A step of faith

"Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole  staircase, just take the first step."
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 I am definitely on the way back to finding some kind of faith again.  The relief is huge!  Following on from my last post, I finally realised the futility of trying to work out with just reason if there was a God. By excluding faith, Scripture, personal experience, others' testimony, and tradition I am saying in advance 'there is no God' because I have excluded most of the ways He uses to speak to us. I am left with reason and how I see the universe around us and how it started.  It was almost like I had to work out what I believed before I started looking at evidence so I knew whether or not to include or exclude certain types of evidence. I wanted to remain totally open to there being a God or not being one.  I decided I wasn't going to exclude evidence simply because it assumed an existence of God.



It came to me that it's a choice. I can't prove it  one way or the other. I have to take that first step of faith into the unknown without being completely sure. I did that last week. I just decided as an act of my will, and not feeling it, that I was going to believe there is a God. It was a conscious act of my will and my mind. Once I made it, I felt a huge sense of peace. 



I am not going to rush things though. It would be too easy to rush into a Christian life as it was before which would be a mistake. It is important to me that I take each step one by one. I've decided there is a God. I never really doubted Jesus being the Son of God, if there was a God. For me I always knew throughout my time of doubting that if there is a God then Jesus is the Messiah, he is the Son of God.

I've been reminded of when the Israelites crossed the Jordan river. The river didn't part until after the priests at the front of the line stepped into the water. They had to step in before the miracle occurred. "Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water’s edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away" Joshua 3:15-16. 

 I think I will just live with that for now and enjoy where I am without trying to rush into anything else. One step at a time.