Unwavering Goodness

The question of what it looks like to have a faith that rests completely in God has been on my heart a lot lately. Not because I feel like I am lacking a general faith in God, but because I feel like I struggle with an intimate faith, a faith that rests completely in God. I have faith in God’s presence and I have faith in his love for me. I have faith that I will see him one day in heaven. But I also have “faith” in a lot of other things. So what do I need to do to make my faith in God my everything? How do I put it above all else? What does that even look like?

I am reading, Becoming A Woman of Prayer, by Cynthia Heald. One of the chapters talks about how necessary faith is in order to have the prayer life God has intended for us. She included a quote that really hit me:

“Faith that rests in God is unwavering trust in His omnipotent power and unfailing goodness.”

Unwavering trust. That is what really gets me about this quote. Catch me on an off day and I will most assuredly be wavering in my faith in God's goodness. Sometimes I think he has failed to bring goodness my way. But when I really think about it, my definition of goodness is so shallow and nearsighted! And I live as if my definition is the right one, the best one. In reality, I am the one that fails in the equation, it's never God. Why am I so quick to doubt his judgement? I think a lot of it goes back to my struggle with patience. I want answers immediately. I want to see the fruit of my labor quickly. If I can't see "goodness" right away, I begin to doubt that it's in the horizon. God likes to take his time. Take Pittsburgh, for example. The first six weeks were so hard! I was living in a hotel, spent most of my nights alone, experienced an epic fail the night I tried to attend a church service, and was struggling to find an apartment. In my mind, there was no goodness to be found in Pittsburgh. In fact, at points I was sure that I had heard God wrong and I was never supposed to go to Pittsburgh to begin with. Talk about impatient!

Now, I will be moving into an apartment in a week and a half that is only 9 miles from work. I found an awesome church that is opening up a campus location in the town I will be living in, in September! I'm meeting with someone to talk about becoming a high school bible study leader in the fall. God is good! But I doubted that because I had to wait six weeks, I had to wait for his perfect timing. My faith wavered. This experience will have little impact, though, if I learn nothing from it. Now, I have a perfect example of God's unwavering goodness versus my impatient, temporary fixes. I think I'm going to start keeping a record of all the times God's unwavering goodness, in his perfect timing, has proved me wrong. I encourage you to do the same!

In the end, I guess it's all about me making a choice. Faith that rests in God is all about me choosing everyday to believe in his unwavering goodness, regardless of my limited knowledge of the circumstances.