Sunny Side Up Dec. 27, 2006 �2006, Kathleen Gibson Pondering the gift of faith Christmas offers many gifts - family, friends, laughter, wonder. Its most splendid offering, however, is faith - given extravagantly to those who worship at the manger. But faith in Jesus Christ is a puzzle to many. How does one use it? Live by it? Walk in it? Like many other gifts, faith needs instructions and assembling! We learn faith the way we learned to walk - step by step. Prayer by prayer. Thought by thought. Deed by deed. And by sticking close to more mature Christians, observing how their faith sifts itself through the days, behaves between church services. God-honoring Christian faith is not a once a week, two hour pill to help people perform well for fellow church-goers. It's a twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week transfusion. Oswald Chambers said it best: "The test of a man's religious life and character is not what he does in the exceptional moments of life, but what he does in the ordinary times, when there is nothing tremendous or exciting going on. The worth of a man is revealed in his attitude to ordinary things when he is not before the footlights." The Christian 'faith package' comes with a set of spiritual senses, facilitated by God's Holy Spirit. He helps us identify, in our commonplace days and through our ordinary ways, the God moments, God realizations, God directions and God lessons. That takes practice. Working faith, you see, includes belief and practice. One without the other isn't true faith. Here's what I want you to understand about the practicing bit: Christians don't practice their faith in order to become perfect - we practice to become more transparent. Why? So that others can see the perfection of Jesus Christ clear through us. We practice to become like him - lover of mankind, champion of the oppressed, personal and societal liberator, servant, friend. Occasionally we get it right. Contrary to popular myth, practicing the Christian faith doesn't guarantee material riches, make one immune to disease, or smooth out all the bumps in our roads. But it offers intimate relationship with the God of the Universe. His riches are ours by heritage, and he made the road possible, even for imperfect people like me - and you. God sent Jesus to live a practical, common life, suffused with belief. And Christian faith, by design, thrives in ordinary people who've learned through regular practice that God dwells and is at work in all their ways and days. Who've trained themselves to experience and practice his presence as much at home, at play, at work, and in society as they do at church. I wouldn't trade my Christian faith for all India's cattle. Relationship with the manger's Babe offers peace of mind, forgiveness for that core of guilt we all carry, hope for the societal chaos that surrounds and threatens to overcome us, and the promise of something beyond that pine box. Something called eternal rest. In our eternally rest-less world, could there be a sweeter gift? Respond Home |
 |