In the message I preached a few weeks ago, I spoke about how practical our faith is. And I believe it really is practical. But as I meditated about this, I thought about how we might think of practicality as the same as rationality. And rationality is not faith. In some ways, the reason we need faith, is that our rational brains are limited and God does not want us to be limited by them. He wants us to have full life, a life that goes beyond that which our mind can imagine, a life that is bigger than ourselves, a life that expands to the full potential that He has given us and wants for us.
Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.” He was telling the people of that time and us alive today that we are not to settle for a one-dimensional life, that the life God intended is a multi-dimensional, full color extravaganza!
Almost every lesson that Jesus taught stood the conventional thought on its head. The world still hasn’t accepted His radical propositions, and that’s why we are still challenged in our church-think today. Because we as God’s children are destined for a life that is inconceivable to the worldly rational mind. And that destiny is not just in the afterlife; it is here and now in our day-to-day lives. We are destined to live fully activated, God-filled, lives, if we accept and practice the faith that Jesus laid out in His Sermon on the Mount. Go and read it–Matthew 5, 6, and 7–and then radically trust Him and live your life according to what He said.
Only by faith can we live out the full potential which we have been given by our Creator.