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FAITH, in layman’s terms, is concentrating on a process knowing that it will work.
The key word here is ‘knowing’. In other words you don’t believe it will work (belief is an opinion!) you know it will work.
You see, true knowing is not leaving any room for doubt. In the same way true faith does not allow any room for doubt.
True faith has certain requirements.
It has to be built on absolute truth. This is what Jesus meant when He said “everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”
The rock here is the rock of His truth. Following His word using Him as your guide will work unlike the opinion of man which can be like building your house on sand.
It requires integrity – knowing that you will do you’re utmost to honour and respect that truth.
It requires resilience – the ability to pursue that truth through all of life’s obstacles. In other words my application of the process is unwavering. Jesus gave us an example by paying for it with his own life.
Faith is – believing without understanding. This is very demanding for us mortal human beings but if you think about it, we can never truly understand the unlimited love of God as the human mind boggles at the concept of unlimited.
I had a great maths teacher, a Mr Tadgh McCurtain in St Brendan’s College in Killarney and he was fascinated with the concept of infinity (unlimited!), so much so that he used to ask us to divide zero by a number (say 6 for example) and the answer was zero.
However if you divide 6 by zero you get infinity i.e. impossible to explain.
He took so much delight in this that he purchased a special calculator such that when you divided a number by zero the calculator began to blink (i.e to represent that it could not understand the concept of what it was being asked to do).
We will never understand God but what we can do is accept that the love that He has for us is unlimited.
He also tells us the way to do this when He says – I am is the way.
When we practice ‘Being’ in His presence – be still and know that I am God we create the environment to connect with His unlimited Love.
The clear example of this in The Bible is in the story of Doubting Thomas when Jesus replied to him “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
The word ‘See’ can mean Understand e.g. I see what you mean – I understand what you mean.
So true Faith is Believing without Understanding.
A classic example of this in nature is the little bird tapping on the eggshell.
Its tiny little beak may have tapped on the shell 10,000 times but it does one more time and eureka, at 10,001 success arrives and the outside world is revealed.
Something in this little bird tells it to persevere. The bird accepts that it doesn’t have to or need to understand this ‘something’. That is nature demonstrating faith.
If you now examine 1,2,3 from above you will see that all the boxes were ticked.
The little bird showed Truth, Integrity and Resilience in the process and didn’t need to understand. Success was sure to follow as God was it’s Guide.
Next week I am going to write about Hope
• Roger Harty is a life coach and can be contacted on 087-6128336, on twitter at @Innerjoyz1 or by email rogharty@gmail.com
