Dear Readers,
I have arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, to attend Sattler College’s inaugural year.
There are beautiful parts of this city.
I am living in the heart of Boston in the historic Back Bay district. The Charles River is just a five minute walk from our dorms.
Just down the street half a mile are the Boston Commons and the Boston Public Gardens. So far, we students have found them useful places to gather, worship, talk, and play spike ball.
Our dorms are located at the International Guest House—a set of converted row houses similar to those pictured below—where I have enjoyed interacting with students from all over the world.
I love that my two roommates and I are on the fifth and top floor of the Guest House. All those stairs make great daily exercise.
My only bone to pick with this city, so far, is that there is no place for me to go to be truly alone. I tried it this morning, sat in a stairwell leading down to the side basement door of a house just down the street—out of sight and hearing of the people passing by—to talk to my mom on the phone.
I told her all sorts of random, private things—must have talked thirty minutes at least—when all of a sudden a voice came through a vent in the brick wall. “Hey! We can hear you out there.”
I was mortified.
Oh well.
For the past week, I have been getting to know Boston and the other students—all twenty-one of them. We had a retreat in New Hampshire together and, just like Thoreau and Emerson back in their day, climbed Mount Monadnock.
The climb was the hardest I’ve done, but the view from the top was definitely worth it.
Classes start this week and, like a mountain top view, knowledge awaits.
Before I close this post, I have a question for you. It started with a recent blog post where, referring to my coming years at Sattler, I wrote: “Once upon a time I thought if I wanted to be a simple Bible-believing Christian, I must give up my yearning for the intellectual world. God is showing me I had it backward.”
A blog reader contacted me to ask me about that “simple, Bible-believing Christian” concept. I had written about it before, in my memoir, Anything But Simple, when I talked of the simple faith my parents gave me. He remembered it. As the father of two young children—one recently born—responsibility and desire loom large.
“As a Christian and new parent,” he wrote, “I wanted to ask if you could expound a little on this simple faith. I have yearned and longed for it, though I can really get in the way and complicate it very easily. To take from your writing and thoughts, I pray and I will sweat and cry to teach our kids a simple faith.”
I didn’t give him a complete answer, because I wanted time to think it through and give a thoughtful one. Instead, I told him I’d write about it in a future blog post and now, for the last month, this seed of a thought has been rattling around in the back of my brain.
What is simple faith?
Who has it?
What makes it?
How does one go about getting it or teaching it?
I plan to write more in next week’s post. In the meantime, I would appreciate any thoughts you all have to give. What do you think? Please tell me in the comments below.
Simple faith is childlike. It trusts without questioning. “Daddy knows everything.”
I think it’s believing the simple truth. “God is real. He wants to know me and me to know him.” That gives us the impetus to dig into relationship. He gave His life for me because He cares and wants me to live with Him. Sin separated us. So now living with that knowledge, what is He thinking? Will I be vulnerable and truthful with Him and will I accept the fact that it’s a reciprocal relationship that will change my life? To know Him, is to invested in the greatest friendship ever.
Simple faith for me is living securely in His love and will because of what Jesus has done. Knowing that every moment I have lived and will live while here is known by God who is Sovereign. The striving of perfection and performance are kept strictly in the realm of privilege – they won’t save me. I can rest in knowing this. Frustration and doubt and condemnation are not simple; they are heavy and convoluted, thus should be recognized as darts from the enemy.
I am looking forward to your thoughts on this, Luci.
Simple faith to me is relying on and trusting in Jesus every day. Even tho daily life is not perfect and is often broken…. letting Jesus in and resting in Him so that your heart and soul are at peace.
Matthew 18:3 And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Simple, childlike faith . . .
Simple faith. It’s clinging to Jesus. Read and study Jesus in the gospels. In the Gospels it tells about the Holy Spirit available to believers. Staying right their under Jeuss’ Words and the Holy Spirit in your life simplifies everything. It just makes me grounded and at peace. And it’s a bottomless well of knowing. A peace beyond comprehension! And God designed us all individually. So we each get to be drawn and cared for individually! Our very own experience that we can also share together with other believers. An amazing simple crazy love!
