You Gotta Have Faith
Following God – letting Him be responsible for our lives and our loved ones – takes a lot of trust. It's funny (or frustrating) that God is the most trustworthy of beings, and is yet the most difficult to trust. I guess that's what faith is all about - trusting in the unseen.
In the movie
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana partners with his father in the quest for the Holy Grail, along with the everlasting life it promised for those who drank from it. After a long journey and with much difficulty, they come upon the location of the Grail to find that their Nazi enemies have beaten them to the site.
When Indy and his father are caught, the leader of the Nazi search party sends Indiana to get the Grail for him. Indy refuses to help, so the Nazi leader turns, shoots his father in the chest, and says to him “It’s time to ask yourself what you believe.” Indy is left with little choice. The Grail is the only thing that can save his father from death, and he must hurry.
Indiana passes the first two tests with only a little trouble, but then finds himself at a great bottomless pit with no way of crossing. He reminds himself of the clue that he’d been given from his father, that to leap from the lion’s head (where he was standing) would prove his worth, but he looks at the distance across the chasm and says to himself, “Impossible. Nobody can jump this.”
His father yells in pain, and knowing that crossing the gap is the only way to save his wounded father, Indiana takes a deep breath and steps off the edge of the cliff. As he does, a path appears beneath his feet, and he crosses safely to the other side.
That’s faith. And that’s what it feels like sometimes to follow God; like leaping off the edge of a cliff, not knowing if we will live or die. But we can’t just follow God when it makes sense. We can’t just follow Him when He’s already going the way we planned, doing our will and serving our needs. Following God means going places and doing things that don’t make sense; things that we’re afraid of, that we don’t understand, that we can’t do on our own.
We have to be those, like the followers in
Mark 6:7-13 and
Luke 9:57-62, who are willing to leave everything behind, so we can give our all to this unknown quest, trusting fully in our Father to provide, direct, defend, demonstrate, and strengthen us along the way.
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