Category: Faith

My faith looks like a drama in three parts.

Act 1: Questions.

Does God see me? Can he hear me? How could he possibly love me? Am I really going to heaven? Is the rapture going to happen tonight? I think I sinned again — am I going to hell now? What happens to people in countries who don’t know about Jesus? Can I listen to music that isn’t Christian? Does God want me to be a teacher? Does God love women as much as men? Does God tune me out when I repeat my prayers? Do I have to understand everything in the Bible? Am I a bad person if I don’t read my Bible every day?

Act 2: Certainty. (A short-lived phase.)

God sees me. He knows me. He loves me. Yes, I’m going to heaven. No, we don’t know when the rapture is happening. No, I’m not going to hell because I sinned again. Yes, I can listen to music that isn’t Christian. God wants me to love him more than he wants me to focus on one singular career path. Yes, God loves women as much as men. No, he doesn’t tune me out when I repeat prayers. No, I don’t have to understand everything in the Bible. No, I’m not a bad person if I don’t read the Bible every day.

Act 3: More Questions. (My current phase, and one I hope I’ll never leave.)

How can we reconcile a loving God with one who not only allowed but ordered the deaths of firstborn children during the Passover? Are people in other parts of the world going to hell because they had the misfortune of being born in non-Christian areas? If so, how much of the responsibility for their damnation is mine? Is it God or only Paul who doesn’t want women to preach? Can I love God and not love certain parts of Scripture? How can evangelical Christians ignore the reprehensible words and actions of politicians who claim to follow Jesus? Should Christian writers and speakers discuss politics in public forums? How can we live in a country where men and women still aren’t paid equally for doing the same work? Where did we get the impression that following Jesus would simplify our lives and eliminate our struggles? If I’m not currently experiencing persecution, am I not doing enough for Christ? How does God feel about homosexuality? Should every Christian foster or adopt children? What does it look like to follow Jesus and have his heart for the refugees flooding into the United States? Why is it still so hard, sometimes, to pray? Why do I still feel, sometimes, like God couldn’t possibly love me? Why am I still tempted, sometimes, to try to earn God’s approval? Why is it that the longer I follow Jesus, the less I know for certain?

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I’m convinced that a faith full of certainty and void of doubt is a dishonest faith. How can we, as limited human beings, fully understand the mysterious God and have no questions about what he has said and done?

It’s just not possible.

A person who says she understands all of Scripture and has no questions is a person who hasn’t done much thinking. Faith doesn’t exclude reason. It doesn’t prohibit questions. It doesn’t ask you to leave your brain at the altar.

I have learned that I can be a person full of love for God and with a desire to follow Jesus who still questions what that looks like. I can simultaneously trust God and not understand all he says. I can believe in his goodness and still question why he asked Abraham to kill his own son.

The minute we stop having questions for our God and about our faith is the minute we choose to become deaf and dumb. The culture around us has questions, too, and if we don’t wrestle with our own, we can never engage with them in theirs. If we become to deaf to their questions, we become numb to their need. If we haven’t wrestled to find answers to our questions, our mouths become dumb to help provide answers for other questioners.

We question to know God better. We wrestle to receive his blessing. We engage in our faith so it becomes true.

Lord, increase my questions if it means you will also increase my faith.

The low-grade stress has slowly been clawing its way out of my body lately.

Stress does that, you know. It makes itself known to you privately first, masquerading as a private issue you think you can hide. As it festers and grows, which it most often does, it always exits your personal, private world and makes its presence known in the public spaces you share.

It may manifest itself in the short answers you give co-workers or the tongue-lashing you unleash on your spouse. It may show up in the headaches that keep you withdrawn or the paranoia that causes you to question people you love.

Stress, though? It always shows up, and it always comes out.

For me, lately, the stress hasn’t been debilitating. It’s been present, for sure, but as I’ve walked with God and learned to invite Him into it, it’s been more manageable.

But manageable, low-grade stress can quickly compound and grow into something more sinister. It’s been trying to do that in me.

And as I’ve tried to understand why I’m facing constant, low-grade stress, it’s become remarkably clear that it’s because I’ve been subjecting myself to constant, low-grade pressure. I’ve been exposing myself daily to expectations I can never meet.

In the simplest of ways, I’ve invited Satan into my life by allowing him into my phone. I don’t want to be a person who paints with a broad brush, coloring everything with a single hue, so I’ll be deliberate here.

