This article is an excerpt from Scarlet Hiltibidal‘s new book, “Hopeful-ish,” from B&H Publishing.
Jesus said, “I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance,” (John 10:10b CSB), but abundant life always seemed to elude me.
My life wasn’t abundant because my life wasn’t reflecting the real thing.
When I was fourteen, I made a commitment to Jesus. I prayed a prayer and got baptized and quickly went from embracing real peace in Jesus to trying to find it in my performance for Jesus.
In my teens, I developed what I thought was a fool-proof peace formula that involved making everyone in my school and family and life worship me for my awesomeness, with some Jesus sprinkled on top.
My twenties? So glad you asked. Peace, at that age, looked like protection; I worked to protect myself from pain, from embarrassment, from anything that could threaten my comfort.
Again, I was a Christian, but living like a fake farmer…wearing the overalls and the muck boots, with little to no harvest.
And now, here in later part of my thirties, I find myself behaving so frequently like the Israelites throughout the Old Testament.
They had experienced the real thing so many times; the fire and smoke of God leading them through the wilderness, the food falling from heaven when they needed it most, the water provided for them when they were thirsty, and so on.
And yet, as if on cue, they cycled through the same forgetfulness, fretting, and frustration toward God on the other side of all those miracles.
They even started faking it toward God, keeping with the external rules for life he had laid out, but with reluctance and grumbling and an eye toward false gods.
I, too, have experienced the real thing in Jesus; the real peace, the real joy, the real moments of provision when there’s no other explanation but God.
And yet on the other side of it, when life goes from the miracle to the mundane and starts to feel like an unruly miniature donkey, I start forgetting and fretting and losing sight of hope.
And like the Israelites, I start faking it.
Don’t Fake Your Faith
I was out of town earlier this year, speaking at a women’s event, and during the discussion time, after one of my talks, I sat down and listened to women of all walks of life talk through their varying faith journeys.
Some of the women were clearly new believers. I remember one of them telling me she hadn’t read the Bible and had barely attended church, and she wanted me to tell her how to follow Jesus.
I remember feeling that her question was too big for me to answer.
There’s an entire “living and active” book about that, after all.
How could I possibly put into just a few sentences what it means to have a real relationship with the Rescuer of the world?
Thankfully, I don’t have to.
Jesus already summarized the whole thing for us when He came to earth.
“When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they came together. And one of them, an expert in the law, asked a question to test him: “Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.” – Matthew 22:34-29, CSB
That’s the real thing. That’s the answer.
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