faith – Page 3 – goodchristianfiction

Can’t Think Yourself Out Of This Box

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

In my life group, we’ve been looking at how the discoveries in science, including the Big Bang Theory, actually support the Biblical account of how the world came to be. Still, scientists want to deny that the Bible could be in any way factual. In fact, some of them stretch their theories beyond the realm of good science just to disprove the possibility that the Bible is right.

But, any arguments about the validity of the Bible in connection with the understandings of the scientific mind miss the point entirely. Believing to the point of knowing is not a matter of mathematical equations or refined physics, but completely in the realm of faith. Faith is not something subject to the scientific method. It truly is beyond all understanding, and it is everything.

Paul explains this truth in his first letter to the Corinthians: “For the word of the cross,” he writes, “is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1:18). We are not going to know about the truth of Christ on the cross because we have scientific or archealogical proof. We have to take on faith the truth of our salvation through Christ’s sacrifice.

“For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God,” Paul continues, “God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe” (1 Corinthians 1:21–bold added). We will not know God through our own knowledge or wisdom, but through our belief in a message that will seem foolish to those who want to rely solely on wisdom, on the things they can see, hear or touch.

Faith doesn’t put us in a box, actually, but frees us to live life to the full, just as Christ wanted for us: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith allows us to reach out to others without fear of being ridiculed. If we are ridiculed in the name of Christ, what is that to those who believe? Faith allows us to love unconditionally as we are loved by God. Faith gives us the patience to seek the daily practice that brings us ever closer to God and the fruit of the Spirit, that is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).

While faith frees us, it also puts us in a box from which we cannot be shaken: “having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise” (Ephesians 1:13). Like the Nicole Nordemann song that asks, “What if you’re wrong, what if there’s more,” through faith we “jump, just close [our] eyes,” knowing that the “arms that catch [us], catch [us] by surprise” (What If?).

No matter how you process information best (through hearing, seeing, or doing), faith, the great equalizer, brings us all to the same conclusion: there is a God who loved us enough to die for us. What a wonderful gift to open each morning, knowing that our stumbles are forgiven and that we can begin again.

Christian Living

If Wishes Were…….Faith

Posted on December 29, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Our Christmas holiday has passed, and this weekend we are all scrambling to come up with the resolutions that will help us begin a New Year early next week. For what has past and for what is yet to come, I am sure there were as many wishes seemingly unfulfilled as there are lights and pretties on this period-decorated Christmas tree.

Are unfulfilled wishes God’s way of saying “no,” a sign that what we wished for wasn’t exactly in line with God’s truth or an indication of our own lack of faith? Surely there are as many answers to that question as there are people asking the question, but let’s address the latter possibility.

I love what we can learn from the people who bless the pages of scripture. Some of them, as Hebrews tells us, are heroes of the faith. Others are obvious villains. All of them, with the exception of Christ, are utterly human.

Peter is one of these oh-so-human heroes. He is chosen to be the cornerstone of Christ’s church, and yet he denies he even knows Christ three times on the night that the Messiah is taken into custody.

One of Peter’s earlier moments of heroism-made-relatable occurs when he reaches out in faith and yet still stumbles. Oh, the lessons we can learn from patterns such as this.

The setting is Matthew 14. Jesus has just fed the five thousand and sent His disciples out on their boat while He stays behind for some quiet time with God. When He is ready to re-join the others, He begins walking on the water.

Of all the disciples, stuck on a boat in the middle of a sea, Peter alone cries out a challenge of faith that he doesn’t even realize he is not yet ready to fulfill. He asks of Jesus, if He be the Christ, then let Peter walk out on the water to join Him. Even though Christ already knows what is going to happen, He tells Peter to come and join Him.

Peter takes a few proving steps, but then the wind picks up and carries away the bit of belief that is keeping him above the waves. He begins to sink and cries out. Jesus IMMEDIATELY reaches out and lifts Peter up, asking His disciple, “Why do you doubt?”

When I read this interlude, a story I’ve read many times before, for yet another time this week, I was struck by two things. One, that even Peter, who had the initial courage to take Christ at His word and risk himself to walk on water based on that belief could not yet sustain his own faith in order to stay above water. Walking by faith obviously takes practice.

