Conflicts of Faith

I confess, I love the movie Signs. At the heart of this ground level alien invasion movie is the story of a man ( a minister, no less) at the heart of a conflict of faith. Years before, his wife dies in a horrific accident, and her last words to him are as nonsensical to the minister as her death is, so he stops having faith. Even when the aliens are coming, and the kids want to pray, he balks.

It's only when he realizes that his wife's last words were not nonsensical but prophetic for the personal battle he faces in his own home against the aliens that faith begins to bud.

Too often, we, and I mean I, fail to see the bigger picture. Once, Kenna was very sick with some nasty bug that cause much expellation of stomach contents. Having dealth with this type thing with Leslie years before, I knew how bad this could get. So I knelt to pray in front of Kenna in her bouncer and as I said 'Amen' she vomitted on me. It was hard to ahve faith then. (But it is terribly funny now, I must admit.)

I think we more often fight the conflict of faith than any other conflict, but we admit that we do it far less than any other conflict. We think to struggle with believing God is shameful, we must always trust and never falter. Yet, we forget that Jesus himself struggled the night before the Cross, asking the Father if there was any other way.

Now, we struggle to have faith when the job sucks, the kids are sick, the checks don't cover the bills, our team/candidate/ballot item lost, or when we can't seem to kick that bad habit or action. We wonder if God is holding out, or testing us, and we sooner or later stop asking God to do anything- yet wonder why He never seems to show up.

I don't expect any aliens to attack us anytime soon, thus inspiring a return to faith for the mass of people. So, instead, let's just start with asking God to reveal something small, heal a tiny hurt, or break us of one tiny habit. But let us ask AND believe, as it says in James 1, otherwise, we should never expect to recieve anything from God.