I’m not a morning person. Waking up is a process, and
my morning routine seems to happen with little or no conscious thought on my
behalf. Sit up, put on my oversize fuzzy slippers, answer mother nature’s call,
feed the cats, make the coffee. It’s the same every day, and I go through it
without even thinking about it.
Or do I?
Even though I may feel (and look) like a mindless
zombie first thing in the morning, each step of my routine is the result of a
choice. I choose to get out of bed rather than sleeping in. I choose to put on
the fuzzy slippers instead of going barefoot. True, going to the bathroom may
be the unavoidable result of bodily functions, but I choose to do that before
feeding the cats or making coffee. Everything we do is the result of a choice,
even for one such as myself who, upon first waking, has more in common with the
walking dead than Mr. Rogers.
What is life if not a series of choices?
Choice is an
ever-present factor of human life. Nothing that you do happens without your
choosing it. You chose your job. You chose what to wear this morning. You chose
what to eat for breakfast - or you may have chosen to skip breakfast altogether.
You chose to read this article (and I choose to thank you for doing so!). If
any of the above decisions were made by someone else on your behalf, then you
chose to let them make that decision for you.
As stated in lyrics penned by the late Neil Peart of
Rush, “If you choose not to decide, you
still have made a choice.” There is no escaping the presence of choice in
your life. It touches everything that you do.
In much the same way, the Shield of Faith overlaps
every other piece of the spiritual Armor of God. Whatever protection is offered
by any of the other symbolic elements of the armor, the shield alone can offer,
as well. Such is the nature of faith - when all other evidence points to the
worst of outcomes, faith alone provides hope. Faith saves you. Faith allows you
to stand firm in the face of temptation. Faith is indispensible to the
Christian life.
But what do you do if your faith is broken?
We have all encountered challenges to our faith. Some
Christians seem to be able to cling to their faith in the most dire of
circumstances as if by divine providence, while some fall away when faced with
even the mildest of obstacles. What makes the difference?
As with all other things in life, faith itself is a choice. Even if the enemy has knocked
you down and seems to have shattered your faith, you can still pick that shield
back up and put it on. Remember that
Jesus said we only need faith the size of a mustard
seed (which is an exceptionally small thing) in order to
accomplish great things for the Kingdom. Even the smallest shard of your broken
faith can provide great comfort, healing, and protection, if you choose to pick it up.
Now to some of you, that statement may sound like a
no-brainer. I have observed a good number of Christians who have endured
terrible hardships and, as far as I can tell, have never wavered in their
faith. Maybe being raised in the church helps with that - I wouldn’t know,
because I had very little contact with the church until my mid-twenties. If
turning to God in faith is as natural to you as taking a breath, I would say
that you should count yourself as highly favored and greatly blessed, because
for some of us, it’s not that easy.
I became a Christian at the age of 26, but I can’t say
that I really became grounded in the faith until I was about 40 or so. I’ve
seen more than a few new Christians come to God later in life only to give up
on their faith when hardships appeared. Truly, Jesus’ parable of
the sower is an accurate description of the various ways people
respond to faith and adversity.
God gives us free will, and He allows us to use it as
we please (the redundancy of that statement is intentional). He also presents
us with plenty of evidence to convince us that faith in Him is a real and
viable choice, even when other evidence may seem to indicate otherwise.
I clearly remember the moment when it dawned on me
that faith, above all else, is a choice. I had been plagued by many doubts, and
I was on the verge of giving up, like so many others. I wondered if my faith
was real or if I was just pretending to believe, and if so, then why I should
even bother. I was involved in a prison ministry, and the inmate teaching the
class made the statement that faith was something that had to be chosen.
The power of that statement shook me to my core and is
still with me today.
I grew up outside the church, though never hostile
toward it. Agnostic would be the best word to describe my younger self. I
always wondered if there was really a God or not, but as a student of science
(I almost chose to major in Chemistry in college, though music won out in the
end), I was skeptical. That skepticism is still a part of me today, to a
certain degree. I can’t seem to avoid asking myself questions like…
Do I really
believe what I say I believe?
The doubts and questions that I had - and still have -
used to cause me great distress. The knowledge that I can choose to believe, in spite of these doubts, has enabled me to move
forward in faith when fear would have me remain paralyzed. Faith is a choice
that I make daily, and I wouldn’t ask God to make it otherwise.
I truly believe that it is good to face our doubts and
ask the hard questions about Christianity. Doing so allows us to grow even
closer to God as we learn more about Him and the world around us. The knowledge
that I can choose faith in the face
of obstacles has allowed me to look beyond the barriers to my faith and find
ways to communicate the Gospel to others like myself. I love science, and the
more I learn about both science and God, the more I see connections between the
two. But those are topics for another time.
I have learned to put
on the Shield of Faith by choosing to
believe in God. I choose to believe
what the Bible says even as I choose
to try to understand what it means. I choose
to believe even when I have doubts. The power of choice is every bit as important as the power of faith. In some ways, I would say that
the two are, in fact, the same.
Now faith
is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by
it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds
were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made
of things which are visible.
~Hebrews
11:1-3 (NKJV)
It is only by faith that Joshua was able to make the
following choice:
And if it
seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you
will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other
side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as
for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
~ Joshua 24:15
(NKJV)
Joshua openly proclaimed his choice to have faith in
God even while others chose differently. Today, more than ever, it is important
for us to realize that faith is, above all else, a choice to be made. Faith is
something which we must choose to fight for. Faith is that which we choose to
hold onto in the face of adversity, lest we fall without it.
When all else fails, choose to stand in faith. It will
be sufficient.
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MORE IN THIS SERIES
The Final Cut (The Armor, part 18)
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