by Mary C Neal
Instead, I’m referring to the way we tend to say and mean the word in everyday ways. Sometimes faith is as light and breezy as the advertising and political campaigns that declare, we just “Gotta have faith.” A man or woman who votes in a certain way, or goes to church or recites the Apostles’ Creed on Sunday, or simply checks yes to the “Do you believe in God?” box on a survey is said to be “a person of faith,” even though this gives no indication of the strength of their beliefs or how they have incorporated them into their own life. Do you see the difference? As beloved as the word faith is to most Christians, Jews, and Muslims, what we mean by it can easily be confusing.
Is it true about you? Maybe you say the right things in church, read the Bible, pray, abide by a lineup of religious assertions, attend small-group studies, and believe that there is a loving God somewhere “out there.” Despite your sincerity, you still live with doubt and hedge your bets. Maybe you can see yourself in the response I have often heard from people who are challenged about their faith in God. They say, “What’s there to lose? If I’m right, I go to heaven and if I’m wrong, I have lost nothing.”
One way I picture the consequences of living with this sort of faith is like this: It’s as if we are pushing off from shore but only one part of us ever gets in the boat. We have one leg in and one leg out. We are partly where we want to be…but we’re also partly soaked!
Honestly, it often seems to me that most “people of faith” are only partly “in the boat.” The results are apparent everywhere around us. People of sincere conviction do not truly live the joy-filled life that God intends for them. Many do not reflect God’s love or offer grace to others. Despite the best of intentions and desires, they live with largely unchanged lives.
When faced with real suffering, the benefits of God’s truth, presence, and love are essentially lost to them. Their faith is shaken. How could this happen?
I think this is because many people equate faith to a really, really, really strong belief that God’s promises are true. This is still different from translating that faith into trust, and it is the choice to trust that propels a person into the realm of transcending joy. For many, seeing themselves as “a person of faith” is as far as they go. Perhaps they suffer from tragically misleading information about who God is and how he feels about them. As a result, they’re unable to take the step of transformation—and get entirely “in the boat.”
That’s where absolute trust happens.
We Change with Absolute Trust
Hope and faith become absolute trust when we personally see convincing evidence of God’s presence in our own life and act on it. Our change of mind might come through personal experience, or a moving encounter with someone else’s story—like this book. The evidence brings with it the realization that to live with anything less than utter confidence in God’s goodness just wouldn’t make sense. To act in faith on what we now know to be true creates a shift that propels us out of our old ways of feeling, thinking, and living.
We have entered the arena of living with absolute trust. The response of absolute trust is not based on emotions, momentary circumstances, convenience, or religious behavior. It is born of the recognition that no matter what happens during our day, God’s promises are everlasting and unchanging—and they’re for each one of us. This type of authentic, life-changing faith—which I call absolute trust—begins with a conscious choice, nearly always based on personal encounter, to risk everything on the unbounded love and goodness of God.
You probably can call to mind biblical heroes who made this discovery and let it change their lives in remarkable ways. Imagine how much trust Noah must have had when he embarked on his ark-building project. He was probably ridiculed while building it, scoffed at when loading it, and jeered at when climbing aboard. Once on the ark, he waited for the promised flood to arrive. And waited. And waited some more. He waited and trusted for seven long days before it began to rain. Without having an unshakable trust in God’s word, Noah might have abandoned the project long before the floodwaters arrived.
Or imagine the trust of Daniel. He was cheerful, honest, and hardworking. But his colleagues were so envious of his success that they sabotaged him and got him put on death row. And then they brought in the lions! But rather than being filled with anger and fear, Daniel faced and overcame his circumstances with unwavering trust.
Many people hope that God’s promises are true, and many more claim to have faith. But how many people have the trust of Noah or Daniel?
Only when we open our hearts to absolute trust do the beautiful truths of God’s goodness really change us. And absolute trust is available for everyone—not just the highly religious, not just the saints of old, and—most certainly—not just the relative handful who have experienced a near-death experience!
REAL TRUST ALWAYS GETS PERSONAL
Call me a hands-on, feet-on-the-ground pragmatist, but I’ve found that so many of the grand truths of our life with God can quickly fade to abstractions. Belief and faith can be that for me. Of course, as ideas, they’re no less important, true, or to be cherished less. But what I love about absolute trust is that it links immediately, directly, and predictably to a personal outcome. Real trust barely exists as an idea. If there’s no action that leads to a different outcome for me, then I didn’t trust. Just as grace is love in action, trust is faith in action.
Imagine you’re hiking with me on a narrow trail deep in the tropical forests of Central America. We come to a ravine spanned by a rope bridge—the only way forward. Far below, we see and hear a rushing torrent. As we nervously inspect the bridge from our side, we notice it swaying in the breeze. The motion, and the strange assembly of ropes and planks, makes the bridge look, well, untrustworthy.
But is it?
