As  a new and infatuated teenage follower of Christ, I was hungry to belong and to matter in my new community of faith. After spending months pacing around the perimeter of myYoung Life fellowship, I finally stepped across the line of faith, and risked declaring myself a believer in Jesus Christ.

I now felt like a legitimate Christ follower; however, I was not only hungry to belong–I wanted to matter. I wanted to stand out and make a difference. After observing the way the Christian body worked, I realized that the leaders played guitar and led singing during our times of praise and worship.

So, I set out to learn to play the guitar and began participating as a worship leader in our fellowship gatherings.  That satisfied me for a while. I then realized that the real power and respect seemed to go to those who could speak persuasively and teach the Bible. So, I dedicated myself to becoming a solid student of the Bible. Eventually, others noticed my gifts and I was offered the opportunity to develop into an inspirational speaker and Bible teacher.

This was a time in my life where I believed that faith was the same as certainty. I prayed and studied so that I could know God and understand his will for my life and the lives of those I was influencing. I considered doubt and resistance the enemy of faith. I valued thougths over feelings; the mind over the heart.  I thought that a significant apsect of my spiritual maturity was being certain of what I believed.  I also wanted to share the love of Christ and learn how to persuade  others to believe as Idid.

I think of this period of my development as my spiritual teens. I was filled with confidence, optimism, hope, and a sense of invulnerability. It was not until I was faced with the shocking reality of sexual abuse among my staff and students at Northwestern, that I began to experience an existential crisis of faith. At this time, I remember thinking that the Bible was not enough.

For the first time, I did not feel comfortable sharing a few verses with my students and praying with a survivor who was trying to recover from past sexual abuse. There was something more I knew they needed and I knew I did not know how to support them. I wanted to learn how to help these women to heal their bodies, souls and spirits. Little did I know that my hunger to help others was driven by my need for healing myself. I was prescribing the very medicine I would need when it cam time for me to confront my denial about my own abuse. This experience led me to become a counselor and found the Center for Christian Life Enrichment.

I now see that this shock to my faith was intended to jar me into the next stage of my spiritual development. I was moving from the black and white stage of youthful certainty into a more adult stage where I was facing all that I did not know and was not certain about in my life and walk with Christ.

It has been during this adult stage of my spiritual development that I have learned to appreciate the power of doubt. I was beginning to see that faith was not synonymous with confidence and certainty. Authentic faith requires us to move foward when we do not understand and when we have more questions than answers. If we knew that everything was as it should be, then what would be the need for faith.

We are more apt to rely on faith when we recognize that everything we do is spiritual. All of life, every thought and decision, is a demonstration of what we belive in. Faith has real significance when we must make decisions and step out when things seem to make the least sense. In many ways certaintyand formulas are the luxury of youth.

What do you think Abraham was feeling and thinking when God instructed him to sacrifice his son, Isaac? Would you have questioned for one milisecond whether you were willing to follow and obey God the way Abraham did? Who of us would have thought for one instant, that it was God directing us to murder our son. If I heard of anyone thinking that that message was from God, I would recommnend hospitalizing them instantly.

However, Abraham, moved forward in his obedience. I doubt whether he reached out to anyone for cousel because think he knew that no one in their right mind would support him in his mission. It was Abraham against every reasonable person on earth.  It was Abraham stepping out in faith. He knew the only one he could trust was who Paul Tillich referred to as the God above God–the complex and at times inscrutible being who is beyond our comfortable and predictable projections. Now, this is a fresh and disturbing look at faith.