Hello and welcome back to the Tiny Pod.
This week I want to talk about faith.
The word faith comes from the Latin fides, which means trust,
confidence and reliance. It was also part of a covenant
that you committed to. Faith isn't just a feeling.
It is a state of being full of trust, of confidence, fully sure
in what you cannot see. Faith is fortitude in the
unknown, the Bible writes. Faith is confidence in what we
hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
Everything we see in the world was once unseen.
It was once an idea. The home you live in, the
building you work in, the bus you ride on, the car you drive
was once an idea. Faith is often mocked, reduced,
ridiculed. We often have to hold our faith
in solitude. Faith is something we have to
guard. It is not externally validated.
It is internal fortitude and confidence that anything is
possible. It is not.
I'll believe it when I see it. It is.
I will see it when I believe it because I believe it.
Faith is not a strategy. It is a frequency.
The world teaches us to succeed through hustle and tune into the
frequency of effort. But in the world of the spirit,
the soul, the heart, faith is the currency.
Being faithful is staying tuned to a frequency higher than
effort and hustle. It is always darkest before the
dawn. And the Bible writes a lot about
testing of faith in James. It writes the testing of your
faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work
so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
Persevering, continuing to believe, to have faith when
there is nothing to see, when there is nothing external to
validate your faith, is how we mature, grow wise and complete.
Immaturity is quick, impulsive, reactive, defensive and as the
Bible writes, double minded. The one who doubts is like a
wave of the sea blown and tossed by the wind.
Such a person is double minded and unstable in all they do.
When you don't have faith in something higher, something
bigger, you're in control. You are it and therefore you
have to control everything. And if things don't go your own
way, you try and control that. It's very immature and
incomplete. You are bouncing around like a
wave from this idea to that person to this job.
There's no fortitude. There's no grounding, rooting
faith. Tomorrow, the Chinese New Year
arrives with a new moon, the darkest point before the light
begins to return. When we are stretched in our
faith in that darkest point, our capacity is expanded, our faith
is strengthened. We trust the sun will rise.
And yet, when it comes to our personal experience, we often
demand proof. But when we say when, if we put
the distance of time between now and our faith, now and our idea.
Because if and when may never come, when I have a car, when I
have a boyfriend, when I get a promotion, then now is all we
have. We live as if we are going to
live forever without ever living.
We get blown around like the wave of the sea when we have no
fixed point of reference outside of our own circumstances.
And that is small minded. We expand our minds, our hearts
and our souls with faith. I love that in Romans it says we
rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces
endurance and endurance produces character and character produces
faith. And faith does not put us to
shame. We can get shamed for faith and
hope, get stuck in our suffering, but this teaches us
to rejoice, to be grateful, to accept and to not resist life as
it is. It truly is easier in that it is
full of ease, surrender, going with the flow and allowing our
nervous system to rest. Peace cannot be bought.
Peace cannot be found in any of the ifs, whens, buts and thens.
It is a choice, much like faith. To be faithful is to possess
constancy. It is refusing to let external
circumstances dictate the internal safety you feel.
A faithful person is like a compass.
The needle may tremble during a storm, but it's orientation
never fails. If the reward is immediate, it
isn't faithfulness, it is simply a transaction.
Being faithful in the little teaches us spiritual stewardship
for being trusted with a lot. Faith is the daily quiet
maintenance of an altar when no fire is visible.
To be faithless is not simply to not believe.
It is a state of spiritual amnesia where the facts of the
present moment are allowed to overwrite the truth of
possibility, peace and faith. Faithlessness is driven by the
tyranny of the immediate. It prioritises the screaming
desires of the flesh over the whisper of the Spirit.
When you walk in faith, it is not by what is seen.
It is the absolute persuasion and commitment to an unseen
reality. Faith is the state of being
fully persuaded. It is the underlying foundation
of things hoped for. Fidus was the goddess of trust.
To have faith is to have trust in life, and it is a spiritual
gravitational pull. While the old world trades in
effort and hustle, the world of faith trades in alignment in the
world of the Spirit. Being faithful is staying even
when the seas are rough, Corinthians writes.
These things remain faith, hope, and love.
This is generational wealth, the love, the hope, and the faith
you leave behind. You can leave pots of money with
a side of anxiety, doubt, insecurity, hurt, and you can
leave love, faith, and hope in the hearts of those you touched.
The new moon arrives tomorrow with the lesson of faith.
The moon is the most powerful when it is invisible.
It moves the entire ocean without reflecting a single ray
of light. That is the power of faith, the
silent heavy pull of a promise that refuses to fade.
I am moving the tiny pod so this will be my last episode here on
Spotify and Apple Podcasts. I have loved this journey.
It took an act of faith to start the Tiny pod and it is a
devotional practise that I am committed to.
Every week I'm taking another leap of faith.
This sanctuary is moving to Patreon.
To those who want to, I will see you on the other side on
Patreon. And to everyone else, I wish you
peace, love and faith on your journey.