Jonathots Daily Blog
(4069)
My favorite passage comes from the First Book of Pissed Off, Chapter 13, Verse 1: “Dammit to hell, Amen, what the shit, thank you, Jesus.”
There is no other collection of words that so typifies the balance of my walk in the Spirit. For I can tell you of a certainty:
Faith without frustration is fake
People who think they can cruise along and never want to spit at the heavens nor ever feel the need to praise the same are forgetting how easy it is for us to bounce between “Doctor Saint and Mister Sinner.”
You don’t have to go any further than Jesus of Nazareth to see faith and frustration at work. He constantly marveled at people’s unbelief. He yelled at the disciples, asking them when they were ever going to get some understanding of what he was trying to teach them. He scratched his head and inquired about how they could come up with so much doubt when they had seen so much happen. And on the night he was betrayed he lamented, “The Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,” and noted that he would sure appreciate if this cup of poison could pass from him.
Frustration brings faith
Faith is the only thing that keeps frustration from taking over our whole being.
But faith offers its own banquet of frustration:
- Who is God?
- What is God?
- Where is God?
- When is God?
- And why is God?
The five Great W’s that keep us in a constant quandary in the sixth:
- Wonder
On the other hand, I know that frustration brings out the validity of my faith and makes it easier for people to understand both who I am and why I believe.
Some people are turned off by street language, and others completely repulsed by Biblical words. Yet a careful look at the history of great men and women of the scriptures shows that each of them had a very colorful faith—“faith” in the sense that they believed in something beyond themselves, and colorful because they spoke from their hearts, which included cursing this and sometimes cussing a blue streak.
So stop trying to remove the frustration from your faith or becoming agnostic by refusing faith to allay your frustration.
We will not know all the answers until we no longer need all the answers.
This in itself is enough to create frustration.
But may I say, the possibility that there will be a place to go where answers will be provided is why we require faith.
The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this inspirational opportunity
Subscribe to Jonathan’s Weekly Podcast
Jonathots Daily Blog 