What is “Reflecting Faith”?

Reflecting Faith

https://reflectingfaith.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/reflecting-faith.m4a

I am sitting here in the airport, in New York, thinking about what my first post would be. There are a million things that come to mind but none that hold the test of time after a few seconds of contemplating them. I then started to think about what I want this blog to represent, where I want it to go, and how this blog will represent my own personal faith journey. This lead me to comb over what the title of my blog “Reflecting Faith” actually means and why I chose it as my representation. In reviewing this, I decided to make my first post answering the very question I posted as the title of the blog post. What is “reflecting faith”?

To start off, I want to first point out that I am simply writing from my experiences through faith, my interpretation from Scripture, my council I have received, and most importantly what I believe God reveals to me in my heart. I am not a master theologian, an all knowing pastor, or in any way take on the belief that everything I say is undoubtedly the truest message from the Scripture and Jesus. I simply am writing from what I know and have learned. I fully hope that as this blog goes on, that my ideas actually change. This is my request because it shows that my faith is not stagnant, but instead growing and maturing. One final statement before we start this topic, I am not an English major or literary professor so I do apologize if my punctuation, sentence and word phrasing, spelling, etc. are not always correct. I am using what I have and know (lol).

So what is reflecting faith? What does it mean? Why is it important? In the simplest explanation, reflecting faith is the act of growing one’s faith by reflecting on the beliefs one has, the experiences and wisdom one has lived and learned, and the path one sees his/her life going or hoping to go. That is it in a nutshell. That statement right there is what I hope this entire blog can do for whoever reads this but, most importantly, do for myself.

What does it mean? I believe that, to grow in anything, one must constantly reflect on his/her past, present, and future. In this reflection, one is able to gain a clear vision on the life that has been lived, the current situations, and the hopeful future situations one can experience and use those reflections to grow in whatever way he/she is trying to grow. This is exactly what I do and mean when I talk about reflecting faith. I think, one of the best ways to grow your faith is to reflect on it. Here are some questions you can think over to help you do this…

• What state is your current faith in?
• Why do you have the faith you do?
• What do you want your faith to provide for you?
• Where can your faith grow?
• How do you think you can grow your faith?
• How do you think you can use your faith to help others?
• What ways in the past has your faith helped you?
• What role do you want your faith to play in your future?
• What experiences have influenced or hindered your faith?

There are obviously millions of questions you can use, but those are some to help you get started and ones that I use very often. The important thing to remember is that your faith is personal to you as mine is to me. With that being said, my suggestions are simply suggestions not solutions. Keep that in mind when going through these and tailor the questions to fit you. If you currently don’t have a faith, the first question I would pour over is “why don’t I?” Spend as much time as you can thinking this question over, even if it takes years.

Why is it important? Faith is not meant to be stagnant at any point in time. God does not reveal all to us as He and only He is all knowing. What this means is there should never be a time in your life where you are completely satisfied and done working on your faith, done asking questions, or done finding answers. I fear the day that I run out of questions to ask about my faith because that is the sole mark that my faith has become stagnant, or that I feel I have learned it all, or that I am the one person to have walked the Earth, since Jesus, that has all the answers (which will never be true). Finally, it would reveal to me that my faith was false because, like I stated before, God does not reveal all to us as He and only He is all knowing. “Can anyone teach knowledge to God, since he judges even the highest?” Job 21:22 NIV. “Great is our Lord and mighty in power, his understanding has no limit.” Psalm 147:5 NIV.

Many people have experiences where it’s frowned upon to ask questions about faith, to have doubts, or to believe anything different than others’ beliefs. I believe asking questions, having doubts, and not simply adopting beliefs others have is the very best way to grow your faith. I am a deep believer in Jesus, however, I would be lying if I didn’t say that not a week goes by where I don’t question everything. To me, this is how you grow. This is reflecting faith at its finest. This shows me how deep of a believer I am because I am not satisfied with “someone said so blah blah blah”. I believe it is so important to find things you question, to surface your doubts, and then to search for deeper answers. In doing this regularly, you are reflecting your faith and ultimately growing it. This is the process of removing the false beliefs or misconceptions and replacing them with true things from God and of Jesus.

I met a guy at Passion Conference 2017 that dropped some great wisdom my way. It helped that he looked exactly like Levi Lusko (lol) but that is beside the point. He said to me, “when we have doubts, that is God’s way of showing us that we need to seek Him and grow in Him more by searching deeper for answers”. I always loved that, whether it is true or not, simply because it takes away the “unacceptable” feeling of having faith doubts and gives breathing room to investigate one’s faith deeper. Never be ashamed of your doubts or worry that your faith isn’t real. The fact that you have doubts, shows how serious you take your faith.

A final meaning of reflecting faith is using the word in a different sense. Reflecting on one’s faith is very important, but being a reflection of who you have faith in is just as important. When we become a reflection of the love and grace that Jesus provides for us, people get to experience God and that experience could be in a way they might have never experienced Him before. “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.” 1 John 4:7 NIV. Showing love is showing someone God in the most non-invasive way. Also, being a reflection of who we have faith in is the best way to spread Jesus’s final request before he ascended into Heaven. “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” Matthew 28:8 NIV. When we become reflections of who we have faith in, people get to see the glory that God offers and are able to consider becoming disciples of Him.

All of what I have stated in the blog post does not come from me and my thoughts. My belief and hope for these blog posts is that there be biblical principles tied to all of the topics and statements that I write about. At the end of the posts, I will lay out some Scripture that will explain where my thoughts arose from. These verses will also be given as verses one can pray over and reflect on in his/her faith journey.

Behind the Writing:

This post came from a few verses in Psalm 139. When reading and praying over these verses, I came to the realization of how much God wants me to reflect on myself. He reveals in these verses that he already knows me and all my ways, before I speak, he knows what I will say, and this knowledge is too wonderful for me. This made me think of how much I need to seek Him in my faith journey for Him to reveal things about me that He has always known that I need to know about myself. At the end of the Psalm, the psalmist reveals how he wants God to search him, know him, and lead him. This was and is the premise of reflecting faith.

“You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.” Psalm 139:1-6 NIV

“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way of everlasting.” Psalm 139:23-24 NIV

-Philip