor taste it, but
you have faith it is there, because without it you could not breathe. After
that I usually have faith that there is still food in the pantry and the sun
will continue to shine. When you get into your car to go to work, you usually
do not consider that you may have an accident while driving, you have faith
that you will get to work safely because you usually do get to work safely. So,
if your argument as to how others have faith is that you must be able to see,
hear, or touch something for it to be real, your logic is seriously flawed.
So
many things in the world are illusionary, but we still believe in them. We
believe in oxygen as I said before. We believe in the sturdiness of bridges
although there is no real way to know that a bridge will not collapse once you
are upon it. We believe that the food we put in the fridge yesterday will still
be there when we get hungry. Things do not just disappear with no explanation!
It is also so with God. He is always with you! He doesn’t just disappear
because we are not paying attention! He doesn’t say, “Oh, Briana is busy typing
so I’ll just go check on Brooke, she’ll never notice I’m gone.” No, God doesn’t
do that at all. He watches each of us very carefully. He knows we need to
breathe and eat. That is why he keeps oxygen in the world, and he doesn’t steal
the food from your fridge.
The
Bible gives us some perspective into faith. We can find it in Hebrews 11:1.
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen.” Isn’t that wonderful? I couldn’t have said it better myself! Faith is
made of hope, hope feeds faith. We hope that we will wake up in the morning. We
hope we will arrive safely to our destinations when we travel. We hope that
there is still food in the fridge. Hope becomes faith when you have experienced
things the same way so often that you no longer consider that they might
change. Perhaps, if you were afraid of monsters in your closet when you were
little, you would go to sleep hoping they wouldn’t eat you. After enough nights
of not being gobbled up by closet monsters, you began to have faith that there
were no monsters in your closet, or at least faith they weren’t going to eat
you. Hebrews 11:6 goes a little further, “But without faith it is impossible to
please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a
rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” Hope must be practiced. Faith does
not usually come with no practice, as it is very easy to say, “I’ll believe it
when I see it” because we live in an uncertain world. When you open yourself up
to God and allow him a presence in your life you will experience something
special. And when you have those experiences, however small, you will continue
to have faith that God is always by your side.
I’ll
even give a personal example. When I was in high school, I dropped a ring my
grandmother had given me at the front of the classroom. I didn’t notice it was
gone until I got to my seat. I spotted it on the ground near where my teacher
was standing and decided I would pick it up after class. After the lesson, the
bell rang and I left for my next class. I left without picking up my ring. I
didn’t realize until I got home that I had forgotten it. I was a nervous wreck.
I’ve never prayed so fervently, so passionately as I prayed that that ring
would still be on the floor of that classroom. I prayed all night. I cried all
night. I was the first one at the door, even before my teacher, at the start of
class the next day. I crawled around on the floor for about two minutes and I
found my ring. It was a miracle to me. By all rights, it should have been gone.
Somebody could have seen it and taken it for their own. The janitors could have
swept it up and thrown it away. For whatever reason, God was with me and it was
within his will that I should not lose that ring. I’m glad I didn’t lose it
forever, it is the most cherished memento I have from my grandmother who I miss
very much. I wear that ring sometimes, and I make very sure that I never drop
it!
Now
that might all seem very silly to you. To 16 year old me, it was truly an act
of God. I had faith, that God would hear my prayer. I had no guarantee that he
would grant my request, but I knew he heard me. And when I found that ring the
next day, I knew he had heard my request and that it was within his plan for me
to find my ring. I still thank God for giving that ring back to me.