over and over I have been reminded of this quote:

"faith isn't faith until its all your holding on to"

I have it on a long sleeve t shirt in a box or in a drawer. It's ingrained in the depths somewhere in me. Its actually the theme of K-Wild, a part of Kanakuk where you go camp in the wilderness for an extended amount of time. oh if my 15 and 16 year old self could've seen what faith would look like. how it would grow and change and move. how it would be the steady ebb and flow along the shores of my life. how the numbing times of little faith and the desperate times of much faith would mark my life. how overflowing faith can equal overflowing joy in the midst of incredibly dark times. how I would hate it and want to rid myself of it yet desperately need it all in one moment. how it would hurt. Oh, how faith can hurt. It burns steadfastly and fiercely away things in my life that I want. Things that I want more then my Jesus many times. And the flame of faith comes in and burns them to ashes. And in that devastation, the faith still remains. And its all I can do to scream, 'No, I don't want this. I don't want faith to define all of this. It hurts too much.' And faith remains.

Because when I am faithless, He is faithful.




“Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last 'trick', whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school.

'But how?' we ask.

Then the voice says, 'They have washed their robes and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'

There they are. There *we* are - the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life's tribulations, but through it all clung to faith.

My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace.”
― Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

Go forth and live,
xoxo Lyd