Social media is not always bad. Right now, for me, though, it is not good.

The internet is not always Satan’s playground. Right now, for me, though, it is a tool Satan uses to distract me from the presence of God.

Seeing others’ lives is not always a great sin. Right now, for me, though, the envy and comparison I feel when I see others’ lives is a great sin.

So for this season, this time of Advent anticipating the coming of Emmanuel, God with us in flesh, I’m choosing to quit what is distracting me from seeing and celebrating my Savior.

I began this spiritual discipline December 1st, before Advent officially began, because I had simply had enough. The low-grade stress of seeing everyone else’s everything was clawing its way out of my body, and I knew something had to give.

It has been only three days, and already I know it was right. The constant, low-grade stress has begun to dissipate, and I am regaining clarity. I don’t find myself reaching subconsciously for an anesthetizing hit of whatever was posted recently. I don’t have a voracious need to know it all or have others validate my all.

I am making room for white space and down time, disconnected from all but God.

Here’s what I am re-remembering about God. He comes when and where He is invited. He listens for those saying, “Meet me here,” and He does. When He sees His people serious in pursuit of Him, He seriously shows His glory.

I’ve seen it already, and I’m ready for more.

What does this season look like for me, specifically?

No scrolling. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. I will post my writing if God prompts me to post, and I will respond to personal messages and notifications. But my interactions will be limited and focused, not mindless and wasteful. My goal is to steward both my time and my thoughts well.

Will this fast continue past Advent? I don’t know. I’m leaving that up to God. I don’t know what else I’ll learn or how God will show Himself in this time, but I know this for sure, today:

I’m leaving room and making space in the expectation that the same Emmanuel who came first without fanfare on a silent night and in an unexpected place will come again to me.

I know the exact moment my heart broke. It was a cold Friday night in February, and my children were sleeping upstairs. Cozy in their footed pajamas, they had no idea their lives were changing forever below them.

Their father — my husband — was leaving.

I could not have understood before that night how everything can change in one moment — that a stable and content life can be ripped from you, leaving indescribable destruction and heartache behind.

But one moment can change everything. It did for me.

That moment changed my physical realities — I needed a new place to live and a new job that would provide financially, and I had to learn how to parent my children as a single mother. The new physical realities were nothing compared to the new emotional realities, though.

In the moment my husband said he was leaving, something shifted in my beliefs about myself and my God, and I fell into a darkness that consumed me for years.

Satan began whispering to me in that moment of vulnerability that I was profoundly unlovable. He told me I was so deeply flawed I was destined to be alone, so unworthy of acceptance I would always be rejected, and too broken to ever be healed.

He told me God did not have great plans for my life and that He chose not to protect me from this hurt. The enemy deceived me as He did Eve, asking me, “Did God actually say…?” He led me to doubt the goodness of my God, and I fell for it all.

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The droplet of sap on my van’s windshield is smaller than a dime. It’s not huge, but it’s on the driver’s side, right in my line of vision. We just repainted our garage floor, and while it was drying, I had to park under the cedar trees at the end of the driveway. One of the days I parked there, a glob of sap dripped right onto the windshield.

I noticed it immediately when I got behind the wheel, but I couldn’t do anything right then to get rid of it. As usual, I was jumping in the car to run from one place to another, and I was in a hurry. Turning on the windshield wipers would only smear it, so I told myself I’d take care of it later.

And you can guess how that went.

That was weeks ago, and the glob is still there. Only now, it’s crystallized and feels like a permanent fixture on my mom-van.

The funny thing is that I’ve learned to look past the glob as I’m driving. It’s in the exact same spot it has been, and it never disappears fully from my line of vision, but I have learned to ignore it. I’ve learned to work around the obstruction.

And it seems like such a metaphor for my life.

Globs of mess fall into our lives, hitting us in places we can see. We notice them and tell ourselves we’ll do something about them, and we really do have good intentions. But life gets in the way. We rush around, trying to keep everything else going, and we push aside what can be pushed aside.

We learn to ignore the globs.

They’re not life-threatening, and they don’t demand our attention, but they’re not insignificant, either.

They obstruct our vision. And when we don’t make the time to deliberately remove them, they stay — and they crystallize. They become permanent fixtures blocking our vision. 

