Searching for faith

I recall learning very early in life that all one needs to have is "faith the size of a mustard seed." When I saw and held in my hand, an actual mustard seed, I was blown away. Faith always seemed large and looming, and something that no matter how much I had, I always needed more. Typically when I post the blog, I add a hashtag to enable the content to be both visible and accessible in multiple places. I added a familiar tag, but it did not load immediately, and for that matter, not for a while. I wrote #faith, and what I received is what you see within the picture that accompanies this blog, "searching for faith." It spoke to me so much to the extent that I hurried to take a screenshot. It pressed into my spirit so deeply as I laughed and then cried reflecting on my search in relation to faith. How many times do we look for God in a thing or wonder how we might have a little more faith to believe, to endure, to sustain? And yet, there is God, just expecting us to have faith the size of a mustard seed. The juxtaposition is that we often expect faith to be enormous, while God is the one operating in the enormity of who He is and positioned to be despite the faith that we hold.

If anything, God is searching for our faith. Searching to determine the cost and the precise moment we will instead lean into Him and not our own understanding or lack thereof. Searching for faith is God beckoning to us, seeking if we will trust Him and not ourselves or the situations we face. Searching for faith is looking for what was deposited in us and looking for it to show up in our now to usher us into our next. Faith is developed and nurtured in the pain and pleasure of what we've experienced. And if we can develop a habit and then perhaps a practice of knowing who God is, our faith is thereby incubated and preserved. Philippians 3:10 reads, "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death." Jesus! The searching comes by the knowing! When we simply say, "I just need to have faith," or someone tells us, "Have faith," our responsive action should be to go deeper into God. When we hear those statements or even make them to ourselves, it is the God within us through the Holy Spirit calling us to return to that which we accepted to make sense of that which does not. Psalm 139:23-23 reads, "Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." We want to be tied into relationship with a God that looks for Himself within us and when our faith is questionable, lacking and weak, we desire for God to set us in the way that pleases Him, gives Him glory and settles our spirit to know that He remains in control! My God! May we be emboldened to trust the God of our faith over everything that concerns us.