Faith

Then I embrace my loving God

He fits me like a glove

~ My Sinking Ship from Fearless Moral Inventory

by Juliet A. Wright, copyright 2009, all rights reserved

Faith is one of the most fundamental, foundational, and important spiritual principles. I need to have faith in something greater than myself in order to be able to obtain victory over what I am struggling with. For me, though, it goes deeper than that. I have to have faith in order to even get out of bed and function in the morning. Faith is a huge part of my life and of who I am. It’s a part of my every waking moment.

To me, faith means that I completely believe and trust in something, whether I see it in front of my eyes or not. I choose to believe it.

Two synonyms for faith are trust and hope.

Faith is believing the word of God and acting upon it no matter how I feel because God promises a good result.

~ James McDonald, author of Lord, Change My Attitude Before It’s Too Late

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

~ Hebrews 11:1 (NIV)

One of my favorite bible teachers said that faith is not a blind leap in the dark — that is superstition. Faith is based on knowledge, belief, and trust. That takes time. 

To me, faith is my complete belief, trust, and confidence that something is true without having to see it first. I have faith that Christ was both fully human and fully God. I did not have to watch him rise from the dead or turn the water into wine in order to believe it. God has performed many miracles in my life. My experience of these miracles has helped to build my trust in Him. I do good things only because God does them through me. I can take no credit in the good I do in this world, except to say that I do my best to be obedient to him.

Faith is the spiritual principle behind Co-Dependents Anonymous Step 2:

2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.^[1]

I admit I am powerless over my over-responsibility and caretaking. I cannot control them. They are controlling me. My life has become unmanageable.

So what do I do? There must be something bigger, better, and more in control of everything to help me out here. There must be something out there that can do for me what I cannot do for myself, as program friends often say. That is God. He can help me. He can bring back my sanity.

I have complete confidence that God exists and is very present in my everyday life. He is the director of my life’s journey. I know I will be with Him when I die and go to heaven. 

In order to have faith in someone, I must know them. In order to know them, I must spend time with them, understand them, and cultivate a relationship with them.

I trust God because I know God. I spend time with God. I spend time reading and listening to his Word, listen to Him at Meeting, during my morning worship, and on my way to work. I talk to and listen to Him throughout the day. Sometimes I am too tired to hear him. I am working on correcting that.

I would not be anywhere without my faith in God. I would have crumbled like a dry piece of coffee cake when Alex and I split up ten years ago. I was devastated, but God got me through it. I went to meeting. I met with my Quaker Clearness Committee. (A Quaker Clearness Committee is a group of three or more Quakers who meet with a person on request to help them to discern God’s will for them. I also discussed Clearness Committees in my first book.) They told me of God’s will as we discerned it together. I knew these people and had spent time with them. I trusted them. I trusted the God that spoke through them.

If I had never met those committee members before, or hadn’t spent time on other committees with them, I would not have had that trust base. But I did. I trust the God that speaks through them. I trust the God that speaks through my therapist. I trust the God that spoke to me and told me to move to Vermont, do my book, do my music, cut my hair, and go back to my natural color.

I heard somewhere that faith is not believing God can, but knowing God will. I like that.

So it’s like walking across a rickety bridge over a canyon and trusting that if I’m meant to live, I will live, and if I’m meant to die, I will die. And I will die willingly because that is what God wants. 

Faith is trusting that whatever happens is meant to happen and is the will of God.

I have faith, trust, and confidence in my God. I recognize that he knows what is best for me. He has saved me from my sins. He will guide me through my life. Whatever happens will be his will and I will handle it one tiny step at a time. It will all work out. I will trust, have confidence in, and believe it will all work out the way God wants it to work out and it will be perfect.

I have a sign in my office that says, “Listen, Trust, Obey.” I will do my best to listen to God, trust what he says, and obey Him. I will turn it all over to Him and let go of the rest.

I have confidence in and rely on God that he will lead me down the path of this life that’s best for me to learn what I came here to learn.
I just wish I could do a better job of being his child. I wish I could do a better job of remembering and trusting that the Holy Spirit lives inside me and I can trust and follow that. I will work hard on that.

I have faith that God is there and he can help me with my over-responsibility and caretaking as I struggle with it daily. He is there and can protect me from myself as I worry, fret, stew, try to fix everything, save others from hurting or dying, trying to play God. I am not God. That is not my job. He has that job.

He will do his job. Embracing this is what Step 2 is about  — believing he is there and is sovereign. He is in control.

Sometimes it seems like the crisis wheel keeps spinning in our family with one thing after another. I worry it will spin out of control.

Other times I just plain get sick of the endless series of disasters that seem to come down our Family Pike. My sponsor tells me that this is just how life is.
So now, when I am fretting about all of this stuff, what is going to happen, and how I can control it, I will stop and remember that there is a God and I turn it over to Him. Then I will let go and repeat helpful slogans to myself.

Juliet’s Mantras that Help:

• Hold the outcome in the Light of God.
• Be still and know I am God. ~ Psalm 46:10
• Treat it like the front page of the newspaper.

Here is a slogan from Pastor James MacDonald that has been very helpful for me:

~ Let’s just trust God for that.^[2]

I will work hard on building trust, confidence, assurance, hope, and certainty in my ability to listen to and follow the God that is inside of me, instead of doubting, blaming, and shaming myself.

Positive Affirmations:

• There is that of God inside me.
• God doesn’t make junk. I am a perfect child of God.
• Doubting the God in me is like doubting God. I have faith in the God in me. I’m doing the best I can.

Additional practices I engage in when working the Principle of Faith:

• More journaling:  Writing gets everything out of me.
• Reflection: I look at what I wrote and admit my powerlessness over my defects of over-responsibility and caretaking.
• Worship: Through prayer and meditation, I surrender my life to God and listen to Him. I am practicing my faith.
• Scripture: I become involved in daily bible study through the bible, bible audio CDs, and audio sermons.
• Exercise: Working out on my punching bag, swimming, walking on my treadmill or in Hopkins Forest, and lifting weights all help me to calm down and see things more clearly.
• Documentation: I record my thoughts into a tape recorder and notate them later.
• The God within: I try to remember I have that of God inside of me and I can trust this.
• Pray continuously: I talk to and pray to God throughout the day as much as possible. This can include giving thanks, surrendering on my hands and knees, or asking for help out loud.
• God is in charge: I realize that God has a plan for me and it will be revealed to me when the time is right.
• I’m doing my best: I realize I’m doing the best I can and give myself credit for that.
• Get to a meeting: I get myself to a CoDA meeting, either in person, online, or just by myself reading the literature and meeting format. (Discussed earlier in “Recovery in Program.”)
• Step work: I do step work, read it to my sponsor, or print it out on the computer and mail it to her, or both.
• Slogans: I repeat my favorite slogans, such as “Easy does it,” “This too shall pass,” “Act as if,” “Let go and let God” and “Turn it over.” Repeating the slogans really helps me relax.

Thank you, God!

^[1] Co-Dependents Anonymous. Co-Dependents Anonymous. Dallas, TX: CoDA Resource Publishing, 2009, p. iv.

^[2] MacDonald, James. Lord, Change My Attitude Before It’s Too Late. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2001.