"Personalised" faith

The one who had made the promise was trustworthy. (Hebrews 11:11)

What gets you out of bed every morning? When motivational speakers and vocational counselors ask this question, they’re not looking for answers like “The baby was crying” or “My alarm rang.” They want to help you identify your “passion”—something you love (or would love) to be doing with your life, the purpose that fires you with energy.

Certainly, Abraham wasn’t searching for his passion on the day he rolled out of his blankets and started traveling to a distant promised land. He had found his passion! Or rather, it had found him. Out of the blue, a God he didn’t know promised that he would have “descendants as numerous as the stars” and would become a blessing for “all the families of the earth” (Hebrews 11:12; Genesis 12:3). Yeah, right! he could have said. Now that I’m seventy-five and Sarah is sixty-five, we’re going to go wandering into the unknown and have a baby? I don’t think so! But, remarkably, Abraham believed. And day after day—despite failures and setbacks, despite the twenty-five-year wait for Isaac’s birth, despite the fact that he never saw the promises completely fulfilled—Abraham kept believing.

How did he stay so focused and energized? By staking his life on the fact that he had a call from God and that “the one who had made the promise was trustworthy” (Hebrews 11:11). That’s how our faith and passion for God grow, too. It’s not enough to agree mentally with the Creed when we recite it on Sundays. Important as that is, faith can grow only in response to a personal call from a God we come to know in a personal way. Without this personal encounter, we won’t find the motivation to put our faith to work [emphasis,mine].

So ask yourself: Have I heard Jesus calling me? Do I know what he wants me to do and to be? If not, am I seeking him out? If yes, how am I responding? 

And tomorrow when you wake up, before your feet hit the floor, thank the Father for his wonderful purpose in creating you. Tell Jesus that you want to follow him more closely. Ask the Holy Spirit for a holy “passion” for the rest of the journey.

from wau.org