It’s been a hard year.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that sentence from people around me and even out of my own mouth.
So many have experienced loss these last 12 months. Loss of jobs and security. Loss of relationships and a sense of belonging. Loss of what is normal and a feeling of unity with friends and surroundings. Loss of plans that were made and loss of hopes that were dreamed for this year.
There has been loss of security in where the next meal is coming from and if tonight will be spent with a roof overhead or under the open skies.
Some even experienced one of the hardest of all losses; the loss of people they loved and weren’t ready to say goodbye too.
Loss seems to be synonymous with 2020.
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you have felt loss this year.
If you have, I am writing to you.
Because I have felt it too.
I’m going to spend some time delicately exploring this topic with you but I won’t do it all today in this post. There is simply too much to cover in one post and keep it short and digestible.
So let me start the conversation with the topic of faith and we’ll explore more branches from this topic in the days to come.
*Note: I write from a perspective of faith in God through Christ and I know for some you may not believe as I do. Especially when I’m discussing a topic as broad as the loss people have experienced from 2020. It’s touched everyone; Christians and Non-Christians. Loss still feels like loss to both. God’s heart is with both. My hope is you don’t let my discussion centered around faith deter you from meditating on this with me. Now that’s out of the way…
Finding Faith When What You Feel Is Loss
You don’t have to explain it away. You don’t have to put on an imaginary mask in an attempt to display strong faith. It’s ok to not be ok with your loss and still have faith.
I was praying through some stuff a few nights ago, stuff that dealt with loss, and I remember distinctly telling God, “Even today I will put my trust in you Father.”
He immediately responded to me, “You have found your faith.”
Now I argued a little, which I’m finding I do more than I’d like to admit, saying to Him, “But that faith feels very weak…”
And it did feel weak.
It sounds “Godly” to say, “Even today I will put my trust in you Father.” It even has a nice humility feel attached to it. But my heart, was breaking.
I was exhausted from the perpetual chasm of loss that never seemed to stop. I was tired of feeling this way and had reached a point where when I said this to God I was saying it because I believed it but also because everything I had tried and was trying to do to fix the brokenness around me…
Had failed…
The Lie In Loss
The lie surrounding the loss wanted me to believe that because I felt like I had failed I was in fact just a failure; it was a character flaw outside of my control.
But that was not true, even though it felt true.
My faith led me to the only place I knew to go, right back to my Father.
But what he said back to me gave me a whole new perspective on faith.
He said, “The greatest faith is revealed out of the times of greatest weakness.”
The greatest faith is revealed out of the times of greatest weakness.
This made me put a few more brain cells to work on what really makes great faith.
What I Found Is Great Faith:
- Can’t be produced when we already know the outcome to expect. At that point it’s no longer faith we have but knowledge. It is our faith in God that pleases Him (Hebrews 11:6), not our knowledge.
- Often shows up in those moments of sorrow where we can’t see light. The moments when tears feel more plentiful than laughter and uncertainty clouds over our sunny days.
- Isn’t produced when we feel strong, it’s produced when He is made strong through us by us simply trusting Him (I’ll have more to say on this in the coming days that digs deeper into what trusting God looks like.)
- Doesn’t look or feel great. It’s often revealed out of the deepest sorrows but doesn’t look at the sorrows as truth but just the current obstacle in the path to what’s ahead.
- Is produced when we look to Him in all our weakness and in our own way with our own words the faith in us expresses, “even today I will put my trust in you Father.”
So today my prayer for you is that you find that small mustard seed of faith living inside you and realize how great it is. Not because of how it feels but because of who placed that faith inside you. And that if He placed that measure of faith inside you, it’s the exact measure you need (Romans 12:3) to trust Him with what’s around you to get you to what’s ahead of you.
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”
Hebrews 1:1
“For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith.”
1 John 5:4
