18 Jun Even When…

I was driving home from school one day stressed, overwhelmed, and disappointed. I thought about all the ways I fail my Savior. I thought about my shame and feelings of unworthiness that only seem to grow as I get more involved in ministries and my local church. I thought about the cracks in my vessel that I try to keep hidden.

In the midst of this overwhelming, gut-wrenching, self-consumed pity, this song came on my radio:

Even when the fight seems lost
I’ll praise You
Even when it hurts like hell
I’ll praise You
Even when it makes no sense to sing
Louder then I’ll sing Your praise

How accurate a depiction of how this life is.

Lately, I have come face to face with overwhelming doubt that a God, whom I cannot see, created this universe and everything in it. When the ones He formed in His image failed Him, He pursued them (us) through the shortcomings and sought a way to reunite us to Him again. In doing so, He sent His son, in the form of a lowly Son of Man to reconcile us and redeem us from our sins.

Biology teachers use this as the butt of jokes. They shake their heads at us foolish “believers” who are so gullible that we believe something they think has no scientific backing. They say we are crazy, bigoted, and unintelligent.

Some religion teachers see the Bible as a book, merely comparable to a Shakespeare novel. They marvel at Psalmists’ poetic and unprecedented techniques. Yet, they give no recognition to an unseen author.

Sometimes, I start to believe them.

My faith is crazy. It is counter-cultural. It contrasts everything modern society tells us is correct, trendy, and acceptable. My faith is not ordinary.

But, neither was a man who carried His only son to the top of a hill to be sacrificed on the altar, nor was a man who had a speech impediment and led a people out of slavery into the wilderness by parting a sea and sending plagues; nor, was a boy who killed a giant with a pebble. Neither is a God who redeemed a people who rejected Him time after time; nor a Father who sacrificed His Son to save a people who turned from Him even as He hung on a cross.

I serve an abnormal God; He is extraordinary, rejected by this world. He is unfathomable, unexplainable, and mysterious. Because His ways are not our ways.

My faith is not easy, or accepted, or an emotion. My faith does not always makes sense to the world. I can have faith because He has saved me. He has provided for me what I could not provide for myself.

I will choose to be confident in what I hope for and assured about things I cannot see.

Why? Because, I see Him work. I hear Him speak. I trust Him because His Son lived and died in my place.  He pursues me in my shortcomings and glorifies the lowly. He is able through my inability. He is strong in my weakness. He is graceful in my sin. He is good. He is a hope that breaks up darkness. He is my home that my heart cries out for in the quiet. He is the coverer of my shame and the light that shines through my cracks.

To question my redemption—to question who He is, to question my worth—is to question the death and resurrection that gives me life, the power of the one that lives in me, the hand that molds me, the grace that calls me beloved. To question whom He is is to question my existence, and that I will not do.
I exist to bring Him praise because of who He is and has been and will continue to be…

Even when it makes no sense to sing; louder then I’ll sing your praise.

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him”
1 John 3:1
“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”
Hebrews 11:1
“Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”
Mark 9:24

-Gracin Watson, Spartanburg Campus