I was driving home tonight after picking up a pizza to eat with my wife and kids and God spoke to me about faith. God does that sort of thing a lot to me. Often I'll be skateboarding, driving, going for a run with my dogs or sometimes even just alone at home and He'll grab my attention and start unfolding some wisdom I didn't know and didn't have a grasp on before. God's wisdom is usually very simple yet very deep at the same time. Sometimes it's so obvious that we miss it in fact. So what God spoke to me was this... Faith is a seed. We don't earn the seed or buy the seed. The seed of faith is given to us by God (1 Corinthians 2:9). The cool thing about that is that it takes the pressure off of us to "work our way" to getting faith. It's simply a gift, just like salvation is. So faith is a seed. A gift from God. Now we don't make the seed grow either. It's very easy to fall into the trap of false religion thinking that the more stuff we do, the more our faith is going to grow and we're going to become awesome in front of everyone that sees us. The opposite is actually true in fact. The more we do, the more we get in the way of what God actually wants to do. Put simply, we are the dirt. I know that doesn't sound super exciting but it's true. After all, we are all made from dirt (Genesis 2:7). So if the seed is a gift and it's God that makes it grow... the what is our role? Well, just like the example above of the dirt our role is to be humble, submissive to the master gardener and patient. Dirt doesn't parade itself, dirt doesn't get impatient when things don't grow, dirt doesn't take any credit for what is grown. Dirt has no control over the weather or whether water comes or not. Dirt can't make the sun shine. Dirt is just... well dirt. It's a part of the process of a plant or tree growing but it's probably the most humble part. That's us. Another great example of how faith works is the example of an empty vessel. God talks about this in an extremely poetic way in 2 Corinthians 4:7 where it says "But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us." So if you want the gift of faith that God has given to you to grow, learn the ways of the dirt. Simple wisdom yet very deep. God is good. Feel free to tag someone or use this yourself, it's God's wisdom not mine. Have an awesome day.
