Navigating Uncertainty Part II - Tied In

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Grappling with uncertainty, or a fear of the future is not an easy task. Being rational and logical goes out the door when a vivid imagination gets underway. I know, I have one of those! The daily doses of “The News” doesn’t help either. Watching chaos erupt around us adds to the sense of being small boats battered in an angry storm with worst case scenarios, maybes and what ifs, washing over us. It’s not long before fear holds us in a vice-like grip. We respond out of fear, we hold back paralysed with uncertainty. Does that sound familiar? 

In “Navigating Uncertainty”, I referred to the need to find a “fixed point of certainty” just as the ancient mariners used the certainty of the stars, moon and sun to navigate their way.  That “fixed point” I suggested is faith in God. Jesus told his fearful disciples in John 14 to not be troubled or afraid by what will come but rather “to believe in and adhere to and trust in and rely on Him” (John 14:1 AMP).  Jesus also said, faith the size of a mustard seed will move mountains; mountains like anxiety and fear. But, what is faith? I have wrestled with this word.  Faith, to me, is an abstract, intangible thing. How do I get it? And when I have got it, how do I grow it and use it? 

On my first overseas trip I encountered an image of faith that revolutionised and stabilised my life. I found it in a book I discovered on the shelf of a home I was visiting. Its title caught my eye, “For this Cross I will kill you!” by Bruce Larson. It was a compelling story, of Bruce’s experience of taking the gospel to a remote South American tribe, known to kill strangers. Over time and through much hardship he gained their trust. Many came to believe his message. Bruce, then began the painstaking task of translating the gospel into their language.  He was stumped by the word “faith”. There was no word in their language for faith and no concept that he could find to describe faith, until one night as he prayed and pondered he looked at the construction of the hammock he was lying in. This tribe used hammocks as their beds and strung them up in sleeping huts from a central pole. The hammocks were woven into the structure of the hut so that when the winds blew and the intense rainstorms of the jungles came the hammocks would merely sway gently because they were tied so securely into the framework.  Bruce used this concept and the words for “tying” or “weaving” the hammocks into the structure to convey faith.  Lights went on for me as I read.

Now think about it with me…..faith means to be “tied or woven” into Jesus Christ.  It means to be so securely connected to Jesus that regardless of what winds or storms life will throw at you, your hammock, your life merely sways in the breeze.  This image was, for me life changing. Faith was no longer intangible. Faith had shape and form. Faith was being tied into Jesus Christ. Faith was based on and in a person.  Hebrews states that Jesus is the author, the pioneer, the source of our faith. That we are to look to him for the courage, the inspiration, the strength, the reason to live our lives.  He is our anchor, our sure foundation.  I grow in faith as I come to know the character and faithfulness of Jesus Christ.  The more I know him, the more I will trust him.

Returning to those words from The Amplified Bible I quoted earlier, “believe in, and adhere to and trust in and rely on”, these words are like the ropes of the hammock – faith, belief, trust, reliance, confidence in, which “tie me” to Jesus. My life or hammock is then secure.  I can rest on the fact that I am “tied securely in”.  Perhaps that is what is meant by the rest of faith, that Hebrews describes. If Jesus holds me, then I really have no reason to worry.  If I am uncertain about tomorrow, I remind myself that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. He said he will be with me today and he will be with me tomorrow.

Faith continues to grow and stay strong as I read about Jesus in the Bible. John said he wrote his gospel so that we might believe in, adhere to, and trust in Jesus! Faith grows as I absorb God’s Word and His promises. Faith relies on, relationship with Jesus. The more I know him, the more I trust him. As the disciples discovered when their boat was being battered by a raging storm, Jesus was in the boat with them.

Faith doesn’t only anchor us in times of uncertainty, faith also pushes us forward and out into the uncertainty – but that’s the subject of the next blog.

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