Remaining Open

June 19, 2017

Day 165: Going With A Smile:
"My heart has heard you say, 'Come and talk with me.' And my heart responds, "Lord, I am coming.'"
—Psalm 27:8

Day 166: Career-Saving Strength From God:
"Strengthen those who have tired hands, and encourage those who have weak knees." —Isiah 35:3

Day 167: Prayers For A Vote To Go Our Way:
"The council then threatened them further, but they finally let them go because they didn't now how to punish them without starting a riot. For everyone was praising God for this miraculous sign—the healing of a man who had been lame for more than forty years." —Acts 4:21-22

All three of these scriptures and the anecdotes that Anderson shares to go with them speak of trusting God—trusting that He will bring you home when the time is right and when He is ready to, trusting that you are where you are because He wants you there, trusting that He will deliver you in times of distress and danger.

Trust is the recurrent motif in much of what I have been reading as of late. I just finished Peter Enns' book The Sin of Certainty in which he focuses on trusting God rather than being certain of what you believe the Bible says. He explains that:
           "Letting go of the need for certainty is more than just a decision about how we think; it's
            a decision about how we want to live. When the quest for finding and holding on to certainty
            is central to our faith, our lives are marked by traits we wouldn't normally value in others:
            ...dogmatic certainty, vigilant monitoring of who's in and who's out, preoccupation with
            winning debates and defending the faith, privileging the finality of logical arguments,
            conforming unquestionably to intellectual authorities and celebrities. A faith like that is in
            constant battle mode....That kind of faith is not marked by trust in the Creator. But trust in
            God casts out fear and cultivates a life of trust that flourishes regardless of how certain we
            feel."

I appreciate his perspective because I personally feel as if I no longer have the capacity or desire to blindly follow a prescribed set of rules of what it means to follow God. I don't know how to "think correctly about God." If we can get beyond "correct thinking" and that need to be right and fight tooth and nail to prove that we are, and instead trust, it is then that we will know peace. As Enns says: "Developing that culture of trust rather than preoccupation with certainty means discerning, articulating, and embodying the heart and soul of the Christian tradition, while also—and just as passionately—remaining open to the movement of God's Spirit.

I want to remain open.