Simple faith doesn’t mean it is always easy. Giving my children a simple faith to live by means I need a heart relationship with my Father. It means I measure the success of each day by the seeds I sow, not by the harvest I reap. It means looking beyond the surface and finding meaning in the ordinary things, like planting a garden, and talking about the soil of our hearts. It means every day should be embraced with joy and surrender, and lived with purpose. It means trusting the grace of Jesus is greater than my failures and perfections.It means that I see my children as equal parts responsibility and privilege. It means looking for advice from the deep, quiet waters, not from the noisiest sources. Every word of this is self-preaching!
A Simple Faith: I always ask myself, How would I live ‘faith’ if I lived all alone in an isolated place?. The answer I most often come up with is this: 1. Read the bible…meditate on it…and live out the heart of it (to love the Lord your God with all your heart soul, mind and strength and to love your neighbour as yourself’) in the truest, purest way I understood. To grasp the concept that I am loved. I have to work from this base. I can’t love others until I love myself, believing I am lovable, loved by God and created to love in return. If that means being kind, gentle, respectful and loving to any form of life that crossed my path, in the absence of people, then that is what I would do. Living out Christ within me. I believe that would be enough.
Child like faith, that is all. Let us find it!
Faith is, at least in part, trusting God to do whatever we can’t for His glory. Faith is not merely a head knowledge of God’s sovereignty. Rather it is a Holy Spirit perfected head knowledge. Faith is an attitude to which the Holy Spirit has born witness that its possessor is a child of God.
For me faith started with knowledge that God desires and will provide the best. That knowledge came closer to faith when personal experience proved to me that God answers prayer. I don’t think that that incredibly safe (though often seemingly reckless) attitude of “I’ll do absolutely whatever you say, Lord, when you say it” comes w/o the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives. While I have been made week in some areas, thus God’s grace being made perfect in unspecified areas, there are many areas where I am still too strong.
As far as teaching faith, we can only do our best. Our best is a three fold process; doing what God has given us the ability to do, asking Him to take care of the rest, and trusting Him to do just that.
There have been times when I did all three parts of my best and I still wasn’t seeing the situation work out. In those times I’ve nearly always been blessed to be able to look back and see God working everything out. I don’t have confidence that during my life I will always be able to do this, however, I do have confidence that it will/did work out and that one day it won’t matter anymore.
Simple faith is just that. Trusting like a child.
I see it standing out alone- tall, strong, and beautiful against the sky. (kinda like the one pic above in you blog:) Something that can be embraced. Within reach. Something that God will give and not withhold from anyone who asks. Uncomplicated like we humans tend to make things. Walking with Jesus today so that I long to live with Him tomorrow.
Clarification: Uncomplicated *NOT like we humans tend to make things. We can tend to make thing complicated;)
Lucinda, I trust all is going well with the beginning of college. The house looks historic and interesting. To be alone? Maybe you will need a prayer closet…do have room in your closet? I am sure though with time you will tune out the crowds and find some peace and quiet.
My older son and his wife were out there 2 weekends ago for a wedding of a friend in Cambridge. They tried to get as much sightseeing in as they could and history. Don’t forget a stop at Italian bakeries…delicious.
Many of the houses in this area of Boston are historic and interesting. It is a beautiful area! And there is no alone like fields or trees or my bedroom…but there are rooms here and there at the college in which I can sequester my self. And I often have my devotions at the park beside the river. I am not exactly alone, since there are many people walking or jogging by, but there is space and green things around me, and no one pays attention to me, so it feels mostly alone.
I haven’t been to Cambridge yet. I hope to visit all the areas of Boston and really get to know this city. Thank you for the recommendation! I am trying to collect different favorites from different people to find out a few must-do’s while I am here.