Easily offended? This one's not for you.

I start with a disclaimer:  This blog is not about you.  If you think it is, that's not my fault. 

I think alot about faith.  What is faith?  The hope of things not seen.  Salvation is not seen, grace is not seen, peace is not seen, Jesus himself is not seen.  I still believe in those things, therefore, I have faith.  My personal thought on faith is that the more crap life deals us the stronger your faith should be.  Not the more we should complain about it.  How can you have faith and how can God prove himself without dealing out crap?  I also believe the people who complain about the crap that life deals them are the people that haven't been through anything substantial enough to have their faith tested.  Not the "faith" they just talk about but the actual faith that gets us through our day.  The faith that makes us get out of bed every morning to face another day when life has literally knocked us on our butt.  Faith that makes me know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God has my back in anything and everything.  Faith that makes me not sweat the small stuff because I have been through MUCH bigger stuff and I'm still here and in one piece physically and mentally. 

A pet peeve of mine is when someone gets on a pedestal and tells someone else how they should or shouldn't act or what they should or shouldn't do to have said faith.  I also can't help but laugh (inside of course) when I hear people talk about how hard it is to have faith or trust God because they've been "hurt".   This brings me back to my thought that the people who talk about it really haven't been through it.  My faith has been built over 30 years and isn't going to be wavered because of a book I read, movie I saw, song I listened to, word I said, drink I drank, thought I had and so on.  Jesus is bigger than all of that.  Jesus built my faith by bringing me through 4 divorces between my 2 parents, years long estrangement from my dad and family, death of BOTH of my parents by the time I was 25 (one by plane crash), infertility, miscarriage, a child with a chronic medical condition who may not even see her teenage years, and a few other things that I'm not going to mention.  He has saved my sanity, my peace of mind and gives me the motivation and joy to get through my day every day.  This is why I know Jesus has my back.  This is why I don't jump to the altar every week thinking I have to or God won't have favor on me or protect me or love me.  I have a peace in my mind and in my heart that I know I am a child of God and He is with me wherever I am and wherever I go.  He has gotten me to the other side of horrible life experiences and will continue to bring me through more.  That is enough for me to have hope of things not seen.  I have not seen Him but I have seen His hand at work and I would not be here without it. 

So when you see someone standing back and not jumping up and down trying to convince everyone of how much faith they have, remember sometimes it's the ones that don't talk about it who have had their faith proven to them and don't have to prove it to everyone else.