Do You Trust God? Prolly Not.

We had a celebrity of sorts as guest priest at church. Fr Joseph Honeycutt is "a priest of the Antiochian Archdiocese, is the Dean of the East Texas Deanery in the Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America and the Pastor of St Joseph Orthodox Church in Houston, Texas." He's a good friend of Fr Nicholas' and he visits All Saints fairly often. Sometimes he delivers the homily. Yesterday was one of those days. Fr Joseph's topic was trusting God, based on the text for yesterday, Matthew 9:1-8 but also drawing from the previous two Sundays' readings in Matthew, 8:5-13 and 8:28-34.

He opened with this question, "Do you trust God?"

Seeing as I was sitting in the choir section at church and pretty much kinda sorta had to be honest, I think my answer is, "Not all the time." And this in spite of all the random crap, self-inflicted and otherwise, that He has brought me through.

Ungrateful much? Yeah.

I think the hard part about that trusting God thing (aka "faith") is that we get all sorts of screwy messages from outside. Some folks like to say having faith in God means that He's going to wave a magic wand and give you health, wealth, and happiness all the days of your life. They say this in spite of all the Biblical evidence to the contrary, by the way, but they do say it. Then when life happens (and it does, unless you are dead) and that mountain you've been speaking to doesn't hurl itself in to the sea but rather falls on your head, they tell you your faith was "obviously not strong enough" or that you must have some "hidden sin" that prevented God from doing what your faith was supposed to make Him do.

Recipe for loss of faith right there by the way.

That isn't what faith is. It's not a way to force God to do anything because, just as He honors our free will, our faith proves that we honor His. Salvation is a symbiotic relationship. We work with Him. He doesn't work for us. Working with Him means realizing that His will is not only pre-eminent and omniscient, but benevolent towards those of us who have faith regardless of what it looks like.

A lot of the time His benevolent will looks like this:

Christ carrying His Cross

It's hard and it's painful and it leads to something that is awful.

How awful?

Pretty damn.

But on the other side of that pretty damn awful something is my salvation, which is worth so much more than any fleet of Jaguars, exclusive neighborhoods, and designer suits I could ever think about owning, wearing, or living in. What the heck is my trust in a Jaguar going to get me? Not a lot, but trust in God, true faith, brings salvation of my eternal soul.

Christ healing the paralytic
 http://www.icons.dumitrunicusor.com

I know for a fact though, that I am weak in this area. I mean really, truly smaller than a mustard seed with that issue here. That is when the Church steps up and becomes the Great Ark of Salvation, carrying me along on the prayers and faith of others until I can do it, too. This is what the Church is for: to remind us to trust God by providing that trust through the faith of others on our behalf. Christ sees the faith of those who carry me to Him when I am weak and heals me.

Christ healing the Centurion's servant
http://www.icons.dumitrunicusor.com

Then He sends me to do my part in the Ark. Finding out about and telling Him about those who are too weak to come to Him on their own, as the Roman Centurion did, as the friends of the paralytic did. It's not just because of that person's faith by itself or because of my own faith by itself, but because He sees the faith of the ARK, of the Church, and helps that person's weakness on all of our behalf. Faith is something you can see by the way. It's not some amorphous something that is indefinite. Faith is proven by what you DO. Faith without works is dead. It's totally in the Bible.

This is why Orthodox pray "through the prayers of the Theotokos" or "through the prayers of the Holy Fathers". Their prayers avail much. They are still in the Ark, still carrying us all along with them. They have achieved what we wish to achieve and they are part of this great journey to God. I do not have to find salvation by myself. That's silly. My path is my own but I am not walking it alone. The light shines on my way through the prayers of all those who are here with me and all those who have gone ahead.

So why do I lose my trust in God's benevolent will? Or not have any at all at times?

Honest and for true? Because I keep wanting my own way, and my own stuff, in my own time. And that is not faith in God. It is idolatry. Idols, however, are not alive. They can't do anything because, frankly, they aren't living and have no power to affect anything. That idol of myself as ruler of what amounts to a teeny tiny speck that is not even a dot on the grand scale of the universe is about as effectual as a sieve against the tide. Less so.

When I get into the Ark though, and join in the prayers of my fellow sailors, we can plow through the tide together with Christ at the helm.

Lord have mercy on me a sinner.

Relevant Reading
Orthodixie
Matthew 8:5-13
Matthew 8:28-34
Matthew 9:1-8