This post is part II of Let’s Talk About God.
Ok, so how do we get this faith? I am sure many of you already have a faith of some sort in a Higher Power or God. From my experience, faith takes work. Maybe you need to put more effort into your religious or spiritual practice. I cannot tell you what to believe and no one can have faith for you. I have included some helpful links on this site that may aid you in your search for faith or help you to strengthen yours.
I believe that faith in God is a personal experience. Being told to believe in a specific God and follow a particular set of rules, without asking why, never worked for me. Discovering a Higher Power of my own understanding and later finding a religion that accepted my beliefs and inspired me to improve and grow spiritually… now that worked for me. My faith has changed through the years, and I allow it to change and progress. My belief in a Higher Power today is much different than it was ten years ago. I do not allow myself not to believe. If my belief system is no longer working, I need to find another one. I cannot afford not to have faith in God, for all of the above reasons.
I will offer one example of a type of belief in a Higher Power that I would imagine could work for many. Let’s say that you don’t believe in a God Almighty, Jesus or The Holy Trinity and you don’t know where else to turn. Surely you can agree that you are not God and that Something created, caused or is in some way responsible for all that is… this world, this solar system, this universe and so on. We’re here right, the earth and beyond? Let’s not waste time trying to figure out how everything was created but just know that it was and that there is some Force or Power that is the cause. I am not saying that this Force need be a God in your image or that It needs to hear your prayers or even that It cares what happens down here. I am just saying that there is some type of Universal Force that started everything and keeps everything going. Maybe it’s purely scientific. This is just one approach that may help some of you.
You may be thinking…so if I believe in this Universal Force example, what exactly am I having faith in? Who do I pray to? Who is going to answer my prayers? Well, in the example above I offered a different faith approach to that of the standard God Almighty. This method of faith varies in the sense that you would not be expecting to have your prayers answered in the traditional sense. You would be praying to relieve yourself of self, to let go of your wants and desires, to let go of the control, which you don’t actually have anyway. You would be having faith in what is, understanding that things just happen and they are out of your control, so why not accept? You need not be confused about what sort of God would allow all the bad in the world to occur because your faith is in the way things are, there wouldn’t be one God pulling the strings. You just need to know that there is something more powerful than you and you can trust that Force to do what It’s going to do, so why not just let go to It?
I’m not telling you that your belief in God or a Higher Power must be this way or that this form of faith is right and yours is wrong. I am simply offering it as an option, an alternative to aid those who are not content with their current faith in God or who are seeking another way, for whatever reason.
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