Love and Mountains

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

It is easy to look at the seemingly impossible requirements of the Christian life and then declare something to the effect that only the Holy Spirit makes it possible for us to fulfill those requirements. The real question, though, is do we let Him make it possible? If we do not truly let the Spirit into our lives the impossible remains so and our hope is easily replaced by fear.

Many years into the Christian walk some of us look at certain as yet unmoved mountains in our lives and have to admit that we feel powerless to remove them. When faced with such powerlessness we have to ask ourselves “why?” Is it that God wants them there permanently? This seems unlikely, especially if the mountains in question involve sin. Is it that we secretly love the mountains and are unwilling to part with them? Possibly, but are we really that in love with misery? Could it be that we find it “easier” to try to dig away at the Mt. Everest’s of our soul than really put our faith in Him to do it for us? That indeed is a part of the problem but I think, for some of us, it goes deeper than lack of faith in and of itself. Perhaps the greatest part of the problem is simply this: we do not believe that God loves us enough to help us.

Faith in the idea that someone both can and will come to our aid is dependent on the belief that the person involved really wants to do good to us. Further, it depends on us knowing that this person is helping us because he or she cares about us as people, in short because this person loves us. If we cannot believe that someone loves us we find it difficult, if not impossible, to open ourselves up to the assistance they are offering. We do not put our faith in their help because we do not trust their motives. In short we do not trust them, and so we remain un-helped.

It is distressing, to say the least, to have spent many years singing “Jesus loves me this I know…” when the truth of the matter is that many of us do not really know, at least not fully. Martin Luther, whose Christian life was sometimes plagued by depression and fear, said that his worst times came when he experienced a “loss of faith that God is good and that He is good to me.” He assumedly said this many years into his walk with Christ. It is a sobering thing to realize that time does not necessarily erase doubts about the love God has for us, even if we involve ourselves in a church, pray and read our Bibles regularly, as Luther undoubtedly did more than most of us.

So it’s true that it is only by the Spirit that things change for the better in our spiritual lives, but the operation of the Spirit is to at least some extent dependent upon our faith, and our faith is dependent upon how we really think and feel about what God thinks and feels about us. Could it be that the degree to which we doubt His love for us is the absolutely defining factor in the degree to which His Spirit can help us?

Let us hope not. As in the case of the father of the sick child who confessed to Jesus that “I believe, help my unbelief,” the scripture also speaks of a God who continues to be willing to help us learn that He loves us even despite ourselves. Always remember that because the love of Christ transcended the doubting father’s shaky faith that sick child was healed anyway. This kind of love is not earned by perfect faith. In fact it is not earned at all. Real love, the divine kind, is purely the gift of the One doing the loving, One who loves innately because He is love.

The paradox is that it is this love that ultimately enables us to grow in faith to begin with.