I think for people following Jesus, small globs are more dangerous than we realize. We become pretty adept at recognizing outrageous sin, and we learn to anticipate the overt ways Satan attacks. But we forget that our enemy uses distraction as well as destruction, and we forget that the globs he throws at our windshields obstruct our vision just enough to make a difference.

I don’t want to be a glob-ignorer. I don’t want to procrastinate dealing with the easily removable sap and be forced to scrape it off after it’s crystallized. I don’t want to have my vision obstructed.

But I also don’t want to do difficult things.

Left to my own ways, I naturally choose the path of least-resistance. It’s really easy to ignore a glob and convince myself I’ll deal with it later. And later becomes never — or at the very least, much too late.

I’ve been learning more about the fruit of the spirit lately, and one of the fruits (are you singing the song in your head yet?) is self-control. Unless we are people under the influence of the Holy Spirit, we will not be people of people of self-control. And people of self-control are people who deal with globs of sap when they happen — because they can control the desire to put off what’s uncomfortable.

Procrastination is, at least for me, an indication that I’ve not surrendered fully to the Holy Spirit. Ignoring globs — whatever they are — shows me there’s more of me to give to God.

That’s walking with Jesus, isn’t it? Realizing there’s more selfishness and sin and brokenness to relinquish? The closer I get to Jesus, the more desperately I need Him.

Needing Him looks a lot like glob removal.

And I’m ready.

I’m starting a podcast, and to say I’m excited would be a stupidly ridiculous understatement.

The title of my show is “In This Skin,” and the premise is this: there are far too many of us who are living timidly and in denial of who we really are and how we were really made. We are self-conscious, wishing we could change and become the idealized versions of ourselves we imagine but never publicize.

We aren’t comfortable in our own skins.

We aren’t comfortable, so we try like snakes to shed our skins and emerge in something new. We compare ourselves to those we see and admire, and we become like David trying to wear Saul’s armor. We behave like chameleons, changing our colors according to our surroundings.

It’s maddening, it’s frustrating, and for the most part, it’s something we never even admit is happening.

Here’s what I know. I am nearly 40 years old, and for the vast majority of my years, I wanted to be someone other than myself. I wanted other people’s talents, their lifestyles, their personalities, and their bodies. I measured myself against the images they projected, and I always found myself lacking.

No matter how hard I worked, no matter what other people said, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get out from under the weight of failing to meet expectations I had for myself.

My skin was my nemesis.

But no more — at least not every day. I’m not going to lie to you and say the temptation to seek a different skin is gone. It still exists, but it doesn’t rule my thoughts and drive my decisions. I am in a different place now with accepting who I am, and the singular goal I have for my podcast is to help you get there, too.

So that’s why every week, I’m going to release a new episode where I talk about my journey and bring in guests who have struggled with this issue, too. We’re going to talk openly about what the struggle looks like and where we are today. It’s going to be fun, it’s going to be real, and it is, I believe, going to be a game changer for people.

The first episode airs October 4th, and I would be honored for you to listen, subscribe, and leave a comment in iTunes.

If you have ideas for topics to cover or guests to invite, I’d love to hear them! Leave a comment below or email me at jenniegscott@gmail.com.

Her soft voice came through the speaker on my phone, telling the podcast interviewer about the hardest years of her life. This woman has moved overseas, adopted orphaned children, begun a non-profit ministry, and written bestselling books about faith. If anyone shouldn’t admit having certain questions about her faith and her God, it seemed she shouldn’t.

But she did.

“Is a God who allows these things really good? Where is God when the worst things happen? Can I really trust Him when I don’t understand?”

I knew just what she meant.

Our hard questions don’t mean we don’t believe, but they always reveal the depth of our faith. And, I’ve learned, they can deepen our faith if we have the courage to voice them. Suppressing them leads to a shallowness in what we believe.

The questions we’re afraid to voice hide our fears of what might be.

• Question: “Where are you, God?” Fear: He has left.
• Question: “Why did you choose not to answer my prayer?” Fear: He doesn’t love me enough to answer.
• Question: “Why are you allowing this tragedy into my life?” Fear: He doesn’t care that it hurts me.

This woman wrestled with God and came out changed. Stronger. More confident in her God. But she only came out stronger because she was willing to wrestle.

