What To Do When Faith Makes No Sense

When you get shredded in life, insecurities surface. It has been said that grief and pain touch every aspect of your life. No stone is left unturned.

That is not just in connection with the passing away of a spouse, parent, sibling, child, or friend. Some losses are less severe than others and can quickly be recovered from, but loss takes many forms from career, relationships, moving house, or changing churches to name a few. The process of dealing with the impact of these losses can be likened to waves pounding a beach or layers peeled away from an onion. They are not one-time moments or events, and just when you think you are ready to move on, or even more so, everyone else is ready for you to just move on, you get hit again.

The passing of Rachel in October 2023 is the greatest loss I have ever experienced. The pain and the process are both deep and lengthy. I do not know all that lies yet before me in this process. d.

In 2016, we walked away from thirteen years of church planting and deep relationships. Some of those relationships remain close, but it is much different now in the ways that we relate and how often. A few years before that, we experienced two miscarriages. Rachel always felt there was a possible third, but these were confirmed pregnancies with an obvious physical termination of the baby. These are all deep painful experiences that have marked me. I am different because of them, and the way that I responded to each loss, differing based upon my experiences and understanding at the time, determined whether I would move forward with success in life or get stuck in the pain.

Just as love needs an opportunity to prove itself as unconditional, so does faith. Some people have confused faith as the ability to avoid difficulties and pain or the denial of its existence. These people become confused when they go through things. On the other side of the spectrum, people define faith as the grace and strength to endure hardship and pain, never expecting their faith to bring any change whatsoever to life's circumstances.

With love, we can say that we love each other all day, but until love has an opportunity to stick with someone and serve them when it is inconvenient, it is never truly love. A lifetime of deep love is the result of a series of opportunities over a long duration to put someone else before yourself. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the love extended.

If we only qualify faith by what we get in physical answers to it and put that as the highest measure of it exercised, then we have missed the genuineness of faith. The proof of faith can be in the results as we read stated in Hebrews 11:1, ”Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," but it is a mistake to limit faith to natural experiences or our timelines. Hebrews 12 would therefore not be a Hall of Faith but a Hall of Failure if we take that approach.

We see in Hebrews 12 two types of faith on display. Those who believed and saw what they believed for, and those who had faith and never saw in this earthly realm what they believed for. We read in the chapter that the eternal reward of faith is what they sought out.

My son called me once from Charis Bible College to tell me what a teacher had shared and how it had touched his heart. He said that he believed that when someone exercises faith, even though they may pass on to glory before they see it (or they pass away young and before they should), they get credit for that faith. It made so much sense to me and touched my heart when I heard those words.

How is that possible? Faith is not limited to time and space. It is eternal. And according to Hebrews 12, it is still accomplishing a work on this earth if exercised in the sincerity of someone's heart even if they are no longer present in this reality. Their faith still speaks today and has results long after they have left their existence on this earth.

What about those times we just fall short of exercising the faith that we have?  When we know the promise, but never see it when we knew, based upon the Scriptures and/or the prophetic, that we should?  That is where we can become paralyzed with guilt and condemnation, and we need to see beyond this natural world.

There are so many aspects to this pilgrimage we traverse while here on earth. God’s plans, our will, satan’s attacks, sin-filled world, lack of knowledge and understanding, and the list goes on. It is a complex web that does not always make sense. Faith reaches beyond the limitations of time and the natural world we live in. It reaches for the comforts of heaven and the love of the Father to heal and bring wholeness during pain and loss while persevering for better days, greater revelation, and more sustained miracles.

Faith is a decision to hold fast when things do not make sense. To embrace the One who is truth, when to the natural mind life seems vague, foggy, and without reason. Faith is not about churches, theologies, and head knowledge in a time of crisis. It is based upon something greater, and that is the person of Jesus Christ.

I get so tired of people’s theologies when I face life's challenges. Not that theology is not important, but is it God's truth or man's interpretation? It is amazing how often in a season of crisis, people climb into their lofty pulpits and preach as if they are full of fear themselves that what you might say or what you may be experiencing may rock their belief system. If it is true it will remain. Always remember, God is not afraid of mess. If anything, the mess can be an opportunity to bring about wholeness, change, and healing.

So what is faith when nothing seems secure? It is taking the time to draw near. It is not giving up. It is believing in the One who has the answers when the answers themselves allude you. It is the ability to remain and to just “be” with God when life makes no sense.

So before you do something radical or reactionary, stop and just "be." Learn what this means. It is easy to make life-altering decisions when chaos is within and without, but it takes courage to pause and ponder.

1. Pause. That is one of the greatest steps of faith you can sometimes take.

2. Reflect. Get understanding that comes through intimate times with God. Learn something new about yourself and your circumstances. Deal with stuff that has come to the surface before moving on.

3. Restore. Allow God to do the process of putting you back together. Let it be in His time and in His way. He is the God of restoration and restitution. Release the tendency to take matters into your own hands. Pain and loss can resurrect our felt need to control because the loss in and of itself is us losing control. Let go and let God as you never have before. This is our opportunity to go deeper with God than we would have if we had not gone through this loss.

A good friend once offered great wisdom. Never make major life decisions when in a pit. Sometimes you need to react to get out of that situation and change your situation, but most often, we go when we are supposed to stay and make radical decisions when we should wait. When we handed over the leadership of Life Church, both in Portlaoise and Carlow, everything was going amazing. That was the time to leave because it set the church and us up for greater success in the next steps, and thankfully, those people and the church are moving on strong in God.

So whatever you are going through right now, or whatever you will be going through connected to pain and loss in the future, see it as a stepping stone into something new. Do not let the pain be wasted. The only way that will happen is if you use that pain and loss to go deeper with God than you have ever been. You will never regret that!