What would you do for God?
Iwish God would show himself like he used to. Wouldn’t that make everything so much easier? We read stories in Sacred Scripture and we are presented with many instances of God talking directly to people, and doing incredible things in their presence, coming to them in dreams and through the words of prophets.
Wouldn’t that be incredible if God would do that same thing in this time and place? What would we do? Our first reaction would probably be experiencing a great amount of fear. After all, we wouldn’t really have any idea what was happening. But then after a certain amount of time our reaction might turn to awe. And wonder. And excitement. And maybe even humility. What an experience that would be!
An experience like that would change us somehow. Some of us might find peace in such an event, while others might be filled with some sort of regret or concern or maybe even feelings of guilt. But one thing that would probably be common to us all is that each of us would probably believe more than we had before. We would believe more strongly in God’s existence. We would believe more strongly that this Jesus we have heard so much about is indeed “close to God”, and might even be God. We would believe more strongly that life is not some sort of accident, but was created with intention and for a purpose.
But would we have more faith? In Scripture’s retelling of this story, on the surface it might seem like this statement is simply an affirmation of who Jesus is, a kind of evidence for Peter, James, and John to take with them. To me, however, it seems to be much more than that, for this statement has two parts. The first seems to be saying believe that this man is who I say he is. And I’m guessing that, after this miracle they had witnessed, this was the easy part.
But it’s that second part of the statement that seems to indicate that God is saying so much more than that. It’s as if God is saying something along the lines of, “don’t just believe in him. Have faith in him too.”
Faith is kind of hard to define. Some define it as a kind of personal knowledge of God, as opposed to simply accepting statements of belief. Yet, if we’re not careful we might assume that faith is like belief in that it’s just something only in our mind
Faith is not simply accepting the “existence” of God. It is deeper than that, for it includes not just what God wants to SHOW us, but accepting what he is ASKING of us. And that’s the most difficult part of faith, the part that actually demands something of us, the part that involves surrendering our own will and desires to the will and desires of our God.
What would I DO for God? Of course, people have answered that question in all sorts of dishonest and unfaithful ways, justifying all sorts of things in the name of God. We must be careful about falling into that trap. But that doesn’t mean the question has no value. Who is this Jesus? And most importantly, do I just believe or do I also have faith? And if we answer that question affirming our desire to have faith, then are we truly listening to Jesus? Or are we still just listening to ourselves?
What would you do for God? Something to ponder today.