Taking the First Step

I took a flight recently from Dayton to Chicago. In Dayton in was mildly snowy, but it didn’t seem bad enough to cancel flights. After one flight got canceled, and another delayed, I finally was on my way to Chicago. I fly a lot, so I rarely get nervous about it; That being said, after several delays in my flight, and from hearing the weather was terrible in Chicago, I was paying more attention to the sounds of the plane than normal. The flight attendant came over the speaker announcing that we were making our final descent and that everything needed to be put away. As she was speaking, I started looking out the window noticing that I could see absolutely nothing but thick, grey clouds. I figured we must just be really high up so I didn’t really think about it to much, but as I could feel the plane continuing to dip down, I noticed that I still couldn’t see anything. I then heard the sound of the landing gear being let out, yet I still couldn’t see a thing. I honestly was a little worried. There was nothing but grey from my point of view, and yet the pilot was still continuing to point the plane towards the ground. Seconds before we were actually landing, the clouds broke and I could see Chicago, but it definitely wasn’t a flight I would like to make again.

 

I say this because it made me think a lot about faith. We all have faith, even if we aren’t Christians. Think about it, this morning when you drove to work, you had faith that the driver of the vehicle behind you would be so kind as to use his brakes rather than plowing through the back of your car. You probably didn’t even think about it, but you too had faith that when you pressed the break pedal, you wouldn’t just keep rolling through the traffic light. I think about faith a lot. Do I trust other people to treat me with the same respect I treat them with? Faith. Do I have enough trust in Christ to be saved from the depths of Hell? Also Faith.

 

In my reading, I realized that it isn’t so much about how much faith we have that saves us from eternal damnation. Shocked? It sounds kind of weird to say that, but really it isn’t. Ephesians 2:8 clearly tells us “For it is by GRACE you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God”. We aren’t saved by faith, we are saved by grace. Grace is an undeserved favor (in this case from God), and faith is trusting in that grace (and giver of grace) to save us. Faith is just the way that grace enters our lives.

To illustrate this point, I go back to the airline industry. Let’s say you get on the plane and have great faith that you will arrive safely in your destination and that the plane will not crash. I however am scared to death of flying, and I only have enough faith to get on the plane, but I am scared and full of doubt the entire time. We both arrive safely in our destination, because reaching our destination does not depend on the amount of faith we have in the plane itself, it depends on the planes ability to fly. The plane does all the work; all we have to do is get on board. In the same way, we aren’t saved by the amount of faith we have, but in Christ’s ability to save us. All we have to do is have faith that the blood of Christ is sufficient to cover our sins. And Just like we become more confident in flying the more we do it, our faith works in the same way. The more we are stretched and used by God through our faith, the more faith we will have, and the more confident we can be during our “ride”.  Martin Luther King, Jr. said it best:

“Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase”

Destined for Greatness

Growing up, my mind was always easily shaped by whatever was around me. I, like most kids, was very impressionable. So watching shows that I thought were real, like He-man and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles always gave me a sense that these people existed, just not anywhere close to where I was. Then there came dramas like Saved by the Bell and later the OC. The shows would always been the same length, and pretty much any problem would resolve by the end of the episode. Things were back to normal, and the characters would all be friends again, awaiting the next “hilarious” mis-hap that would fit perfectly into an hour long episode (with commercial breaks of course).

 

What I don’t think I consciously was paying attention to while watching these dramas was also the fact that everything always resolved. If I thought of it like that, it would make the shows not even worth watching right? We pretty much know that all the main characters are going to live through the episode and whatever thing they do will most likely have little impact on the subsequent shows. Unfortunately, I think at a certain point, I started to view my life in this way too. Not that I was trying to become a Zach Morris or anything, but it was weird how when watching the shows, people would almost identify or pull for certain characters to complete whatever goal or happy ending for their life they had. A.C Slater goes off with the big wrestling scholarship, Zach marries Kelley after a terrible stint in the “College Years”, Seth eventually marries Summer at the end of a painful 4^th season.

 

There was a certain point in my life, where I came to realization that I may not be destined for this greatness that I had always thought. Not that I had any specific dreams to set out to be in movies or anything like that, but I always had this feeling like I was destined for great things. I had been interviewing for jobs, and it was some where in between interviewing for a position as a branch manager for a “cash advance” company (which would literally be one of the worst jobs around) and telling a story during an interview about how I had accidentally smeared cupcake in my roommates hair and the next thing I knew I had it in my ear, that I realized I was just spinning my wheels. It took me some time to come away from all of this; from thinking that I was going to some how change the world and impact everyone’s life around me, to feeling like I wasn’t even good enough to manage handing out money to people who can’t manage money.

 

Why would God make me go through these terrible interviews, where I was trying hard and just getting denied time after time? Why was I pushing so hard for these things and not being backed up by the Creator of the world? It wasn’t until I recently did some reading that any of this made sense to me. Ephesians 2:10 says “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Breaking this down, really helped me to put things into perspective. God’s workmanship in Greek translates to the word Poema which is “a spoken work of art”. Any poet or artist knows that the things they create are some of the most special and unique results of their gifts. In the same way, we are God’s poetry, literally…we are his works of art, spoken into existence and uniquely created for a specific purpose in his overall plan. Even though it sucked not getting the first couple jobs I applied for, I learned that God had something to teach me during that time, to prepare me for plans he had for me later down the road. While those times were frustrating for me, they were all part of his purpose in putting me where I am today. As for my destined greatness, I have had to put things into a different perspective. While I was looking for something that the world would define as great, and the world would reward me with wealth, my true destiny lies elsewhere. I couldn’t be happier that I am destined to do great things by following God’s will for my life and taking part in his greater plan for the world.