Faith

I was recently rereading a letter that I had written to someone and in it I said… There is an inward faith, a soul deep faith that is so deep that it literally becomes who we are. That is saving faith.

Those two sentences stood out to me so much as I read over them. I know I wrote them, I remember writing them, but as I read them they were just…profound. They mean as much today, maybe more, than they meant the day I wrote them. There in those two sentences is the essence of who I am. Within me is a faith so deep, so strong, that it has changed everything about me.

I know people that profess to believe in Christ but live as if He doesn’t exist. I know people that do everything they can to get themselves into the Lord’s good graces. And I know people that fall somewhere in the midst of those two extremes.

As far as I know all of those people would say they have been saved…that they have found salvation.

But I didn’t find salvation. Quite the opposite. Salvation found me. And in reality salvation didn’t find me…salvation was given to me. It was handed to me out of the graces and mercy of my Lord.

It changed my life. Not because I went looking for it, not because I sought after it, not because I in any way desired it, but because the Lord removed the heart of stone within me and replaced it with a heart of flesh…he changed me from what I was, from what I thought I wanted to be, to what He wanted me to be.

I have heard many testimonies of ‘Christians’ that tell of how they chose Jesus and what Jesus has done for them. But I can’t put any stock in those kinds of testimony. They go against the very basis of Scripture. Scripture says that no man can choose Christ and that we are dawn…dragged…to Him. And yet ‘Christian’ after ‘Christian’ will tell you how they chose Christ.

But I know others, not just myself, that have a different sort of testimony. They tell how they despised Christ one night and woke up the next morning seeking for Him. In almost the blink of an eye their hearts were changed. Can we do that ourselves? Can we choose to instantly stop hating something and start loving it instead?

I know someone that had a passing belief…a sort of I believe in Jesus but…kind of belief. This person went from living life on their terms knowing and believing in Jesus but not really having all that much interest or involvement with Him to crying out and begging Him for salvation. Why? What would make someone that thought salvation came in the form of believing in Jesus to beg Christ to save them if they held the very belief that supposedly gave them salvation? Is that of man or is that of Christ? Did this person chose to beg for salvation, thinking they already had it, or did Christ take hold of them and make them cry out for salvation despite what our society and the scores of ‘Christians’ had told them?

I grew up being told I was ‘saved’, that I was a ‘Christian’. I guess you could say I did everything right. I said ‘the prayer’ when I was six. I was baptized when I was seven. I believed in Jesus my whole life. But I never felt secure in my ‘salvation’. Something in me kept asking but am I really ‘saved’? I was assured by person after person that I was ‘saved’. I was told by a preacher that I had eternal security. But something in me kept wondering. There was an underlining worry, fear even, that the prayer I said wasn’t enough. And so I said the prayer again. And again. And again… And still the doubts and worry lingered. There just seemed something that wasn’t quite right about my ‘salvation’ and the prayers I kept saying.

I never voiced those doubts aloud though, unless you count the time a preacher asked me ‘if you died today, do you know where you would go’ and I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He then asked me if I was ‘saved’ and I told him I had said the prayer. He then assured me that I was ‘saved’ and need never worry again.

But I did worry.

His assurance did nothing to reassure me when he told me the same thing I’d been told my entire life and all those years of being told that hadn’t prevented the doubts in the first place. He just reiterated the same lessons I’d always heard…and still the doubts remained.

Something niggled at me that that ‘prayer’ had not saved me. There was more. The niggling continued. The doubts continued. But I had no idea what to do about it. So I pressed on, living with the doubts, wishing I knew for sure or could be as sure as the ‘Christians’ that claimed that prayer saved by the simple act of saying it.

Did I plant those doubts in myself? Did I cause the niggling inside me that told me there was more to this even if I didn’t know what it was? Or did Christ draw me in? Did Christ plant something inside me that went against the majority of everything I had ever been taught?

I have no idea when I went from the I-said-the-prayer-I’m-saved kind of ‘Christian’ to what I am now. It just sort of happened. Slowly. Gradually. But happen it did. And in the happening I was changed from who and what I used to be to what I am now.

I don’t have the kind of conversion story that gives me that instant moment…a date to look back on…it just sort of happened until I can’t really pinpoint the moment. But I know it happened. And I know that I had nothing to do with it.

About a year ago I told someone that my faith is so deep it has roots under my feet. I said this because the person I was talking to was talking about how their faith is much deeper than almost everyone they know and that no one seems to understand that. I understood what this person was talking about and told them so. I told them how I felt as if most ‘Christians’ have faith at eye level while mine has roots under my feet. It was the best example I could come up with.

But I didn’t tell that person of how my faith had changed me. That my faith caused a change in me that had nothing to do with any choice I made.

As I read over what I wrote to a friend I knew that I had written it out in the best way possible, at least for me. Because that faith goes so deep that it changes us from the inside out. It doesn’t come from a choice or a decision we make. It doesn’t come from something we wanted. It happens without us having any say in the matter. Because…

There is an inward faith, a soul deep faith that is so deep that it literally becomes who we are. That is saving faith.