Day 1 - God, Can We Chat?

“Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.” (1 Corinthians 13:12, NLT)

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the LORD. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.” (Isaiah 55:8, NLT)

I finally met Jesus over a pasta dinner in a Victorian church with bare brick walls, minutes from Buckingham Palace. A friend had invited me to hear a talk about faith and whether life held meaning, and my curiosity and stomach couldn’t resist (she’d mentioned there’d be pasta and cake). Dressed in dark jeans and an even darker T-shirt, the speaker looked normal enough (“normal” equating to trustworthiness in my young, twentysomething brain), so I listened with an open yet curious skepticism. As we took the last bites of our baked ziti and looked longingly at the promised coffee and cake, he reassured us Christianity isn’t a religion but a relationship.

Until then, my relationship with God (if you could even call it that) had been tenuous at best. In hindsight, I was Christian with a lowercase c—a default setting thanks to my heritage, upbringing, and apathy toward religion in general. But that night I felt as if I’d been reintroduced to an old friend.

Have we met before?

Why does he seem so familiar?

Why do I want to know him so badly?

So with my normal barrage of questions silenced by this newfound desire to be friends with the Creator of the galaxies, I simply whispered, Yes please, God. I’m in if you’ll have me.

In that moment, relationship, reason, and a thousand questions I’d been happy to park for a while collided to awaken and fuel a delicate, newborn faith.

Fast-forward thirty years, through massive job shifts, international moves, church planting, burnout, and cancer—not to mention a global pandemic and political, racial, and religious division—I found myself longing for the willingness of that night to live in peace with my questions, wishing I wasn’t such a relentless question asker or black-and-white thinker. The years had knocked what I held true. I was like a tortoise flipped on its back, my faith-feet kicking wildly, failing to find traction. With my faith’s tender underbelly exposed, I longed to right myself despite having more unanswerable questions than faith to believe.

Maybe you’re there too.

Doubting the faith we once held dear or questioning the God we’ve always loved and trusted isn’t a pleasant place to be, so I’m glad you’re here, looking for a safe space to be curious.

We’re often told our doubts are our faith’s kryptonite—didn’t Jesus admonish folks with little to no faith and praise the faith of others? But I’ve come to realize that doubts hold the potential to be our faith’s superpower. When we lean into our questions and allow our doubts to lead us to Jesus, he reassures us that we see only in part (1 Cor. 13:12) and that God’s thoughts and ways are higher than ours (Isa. 55:8). Then, like great women and men of faith before us, doubting (far from being a swear word) becomes one of the most faith-building things we can do for ourselves.

You simply need a sprinkling of courage, a spoonful of honesty, and a large dash of willingness.

So, are you ready for a daringly honest, wonderfully imperfect, and not terribly holy heart-to-heart with God? I am. Let’s do this, together.