Part of my talk
Part of my talk
My faith assures me that every event in my life has meaning and brings gifts?
What hell was I thinking when I created that title topic? I suspect it made perfect sense when I came up with the idea. But it made absolutely no sense on Tuesday night when I said to myself, “Neil, you need to think about your talk on Sunday which is when I reviewed the submission, I sent to SLT.”
So, if you read my talk description, you noticed that I have already looked up a definition of FAITH in the dictionary.
For me Faith is an interesting word. Most people understand faith as a
noun
complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
e.g. “this restores one’s faith in politicians”
a strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.
“bereaved people who have shown supreme faith”
I read the above definitions and two words jump out at me to muddle the water for me!
Trust and Belief
So is Faith a concept on its own? Or is it just a fancy word for Trust and Belief or is it deeper?
So that triggered me to ponder the potential interaction between, Faith, Belief and Trust.
The difference between trust and belief can be explained by an illustration.
There was a tight rope walker Charles Blondin (1800’s) who could perform death defying feats without support or life saving equipment. Crowds gathered to watch his feats. He would walk across Niagara Falls over the tight rope. In an event, He performed the daring stunt and took a wheelbarrow over the tight rope. He asked the audience ‘ Do you believe that I can take the wheelbarrow over the tight rope’. Everyone in the audience believed and cheered him. He said, ‘In case you believe I can do it, who will sit on the wheelbarrow’. There were no volunteers.
Here we see that everyone had a firm belief that he could carry the wheelbarrow successfully over the tight rope. But no one wanted to volunteer to sit in the wheelbarrow and trust him with their life. Here you see the difference between belief and trust. You have a belief that Blondin will do it successfully, but you don’t want to trust him with your life.
Which gets me to think, am I operating at the default level of belief, trust or faith. At a little level my ego wants me to figure this out, so I know how evolved I am compared to you J because face it whether we like it or not, we are judgement machines. I am no different than you
We are always operating on two basic human principles, am I safe or am I not safe. Every room, or situation we find our selves in. We are assessing for those two conditions.
Ego has me feeling safe, if I am in a group where I am a head of another or am at the same level as the group. Fear kicks in if we are not the same.
Good thing this talk is on Faith and not pride….. Or I would be is such big trouble…
When I was researching my title talk 4 or 5 weeks ago, this quote jumped out to me.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” — Proverbs 3:5-6
When I look at the first sentence on its own, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” I go heck, I can and do that in my life!
The second sentence, makes my French ancestry wanna jump out and shout out, “insert bad words” followed up with the word emphatically with the word “Tabernac.”
Because if we all, and I mean all of us look at the second sentence. I suspect we all go hmmm.
“In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”
I mean, (You know I want to insert a bad word here) if I look back at my life, it didn’t always go in a straight line. So, does that mean I am not living my life at the default level of FAITH.
Sigh, the short answer, is yes! I am having the human experience of living my life at faith! Times I am doing great and times, there is room for vast improvement!
I could beat myself up for living this way. But I won’t, because of the Pollyanna life I endeavour to live. Has me thinking, if this is the way I am living my life, what are the gifts I have received along the way?
Now, I must laugh…. Because NOW I find myself inadvertently looking the title of todays talk square in the face
My faith assures me that every event in my life has meaning and brings gifts?
Let’s face it, true faith for all of us here or online is a work in progress! One of the reasons we attend Unity is to build up our FAITH muscles… because faith like anything, needs to be worked. Yet, in the case of FAITH, the work really comes in the form of surrender!
So really, we are practicing the art of surrender! Which takes a lot of trust!