The second thing that stands out for me is that Christ IMMEDIATELY reached out to lift Peter up, even as He pointed out to Peter exactly what was causing him to stumble, “Why do you doubt?” Even though I have evidence in my life over and over of situations and difficult times that God has seen me through, why do I still doubt? At the same time, shouldn’t I be able to take even more water-walking steps of faith when I remember that Christ is there to IMMEDIATELY catch me?

I pray that my New Year’s resolutions be prayers based on faith and that they are in line with God’s will. May your resolutions be equally blessed, even water-walking challenges. May 2013 be the year where faith helps us love God first and everyone else with the love we hold for our innermost selves.

Christian Living, Christianity, Faith, Self-Help

Legacy: Let’s Get Practical

Posted on November 11, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

If you are going to sow seeds for the kingdom, you have to embrace not just the ideals of a life in Christ but also the practical, day-to-day actions you should and should not take if you are truly walking the narrow path to the kingdom of Heaven.

The best place to go to find practical ways to apply God’s truth in your life is the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus explains the Kingdom’s precepts and practices.

The practical matters of legacy are not exactly easy, which is why it is so important that we have the support of the Spirit in us to help us live in the light. For, Christ not only upholds the basic truths of the Old Testament law, He ups the ante on each of those truths.

Do not murder, He tells us, but also to hate is to do as much damage to one’s soul as to murder. Do not commit adultery, but to even lust after another is to commit adultery. Do not quarrel, but even seek forgiveness up to the point of turning your left cheek when your right cheek has been struck.

As I heard a preacher put it once, God sent His son to sacrifice Himself for us. Do we actually think He would expect less of us after that kind of giving?

Make no mistake. We don’t earn our salvation through our actions. Only by grace can we accept the belief in Christ’s resurrection that saves us. But once we accept that grace, our faith should compel us to want to grow in Christ.

Anyone who plays a musical instrument or a sport knows that there is no way to improve without consistent, disciplined practice over time. Even the most proficient musician still warms up with scales, the basic building blocks of music. And that proficient musician practices his/her art each and every day for several hours at a time.

Christianity has its basic building blocks as well, disciplines that those of us who limit our Christianity to church on Sunday quite frankly miss out on. Even people who approach their religion as a way of life need the daily, routine practice of the Christian “scales” in order to continue to grow in Christ.

What does this routine practice include? Again, look to the Sermon on the Mount. Do you pray every day, and not just the same prayer mumbled quickly before you go to sleep, but with your whole self, throwing your whole body into it? Have you ever fasted? Do you regularly reach out to those who do not believe? Do you have spiritual elders to whom you regularly report about your growth in Christ?

I am an academic. If I had chosen to stay in the college setting as an instructor, I could have easily fallen into the “ivory tower” trap of staying inside my head all the time, living in the world of ideas instead of the world of practical application. That’s a fancy way of saying that it is very easy for me to get caught up in my head instead of listening to what my body is telling me. Some days, it’s as if the two entities have never met.

In the past several years, I have been doing an exercise program that involves yoga, but not the kind of yoga that you are possibly thinking about. It isn’t a classroom filled with hot babes in skimpy clothes. It isn’t a torture chamber of hot temperatures. It certainly isn’t a metaphysical den of crystals and gongs.

Luckily for me, my yoga center is focused on the principles that help us understand how our minds and bodies work together to feel the energy that is all around us, the energy that makes up the planet, the energy we Christians know as the Holy Spirit.

Before yoga, I had prayed with my mind and my heart, but I had never prayed all the way to my fingertips. What I have also learned from yoga is that real change of any kind in our lives requires a commitment of our whole selves. With the guidance of a spiritual leader, such as the pastor at your church, you can learn the daily practices, actual things you need to do every day, that will help you meet your spiritual goals.

How many of us even have real, spiritual goals that we have committed to paper, much less to our hearts, when it comes to our service to God and our growth in the Spirit? Practical faith means practice.

