From The Healing Path by Dan Allender
"My faith in God’s character grows to the degree I remember God. Faith is trust in the goodness of God. I grow as I recall and recollect stories of God in the Bible, in the lives of others, and in my own life. To recall is to name, with sufficient detail to be be moved by God’s presence, the life scenes or events in which he showed up as Rescuer. The external world and our internal gyroscope are never so clear that we have absolute assurance that a personal God is at work redeeming us. Instead, we have a gallery of pictures – a wall of remembrance that holds the faces of the actors in our lives who spoke their part in the play of our redemption.
Naming does not merely provide a caption for a picture; it allows the narrative of an event to be played out in our mind. Recall writes the play not so much as it merely happened but as we see it – recording the external and internal moments of what occurred; adding motivation, emotion, and suspense to the scene.
Recall (the naming of events) takes us to recollection (the ordering of events). Recollection is like arranging photos in an album, we give meaning to each one by ordering them according to time, event or person. We form a collection. A collection has a dominant theme that, in its separate parts, tells a story. Faith grows as we name the moments in which God appeared and rescued us and then gains a sense of the meaning of those moments for the rest of our lives. Memory is the key to faith.
The dilemma is that as I remember the moments where God has redeemed m, I am also left with the many moments he has chosen, apparently to abandon me or – even more painful to admit – betray me. Many will say, “God never abandons and certainly never betrays.” True. But then why are those sentiments a consistent complaint of the faithful who follow God (see Psalm 13, 39,44,88)? When we remember, we also suffer and groan (Ps. 77) . We recall and recollect moments of horror that were not (apparently) redeemed and moments of glory that (apparently ) ended prematurely.
We suffer when we remember. And as we suffer, we doubt. It is doubt that sends us on a search to comprehend God. And it is that search that leads us not so much to find God as much as it brings God to find us. Do we find God? Indeed, but only because he finds us first. And it is the wonder of being found that we enter a place of rest and stability that gives us not only faith, but a sense of our identity and calling.
God is telling a story. His story. He is intimately involved in the passing minutes of every one of our days and every one of yours. He also orchestrates and tells our stories. He is both the author and narrator. Faith increases to the degree that we are aware of, caught up in , enthralled by, and participating in his and our story. "
Pray for me please as I have something and not sure whether it is me or Him trying to talk to me about it. Pray for me to 'not blink', for me to respond with a soft heart ready to listen and learn and perhaps move into something I know nothing about.
