Imperfect faith
Faith is a multitude of thoughts, feelings, and actions. In my journey of strengthening my relationship with God, one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is redefining what faith looks like and what it truly means to me.
I used to think of faith as an unwavering, unquestionable belief that everything would be okay. I believed that any challenge to that certainty meant I lacked faith. If I had doubts or fears, I saw them as spiritual weaknesses. If I asked questions, I worried it meant I didn’t trust God enough or I was questioning him. This led to a cycle of self-condemnation or denial. Either punishing myself for feeling human emotions, or pretending those feelings didn’t exist so I could appear “faithful.”
This was till I started to learn about who God is rather than solely focusing on the principles that form our relationship with him.
When you’re growing in your relationship with God, there is often this heavy emphasis on aligning yourself with the godly principles above all else, making sure you’re faithful, obedient, righteous, honest. All of those things matter, but what’s even more important is understanding who God is, because it’s through knowing Him that those principles come to life in a meaningful, sustainable way.
This is what I have learned so far.
Faith doesn’t require you to always be of the mind that everything is going to work out. Faith doesn’t always look like confidence. Sometimes faith looks like coming to God and telling him that you don’t see how things are going to work out, you’re struggling to believe, you’re struggling to see past your circumstances. Sometimes faith looks like sitting in confusion and fear and still choosing to bring that to God. Faith is believing that God will provide empathy, comfort and peace of mind in those times.
Faith although blind, is not free of emotion. The emotions that come with disappointment, failure, mistakes are not to be pushed aside and covered up with faith. Faith to me is knowing and believing that I can come to God as imperfect as I am and he will love me endlessly. I don’t need to cover up my humanity with faith, I need my faith to show up exactly as I am.
God is after your heart. God isn’t after a version of you that looks or sounds appealing, that says all the right things, what good is saying the right thing when within you’re feeling unsettled. He wants the truth of who you are, even when it’s messy.
Gods purpose is to love not as a reward but as a gift.
Learning this has taught me so much about how I also want to show up for others in the world and the kind of love my heart seeks and the relationships I want to build. I’ve always been cautious about exposing my flaws and letting someone see me perfectly clear, while I do have relationships in my life who have welcomed my flaws I’ve also experienced the other side of that. I’ve experienced relationships where my flaws and short comings were met with hardness and withdrawal while I’m okay with this it would be disingenuous of me to say that it hasn’t made me more reserved in what and how much I share.
The world we live in today demands perfection, it demands saying the right thing with the most perfect words, it demands flawless responses and presentations as a result I understand why we, myself included often feel the pressure to walk through this world with the perfect persona.
However the same way I know that I can’t build a relationship with God on pretences or personas, the same applies to people. The relationships I know I want to build are built on grace, ease, kindness, acceptance and love without conditions so as much as I would want those around me to show up as exactly who they are, I must also be courageous and show up as exactly who I am whether that person has the capacity to provide the space and love is their choice but for me showing up as myself is the greatest love I could ever give to myself.
I hope you trust God with your imperfections, doubts and worries. I hope you meet people who show you that you’re flaws, mistakes, hurt and past don’t make you any less lovable or worthy and if ever in doubt God loves you unconditionally and undeniably. Your faith doesn’t have to be perfect, and neither do you.
With all my love.