As we have discovered over the past several weeks, legacy is not just a dreamy concept about what is left of us when we are no longer part of this planet. Legacy is about our partnership with God and making good on our faith in ways in which only He understands the potential impact.

Start putting the practice into practical this week. Maybe make part of your daily Bible study a re-read of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). And set down a list of daily actions you plan to begin for the next 21 days to reach a goal you have in Christ. Pray about it, share with fellow believers, and have faith that the Spirit will guide you where Christ would have you go. But go somewhere. No one leaves a legacy by merely standing still.

Christian Living, Christianity

Legacy: What does GOD want?

Posted on October 21, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Last week, I proposed that when someone brings up the concept of one’s legacy, what first comes to mind usually involves one’s progeny and worldly achievements.

This week, I want to consider the more important aspect of legacy, and that is from the perspective of how God defines the word.

It strikes me that perhaps the best way to approach God’s version of legacy is through the example that He offered when He came to earth to walk among us in the form of His son, Jesus Christ. Christ, after all, lived as a man in the world of men. If He had not been God made flesh, after all, the entire concept of salvation is turned on its head.

But Christ did live in human form, and in all ways possible we are admonished to follow the examples in living He gave us while He was on this planet.

So, from the perspecitve of Christ as man, what kind of legacy did He seem to be worried about?

The only record we have of anything Jesus did or said is through words He Himself did not write. (Those words, the Bible, being God-inspired, I take as a given and beside the point at the moment.) In fact, the only time Christ physically wrote anything of which we know anything about were tracings in the sand which sifted quickly away.

With a few notable exceptions, Christ healed and then usually admonished the receiver of His bounty not to tell anyone about it. Rather than grabbing the limelight, He taught disciples and sent them away from Him to go forth and duplicate the work they had been doing together, a sort of trial run for when He would have to leave them.

Even though when He came to the planet, He accepted the limitations and temptations of the human body, Christ didn’t define legacy from a typically human perspective. His priorities for legacy did not involve money or worldly success. Instead, His priorities revolved around love of God and the relationships that are essential between people when we love God first and others the way we want to be loved–the two commandments Christ explained entail all the rest.

Next week, I want to begin the biblical quest that offers proof of God’s definition of legacy, not in my own words but in the inspired words that are His alone. For now, I hope it is enough to know that legacy and love go hand-in-hand from Christ’s perspective.

In the end, is a life lived loving others such a bad thing? Last week, I quoted from Nicole Nordemann’s song, “Legacy.” Another line from that song is perfect for defining the kind of legacy a Christian should really concern him/herself with:

“In the end, just want to hear, ‘Well, done, good and faithful one. . . .'”

Christian Living, Faith

Stuck in the Mire?

Posted on May 24, 2012May 24, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Have you ever had just a blah kind of day, where your mind and body both felt just out of whack or irritated, and you just couldn’t put your finger on the exact cause?

Have you ever considered that the exact cause might just be your own unconfessed sin before God? Sometimes, we get in such an easy habit of beginning or ending our prayers with a blanket “forgive us our sins,” that we forget the awesome power that can be gained from picking apart our sins before God. He knows what they are already, of course. But do we?

I started thinking about how not getting specific with God gets me stuck in the mire as I have been reading the Psalms. In these wonderful poetic prayers, the various authors pour out their sentiments to God in imagery, metaphor, and splendid detail. The more I read these prayers, the more I am struck by how helpful it is to be specific when you are talking to God.

In a world where there is often 26 hours of things to do in each 24 hour day, we often let getting specific fall between the cracks of all the materialistic things we have convinced ourselves need to be done for our existence not to fall apart. But God has all the time in the world to listen to us, no matter how long we speak. So should we.

In Psalm 32, David gives an apt description of what it feels like to be trapped in our sins: “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your [God’s] hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’–and you forgave the guilt of my sin” (3-5).

David, who lived in a time without the guarantee of Jesus as intecessor, had many reasons to hide his sin from God, even though God already knew the sin. Essentially, by not confessing to God, David was only denying the truth to himself, and this denial effectively shut him off from God! How much simpler it should be for those of us who have the Great Intecessor to go freely to God to admit to ourselves the sins we have committed against Him. After all, we have all assurance through the grace of Christ that God will forgive us, whereas David did not.