Sometimes we’re not willing to wrestle because we think it shows a lack of faith. I think it shows the opposite. Wrestling shows that we’re invested, that we know something worthwhile will come from the fight. It shows that we aren’t easily scared off, that we know the battle is worth the scars it inflicts.

But what happens when the battle takes a while? What do you do when the wrestling match doesn’t last for just one night?

What do you do when you can’t find the answers? Sarah Bessey says in her book Out of Sorts that sometimes “our answer is to wait in the question.”

Waiting in the question is a type of wrestling.

To wait is to wrestle against the perceived need for immediacy. To wait is to wrestle against the presumption that you deserve an answer at all. To wait is to wrestle against your selfish desires for clarity.

To wait is to acknowledge that you are not the god of your life.

It might just be that in the waiting, we learn more than we would in an answer.

We realize God can be trusted, that He has not forsaken us and will not leave us as we are. We realize that our understanding is limited, that we are incapable of understanding all spiritual implications.

When we wait, we realize that although our circumstances may not be what we want, God is still good in them. Waiting reveals God’s goodness. Yes, the ways of the Kingdom are backwards, are they not? To be first, you must be last. To be great, you must be a servant. When you are weak, you are strong.

Waiting is a gift because it prompts us to wrestle, and we wrestle only with what matters. If it doesn’t matter, it’s easy to dismiss.

Waiting.

Wrestling.

Questioning.

They lead to learning.

Changing.

Trusting.

The questions we’re afraid to voice hide our fears of what might be.

The way of the Jesus-follower is to be brave enough to voice our fears because we know we have a God mighty enough to handle them.

So ask away. Wrestle in the waiting.

And watch God prove Himself.

The words that stopped me cold weren’t shouted or even spoken angrily. They were gentle, coming through the speakers of my laptop. One sentence, spoken sweetly, as part of a longer podcast episode. One sentence that gave me chills:

“Never believe anything bad about God.”

Emily P. Freeman spoke these words in her episode “Remember the Real Art,” and my heart stopped for a split second.

“Never believe anything bad about God.”

I was pierced to my core because I have done just what she said not to do. I’ve believed bad things about my good God.

I’ve believed He was indifferent to my broken heart, seeing my tears as evidence of my weakness and hearing my questions as proof of my unworthiness.

I’ve believed He favors other people over me, giving them opportunities and advantages He doesn’t think I deserve.

I’ve believed He regrets the way He made me, looking at me and thinking, “What a disaster.”

I’ve believed He has ignored my cries for help.

I’ve believed He loves His other children more than me.

I’ve believed He couldn’t love someone like me.

I’ve believed the worst in my mind.

But I’ve confessed His goodness with my mouth.

My private thoughts and public confessions have disagreed. And while I may feel justified in my secret thoughts and safe from judgment because no other person knows, God does. And His knowledge is the only one that matters. He knows I doubt His goodness while simultaneously acting like I don’t.  He knows I sometimes believe the bad and pretend I don’t, but He loves me anyway. The way He sees me never changes — because He doesn’t see the sinful, screwed up person I naturally am. He sees His perfect son Jesus in me, His righteousness covering my depravity.

It seems too much to believe.

But this week, Holy Week, is the perfect time to examine what we believe. Not just that He died and rose, but that He lives within and through us. Not just that He saves us from sin, but that He only ever loves us. Not just that He made a way for us once, but that He makes ways for us daily.

I have believed wrongly about God because I have viewed God as I view people, and people have bad in them. I have assumed God sees me and treats me like people have seen and treated me. I have equated the Creator’s behavior with people’s.

And I have been wrong.

My God is good. Only and always.

My God adores me. Forever, without conditions.

My God sees me. Understands me. Hears me. Is with me.

Believing these things does not come naturally. It is not the instinct of our hearts. But “the heart is deceitful above all things” (Jer. 17:9), so we must tell it to stop lying to our heads. We must train ourselves to believe what our sinful nature and our enemy would like us never to believe.

We must know the truth, because it is what sets us free.

This is the truth:

• “For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you” (Psalm 86:5).
• “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1).
• “Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved” (Psalm 55:22).
• “You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle” (Psalm 56:8).

I need my easily-accepted lies to be replaced with hard-won truth. So I will wrestle, daily if necessary. I will call out lies. I will examine my own thoughts. I will admit my wrong beliefs. And from this point forward, as much as I can, I will refuse to believe anything bad about God.