{"id":1313,"date":"2022-01-14T11:10:01","date_gmt":"2022-01-14T16:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1313"},"modified":"2022-01-14T11:10:01","modified_gmt":"2022-01-14T16:10:01","slug":"follow-the-clues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/01\/14\/follow-the-clues\/","title":{"rendered":"Follow the Clues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A few years ago, as the workplace pastor for a faith-friendly healthcare organization, I visited one of the office work teams.

I was holding something in my left hand, which was tightly closed. 

\u201cSo what do you think I\u2019m holding right now?  Anybody want to take a guess?\u201d  There were lots of guesses.  A coin.  A marble.  An acorn.  I asked if any of those who had made a guess were willing to bet their next housing payment that they had guessed right.  Nobody put up their hand. 

I explained that faith is commonly assumed to be little more than a wild guess about the nature of reality.  Sigmund Freud popularized the idea that faith is what helps fragile, fearful people get through hard times.  Perhaps we had a strained relationship with our earthly father.  Or we miss him terribly.  So we\u2019ll just imagine a Father in heaven who will never leave us or disappoint us, and we\u2019ll feel better about things.  Such wishful thinking, said Freud, is just a shot in the dark.

I asked the team, \u201cWhat if I told you that I have a regulation-size basketball in my left hand?\u201d   

That, of course, was impossible.  Archie Bunker famously defined faith as \u201cbelieving what you know can\u2019t possibly be true except that it\u2019s in the Bible.\u201d  Faith, in other words, is rubbish \u2013 believing implausible stories that defy the laws of physics that concern people who have been dead for two millennia. 

I then asked, \u201cWhat if I told you that I\u2019m holding a plastic Chicken McNugget from a McDonald\u2019s Happy Meal?  Would any of you bet your next housing payment on that<\/em>?\u201d  There were a few smiles, but no takers. 

I changed my strategy.  \u201cOK, no more guesses, and no more playing around.  Here\u2019s the story: I really am holding a plastic Chicken McNugget from a McDonald\u2019s Happy Meal.  It fits snugly in my left hand.  I\u2019m the workplace pastor and most of you trust me.  Who has faith that I\u2019m telling the truth?\u201d 

A few people tentatively raised their hands.  I suppose the fact that I had told a few tall tales in the past caused everyone else to hesitate. 

I explained that believing in what I was holding in my left hand was now no longer sheer guesswork.  It wasn\u2019t a leap in the dark.  Nor was it implausible.  It really came down to whether they trusted me.  Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is \u201cconfidence in what we hope for, and assurance concerning what we do not see.\u201d  Faith always involves some degree of not-seeing.  It\u2019s a decision we have to make without having all the information we\u2019d like.

The question then becomes: Is our trust well-placed?

I then said rather dramatically, \u201cWatch me destroy your faith.\u201d  I opened my hand.  I was holding a plastic Chicken McNugget from a McDonald\u2019s Happy Meal.  \u201cNow you don\u2019t need faith anymore.  The identity of what I\u2019m holding has become knowledge.  Now you can see<\/em>.\u201d

The great drama of the Jesus-following life is that we must surrender ourselves to a God we cannot see.  

So what does God ask of us?

God asks us to trust him, even without all the information we wish we had.  Faith is the will to believe \u2013 the decision<\/em> to follow the best light available.  We cannot see everything we want to see \u2013 certainly not when we\u2019re being pounded by waves of suffering, loss, and uncertainty. 

But God always provides clues.  Our call is to follow those clues and not give up.   

God leaves room for us to take steps of faith in the direction the clues are pointing.  As we do so, our trust grows.  And we gradually learn that our trust is well-placed. 

You can do a hundred Bible studies on Jesus\u2019 assurance that \u201cit is more blessed to give than to receive.\u201d  But how will you ever find out if that\u2019s true?  You\u2019ll have to give it a shot.  Choose to be generous.  Find out for yourself.<\/em>

The key component is found in Hebrews 11:6: \u201cAnd without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.\u201d

God does reveal himself.  He reveals himself to those who want<\/em> to find out if he\u2019s really there, and what kind of God he really is.   

As the late philosopher Dallas Willard observed, \u201cThe issue is, what do we want?  The Bible says that if you seek God with all your heart, then you will surely find him.  Surely<\/em> find him.  It\u2019s the person who wants to know God that God reveals himself to.  And if a person doesn\u2019t want to know God \u2013 well, God has created the world and the human mind in such a way that he doesn\u2019t have to\u2026 God ordained that people should be governed in the end by what they want.\u201d <\/em>

What do you want \u2013 evidence that God is who he says he is?  Or are you holding out for reassurance that God probably isn’t there and will never bother you again?

If you want God, you can find him.

Just follow the clues. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years ago, as the workplace pastor for a faith-friendly healthcare organization, I visited one of the office work teams. I was holding something in my left hand, which was tightly closed.  \u201cSo what do you think I\u2019m holding right now?  Anybody want to take a guess?\u201d  There were lots of guesses.  A coin.  A marble.  An acorn.  I… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1314,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[309,127,141],"class_list":["post-1313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-apologetics","tag-faith","tag-trust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1315,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313\/revisions\/1315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}