Measure of Faith

I am reminded of what Gerald may has written about faith and grace in his book entitled Addiction & Grace

"We always retain some spark of capacity to choose. We can use the ember of freedom to choose to risk ourselves in the goodness of God or to continue to strive for our own autonomy or to give in to the powers that oppress us. I am convinced that nothing whatsoever determines the choices we make at this primal level. Here, finally, the choices are totally up to us, we really are free.

....whenever we feel absolutely powerless, we have the most real power. Nothing is left in us to force us to choose one way or another. Our choice then is a true act of faith. We may put our faith in ourselves, or in our attachments, or in God. It is that simple.

....faith choices are enacted through the cellular activity of our brains, but they are not predetermined by that activity. There is no evidence that they are predestined in any way by other cellular patterns. Grace empowers us to choose rightly in what seem to be the most choiceless of situations, but it does not, and will not, determine that choice.

....for this reason, the purest acts of faith always feel like risks. Instead of leading to absolute quietude and serenity, true spiritual growth is characterized by increasingly deep risk taking. Growth in faith means willingness to trust God more and more, not only in those areas of our lives where we are most successful, but also, and most significantly at those levels where we are most vulnerable, wounded and weak. It is where our personal power seems most defeated that we are given the most profound opportunities to act in true faith.

....the purest faith is enacted when all we can choose is to relax our hands or clench them, to turn wordlessly toward or away from God. This tiny option, the faith Jesus measured as the size of the mustard seed, is where grace and the human spirit embrace in absolute perfection and explode in world changing power.

....true faith choices therefore always feel like risks; they just go on, involving deeper and deeper levels of our being. Each choice remains difficult; what really becomes conditioned in this process is simply our willingness and readiness to take the risks of faith. They never stop feeling like risks.

....the measure of faith, then, is the degree to which one is really willing to risk the truth of grace.

Amen!