Without taking a single step farther, you and I can certainly hope the bridge will hold us.
Without taking a single step, we could even have great faith that the rope bridge will hold us—so much so we don’t really feel concern about a bad outcome should we decide to march across the chasm. Still, we haven’t taken a step, and we certainly haven’t crossed the ravine.
Trust? That’s different. You and I can’t really say we have trust until we’re in motion across that bridge. Trust begins when we make a choice and act on it. Trust propels us to take a step, and then another one, and another one—out across that sagging, swaying footbridge until we get to the other side.
That’s why I say that real trust always gets personal. It begins with a powerful commitment that propels us in a direction we would have never gone without it. You and I can talk with great insight about hope and faith, but we have to live trust.
No wonder living with absolute trust in God’s promises is so life changing!
For me, the emotional and behavioral benefits of wholly trusting God’s promises continue to profoundly alter how I experience daily life. For example, I realize now that God’s promise that He loves me dearly applies equally to the people I don’t like. He loves the people who don’t look like me or agree with me. Of course, I don’t always want God to love others as much as I believe He loves me. That doesn’t change a thing, though. He loves them anyway—deeply, unconditionally, passionately, and forever. He loves the people who don’t like me back. He loves the people who have hurt me. He loves people I think are unethical, immoral, or just plain jerks.
In fact, God not only loves them, but they are an integral part of His plan for the world (just as you and I are).
Trusting God’s promises invites us to live in the freedom that comes from resting entirely on God as he declares himself to be, not on a god of our own construction. It moves us away from the comfortable platitudes and passionate songs that we mistake for being in true relationship with the divine. It enables us to transcend momentary circumstances, and to live fully the life Jesus modeled and God wants for each of us.
I care deeply about long-held Christian beliefs and what they teach us about living, and I hav
e studied scripture, but I do not write as a trained theologian. Rather, I write as a faithful witness—an expert in only a few things, one of them being my own experience. On that score, I feel sent, humbled by what happened to me, and passionate about what I have to say about it.
My experience at the river changed me—not to perfection, I can assure you, but to something like freedom in Spirit. In trusting that everyone is important and deeply loved, I feel free to risk compassion for all people. Free from the anxiety about my own death or that of my loved ones, I’ve radically changed my response to death. When someone I love dies, I am certainly sad for the loss, but I also feel a small pang of envy, knowing the person is returning to our true home. In recognizing everyone has a backstory, as well as an ongoing story that God is actively redeeming, I am free to offer grace rather than judgment. In knowing that we all exist in God’s loving embrace, I feel free to look for the loveliness of Jesus in every face.
This doesn’t mean I like and enjoy everyone I meet—focusing on God does not turn us into perfect people, but forgiven people. I am, however, compelled to search for the beauty within each person. When my initial response is critical, I silently acknowledge my folly and forgive it, showing myself the same grace God shows to me. I then focus my thoughts on God’s compelling and undeniable love for that person. I trust that he or she is part of God’s beautiful plan for the world. I look for something I like about the individual, no matter how small, consciously softening my heart as I look for God’s beauty within them. This tiny seed of connection almost always begins to grow, blossoming into love, regardless of how I initially felt.
Even when terrible things happen—as with the death of a beloved child—I know from personal experience that no darkness can hide the light for long. That is absolute trust, as best I understand and live it, and the payoffs for me or anyone are immense. “We shall steer safely through every storm,” wrote fifteenth-century spiritual teacher Francis de Sales, “so long as our heart is right, our intention fervent, our courage steadfast, and our trust fixed on God.”1
FOUR STEPS FROM WOBBLY TO UNSHAKABLE
Unshakable joy is built on the bedrock of God’s promises. It reflects a trust in God’s plans and the hope for His people. Most people actually want to trust God that way, even if the desire is hidden deep within their heart. Perhaps as a result, many spend years missing out on the joy that a spiritual life can bring, while searching for happiness on their own. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
While many roads can lead to change, I will share a systematic approach that I have seen work well, even without the need for dramatic events. As you know by now, I consider myself a concrete-thinking, scientifically trained pragmatist. You won’t be surprised then, when you see that the path to discovering absolute trust that I describe here is careful, sequential, cumulative, and evidence based. If sincerely undertaken, I believe these steps can help you transform spiritual beliefs that may be occasionally wobbly into an unshakable trust.
They unfold in a simple progression that we’ll explore in very practical ways in the following chapters:
1. Look beyond. Open your heart to the truth of God’s promises, and form a testable hypothesis.
2. Look around. Collect evidence from the natural world and from other people.
3. Look within. Collect personal data from your own experiences.
4. Form a conclusion. Reevaluate your hypothesis, make a choice, and act on it.
By following these steps, you will support your conclusions with experience and data, and with God’s help, you will begin to live differently—with joy and confidence in His unfailing goodness. I am absolutely convinced that anyone can make this transformation, but it does not happen as a result of wishing or hoping. Each person must take the first step, and then the next, to make it happen.
