What Helps You Believe

W

Is what helps you believe.

Most likely it is not the same thing that will make someone else believe. Share your story, but don’t be discouraged if your listener doesn’t find it particularly compelling. It’s still your story; it’s still the genesis of your belief. Rejoice in the seemingly inconsequential or unconvincing thing that helps them believe.

If God truly is as vast and incomprehensible as any honest definition of “God” implies, then reasons to believe must necessarily be as numerous as there are people to believe. No one-size-fits-all. No clincher of an argument. No silver bullet.

Further, it is not likely the same thing that will keep you believing. Your story will add new chapters, the plot will get more complicated, there will be more crises and antagonists introduced, and it will not all get wrapped up with a fairytale bow. At least not yet. There will be, thank God, an ultimate happily-ever-after ending, but that is a slow kingdom coming. In the meantime life is a mixed bag of blessings and sufferings.

Or—more to my point—life is a mixed bag of reasons to keep on believing and reasons to give up believing altogether. What worked at first may not work now. And what you find that works now may not work ten years from now. If old reasons feel like shaky ground, it doesn’t mean that you’ve been heading in the wrong direction all along, it means that you have actually walked down your spiritual path. You have not stood still. The ground beneath your feet is different. Which was the whole point of a journey to begin with.

So today, ask yourself what helps you believe. Take in the view from wherever your wild, wandering journey has brought you, and enjoy the beauty. Give thanks for new reasons to believe just as much as you had given thanks for the old reasons.

Rodger Otero

I'm a husband-father-musician-pastor trying to make a decent contribution to the world. California is the Motherland, North Carolina has my heart, Georgia is Home. These are mostly my riffs on formation, leadership, and being fully human.

Follow Me