Feeling All on Your Own - 06/27/2016

WARNING PREACHY

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

(Hebrews 11:1)

I remember being a young twenty-something when my mother told me that she worried for me.  I remember telling her that as long as I can do manual labor, I was going to be just fine.  I now know what she really meant about “worrying for me.”

In 2001 I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.  Since that time my ability to do manual labor has dwindled away.   I was a Christian at that time but once my ability to work as a laborer was gone I had no idea how I was going to pay the bills – and I’m still largely trying to figure it out.

Each week I meet with people who are ill enough to need someone to care for them.  They live in adult foster care homes and my mission is to share with them the love and gospel of Jesus Christ.  It is often difficult to tell people who are in these situations that they can trust in Jesus “because He has not forgotten nor forsaken you.”  Sometimes I struggle with the concept myself because I feel left out in the cold now that blue-collar work is not an option for me.

Not many people know this, but Mother Teresa struggled for years feeling alone as she could not feel God’s presence in her soul.  God called her to the ministry of the desperately poor and dying in Calcutta and she reported that once she begun she felt abandoned by His presence.

Mother Teresa felt like I and the people at the AFC homes often do.  But no matter the darkness in her soul she was completely convinced of Him in her life and work.  “What mattered to her was that she loved God, whether or not He granted her the consolation and joy of His presence.”  (Mother Teresa:  Come Be My Light, Pg. 177)

I like this last statement.  Mother Teresa was determined that she love God no matter what she felt.  For me this is the penult of what faith in God should be.  No matter what we experience, what we see, or what we feel, in faith we love and honor God in Christ.  Like Mother Teresa, our faith is not usually a visible or knowable reality, but rather it is a blind spiritual hope in the Christ who has risen back to life from the dead.

^“ Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.  So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.”

(Hebrews 13:5-6)