I invite you to take your first step.
Chapter 14
STEP 1: LOOK BEYOND
Forming a Hypothesis with an Open Heart
“You have made known to me the paths of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence.”
—ACTS 2:28
If you are honestly ready and willing to wake up to God’s presence and purpose in your life, then I invite you to take your first, truly perspective-altering step in that direction. I describe this step as “Look Beyond.”
To understand the significance of “looking beyond,” picture yourself standing in a field looking out at the horizon. The horizon beckons you. It is the future you want—in this case, a life built on absolute trust in God’s promises. But the field around you represents your life up to now. Since you’ve been alive for a while, the field is cluttered. All around you, you see obligations, old dreams, recent successes, relationships, grudges, disappointments, beliefs, memories—in other words, all the emotional and intellectual baggage that naturally come from a full life.
How do you “look beyond” all of that to the horizon where you can find and claim your new life? There’s so much to distract, to hold you back, to argue against making any change at all. Your first challenge is to understand how you got here, then put yourself in motion toward the future you want.
Let’s apply what this little scene suggests to help you begin your journey toward living in absolute trust. I propose taking three actions that will begin to free you from your past and present, and launch you toward the life you want:
1. Start with a self-inventory, identifying those things that have been holding you back.
2. Set the parameters for your search by asking the question, “How much evidence will I need to change my beliefs?”
3. Create a clear, testable hypothesis to give you direction going forward.
A hypothesis, as you may remember from school, is a statement that provides the starting point and focus of a quest. In advance, and based on what you know so far, you put into plain language what you think the evidence might support. Then you set about to collect evidence that will make the case for or against it.
Imagine what would occur if your search delivered such persuasive evidence that you could truly accept that God is real, present, and working in your life today? That He personally knows you and loves you as though you are His only child? Imagine the release of worry and anxiety you would experience if you truly accepted that God’s promises and plans for you are full of beauty and hope?
Even if you approach this five-step learning experience with trepidation, I have great confidence in the outcome. In ages past, God “set eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11), and without a doubt, my friend, you have eternity in your heart. (The fact that you’re still reading this book makes that abundantly clear.)
Furthermore, you are not alone in the search—God is in it with you. And he promises to make known the paths of life to you, all the more when you seek him with all your heart (Acts 2:28, Deuteronomy 4:29; Matthew 7:7). That’s why I urge you to bring your whole being—mind, heart, soul—to your search. Ask God to show you the way. If you do, I’m certain that His Word, His Spirit, His angels, and His loving presence will guide you to your true home.
ASK, WHAT’S HOLDING ME BACK?
Your first move in looking beyond is to take a personal inventory. I recommend starting with questions like: How open are you to seeing the reality of a supernatural, loving God at work in your life? What limiting biases or attitudes—personal “baggage”—might block your path or skew the outcome of your investigation?
A thoughtful accounting of where we stand now helps us figure out how we got here. We review our past, our spiritual story up to the present, and any previous conclusions that have shaped how we understand God and his amazing promises. Of course, we go through most days unaware of all this, but then at the moment when we most want to trust God absolutely, we hesitate. Baggage is blocking our way forward.
You could make your own list of what clutters your spiritual landscape (at the end of the chapter, I’ll ask you to do that). For many of us, the list
is a long one. Here are some of the obstacles others have shared with me, often through tears of anguish and heartbreak:
“I have been hurt by religion.” Sadly, this is a familiar story. Many have become disillusioned with church and religion. In the name of a particular faith tradition, people may have brought more harm than good. An arrogant or hypocritical church leader may have inflicted deep emotional injury. Some of us suffered terribly from oppressive rules, silly obsessions, bad science, or uninformed and mean-spirited politics—all foisted on us in God’s name. The perpetrators of this damage generally were not bad people. Even well-meaning people of faith can screw up the message of Christ. But in either case, the fallout is real.
“I’m not sure about the Bible anymore.” Perhaps the scriptures, instead of bringing the good news of new life for all, were used in your past as a weapon to sow division, exclusion, injustice, ignorance, prejudice, or fear. Perhaps narrow interpretations of biblical passages represent God’s nature and promises in ways that no longer make sense for you.
“Why should I trust ‘the man upstairs’ with my life?” Many of us move into adulthood with childish understandings and expectations of God. What might have been helpful or at least benign back then now saddles us with quaint, literalist, and patriarchal views of God that we reject. In real life, we need a God for grown-ups.
“But if I trust God completely, I’ll never…I’ll always…” Obstacles like these rarely get verbalized, but they lurk in various guises beneath the surface for almost everyone. We assume that opening our heart fully to God means that we will need to follow a long list of rules. We assume that we’ll be limited in the fun we can have or be obligated to do things we don’t want to do. How would you complete the sentences from your own experience?