Are your bones wasting away? It shouldn’t be that way for those who believe. “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered,” David begins the psalm (32:1). “Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit” (32:2). The person David is describing is every Christian. We all have the right through grace to claim this state of being.

But we have to be honest with ourselves. There is no lying to God, of course, though we say those lies anyway, the things we want to believe about ourselves even though the tiny voice at the back of our mind is telling us we are wrong. Oh, to be the spirit with no deceit before the Father!

What we lose when we don’t confess our specific sins is the chance to grab what David prized most in his relationship with God, and that is the ability to feel the full joy of God, to grasp God’s righteousness, and to praise Him in full understanding of the depth and breadth of God’s goodness. David finishes Psalms 32 with just such a declaration: “Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart!” (11).

There is no way to get there without first stripping ourselves bare before the One who already knows. By acknowledging to Him where we have fallen, we effectively admit it to ourselves, casting off the heavy hand upon us and freeing ourselves to truly rejoice!

Christian Living, Christianity, Faith

Do You Live Like You Believe It?

Posted on May 20, 2012May 20, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

This little pool of water may not seem like much, but at different points in time, it has actually served as the site where some were baptized into the family of Jesus. We all remember the moment when we ourselves were baptized and those fledgling years of our Christianity when everything was just a little brighter, when our zest for God fairly glowed.

But life has a way of catching up to us. If the race we are running were an easy one, it would really not be worth the effort of putting one foot in front of another. The glow of our early years of Christian faith can begin to tarnish with the cares of this world. We start to hold on to what is right in front of us instead of offering up the cares of this world to the Ruler of the next one. We let worry creep in, no matter what Christ told us about worrying, no matter that the Creator of everything knows the number of hairs on our very heads. We cling to treasures on this earth under the auspices of security, like the rich young man unable to sell all and follow the Son of Man.

Many years ago, my father-in-law asked a series of questions to a younger person he was counseling. This person was facing several family crises, depression, and budget woes. Knowing that she believed in Christ, my father-in-law began by asking her about her belief. When she strongly proclaimed her faith in God, my father-in-law asked her to consider if she were living like she believed Christ died for her and rose again.

How about you? How about me? What does it mean to live like I believe it? In the past several years, it has come to mean my spending more time doing and less time wringing my hands wondering if where I am and what I am up to is what God wants from me. I don’t mean that I have quit praying to God about His purpose for my life, or that I have quit aligning my actions to the principles of the Bible as best as I can. What I have started to do is to give my actions over into God’s hands, where they have really been all along. Now, however, my mind is recognizing God’s authority. If He wants me somewhere else or doing something else, I have to live like I believe and step forward in the faith that He will get me where He wants me to be.

This process is not easy, like all growing pains, but through the gift of the Spirit that God has granted us believers, we can make it through life’s challenges aided by the One and Only, proof positive that “His burden is light.” Living like we believe involves prayer time, worship time, helping others, and doing instead of worrying. The more I can live like I believe, the more God’s light will shine through me. And what more could any of us want than that?

Christian Living, Christianity, Faith, Living

What Does God Need From You?

Posted on May 6, 2012May 6, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Let’s face it. When it comes to our relationship with God, from His perspective it has to often seem like a one-way street, where we are constantly seen with our hands out, often calling to Him in times of great need when He may not have heard from us for so long, He doesn’t quite recognize us at first.

Of course, God always recognizes us, knows what we’re up to, and HAS A PLAN for whatever is happening in our lives, no matter how helpless we currently feel or how bleak our present outlook. In Bible class today, we discussed some of the really crisis moments different members had faced, moments so terrifying that they were forced to look to God in a complete realization of just how helpless we human beings are. In those moments, these people truly experience the all-encompassing power that is God.

More importantly, they learned a key lesson that they have taken away from their experiences: God is not through with them yet! He has plans for them in this world that they are yet to achieve. He has journeys for them for which that crisis may have been the first step or for which they have not yet taken a step at all.

As I listened to these shared stories, I was struck by the realization that God has a plan for us even when the crises in our lives are entirely of our own making. What if your crisis is spending more money than you can afford to pay or choosing to go out with someone you know your parents wouldn’t approve of, much less God? Now, because of those decisions, you live in fear of phone calls from debt collectors or have wound up married to a non-believer who may be abusive to you.

God has a plan for that. This fact does not mean that He wanted the bad things to happen to us. We live in a fallen world. Bad things are going to happen. But God has a plan for your life that includes bringing to the good something for you, for your family, or for others in this broken world from the ashes that are the destruction crisis may have punched into your life.

Does this mean that we might as well sin, or even live a sinful lifestyle and just expect God to make something good out of it? Of course not! Whenever Jesus reached out loving arms to sinners, He always loved the sinner but hated the sin. He never let them part from Him without warning them or entreating them to turn from the ways they knew were wrong.

The Bible offers us example after example of people who looked to God for their deliverance but who also kept doing what was in their power to do to move that deliverance along. The woman at the well knew that her current live-in was not her husband in God’s eyes and that she would have to end that relationship. The disciples fished. Paul made tents to earn his living as he spread the gospel. Instead of being greedy and holding out hands that have not tried to help themselves, these believers did what they could and looked to God to fill in all the gaps only He is able to fill.

I find this truth that God is working His plan for me even when it doesn’t feel like it a key to throwing away a lot of the anxieties I have put on myself when it comes to what I think He wants from me. First of all, whatever happens in my life is going to happen on God’s time, not mine. Secondly, I have made decisions in my life about what jobs to take, whom to marry, what kind of schooling to get, and I am not the only one living with those decisions. God is too. He knew what I was going to decide before I decided it, and He also knew how He was going to use those decisions in my life to do something good for Him, if I will only keep tuned in to His frequency.

So, what am I worrying about all the time? The little things, material things, things that have more to do with my pride in skills God gave me in the first place that I shouldn’t be taking pride in but giving to the glory of God. If I must put thought to something (and the thoughts shouldn’t be worrisome; Jesus told us not to worry), shouldn’t it be how I can love God more in my life, how I can reach out to other people in love, how I can line up my actions with the instructions so clearly laid out in God’s word?

What does God need from me? My faith in His truth, my devotion to His word, my love for Him and the other humans around me holding our hands out, crying out rightfully to the sky but sometimes forgetting the good those hands can do grounded back on earth in fellowship and as God’s helping hands for others around us.

What will God “work to the good” (Romans 8) for you this week? Can He get some of what He needs instead of being the One giving?

Christianity, Writing

Pursuing Gentleness

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Paul admonishes Timothy to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. I am no Timothy, but if I am trying to use my writing to share Christianity, then surely I should also take these pursuits to heart. It goes without saying that righteousness and godliness are challenges every day. However, I think one of my biggest challenges from this list is actually gentleness.
Why would I say that gentleness is the hardest pursuit? I believe it is because gentleness is the one admonition that truly requires us to remove all judgment, see things from others’ perspectives, and gain our best hope of leading someone out of the darkness and into the light.
In other of his writings, Paul admonishes to lead other’s gently, especially those who have turned away from God in the things that they do. He also warns to be careful not to fall into the same trap of evil as the one you are trying to turn back to God. Sin is so tempting because it is the easy way. Trying to make the right choices is much more challenging, which is why we must have Jesus in our lives in order to have a chance of doing what is right. The easiness of sin is also why being gentle when we are trying to instruct in ways that are opposed to sin is so important.
Of course, Paul makes it clear in other texts that there are times, once gentleness has been tried unsuccessfully, when a person must be handed over to the devil in the hopes of shocking that person into coming back to the light.
But this kind of heavy hand is not the purview of a writer of fiction. No, I should reflect a gentleness that expresses the faith, love, endurance, righteousness, and godliness of a strong walk with Christ.
Thankfully, my writing is something I can edit, ponder, and “perfect,” not like my conversation, which is often quick to judgment and often not gentle. So, like all readers of Timothy, I must strive every day to be gentle, not just when I am trying to write something. And that may just take the most endurance of all.