The spiritual life is one of ongoing maturity. As such, our faith is expected to grow from one season to the next. But all too often we allow our faith to stagnant and then grow frustrated when things don’t seem to work anymore. These moments of frustration are often opportunities for us to elevate our faith – moving from playing checkers to playing chess.
To be sure, checkers and chess are similar games, but also very different in terms of their complexity. And we will be forever frustrated when we bring a checker’s mindset to chess and expect the same results. The same is true when it comes to our faith.
For instance, perhaps early in our spiritual life, marriage, and even sexual development we saw many benefits in just adhering to the basic principles offered to us. We attended church and read our Bible, we were quick to forgive and overlook faults in our marriage, and we kept sex within the bonds of our marriage covenant.
We might then wonder what we’re doing wrong when God seems distant, our marriage begins to crumble, and secret sexual desires start to take root in our heart. Certainly, it’s helpful to go back to the basics many times over. But there’s also a need to continue growing toward maturity.
To elevate our faith means our spiritual life becomes an intimate life with God and not just a checkbox of disciplines, for example. And, in our marriage, we might wrestle through the deeper issues between us without bypassing these in the name of forgiveness. Likewise, we grow as we learn to celebrate the complexity of our sexuality without reducing it to mere black and white platitudes.
Whatever it looks like, we grow in our faith by embracing the weightier matters of life.
In the end, there’s a time to play checkers and a time to play chess. And it might be time to elevate your game when your understanding of faith leaves you frustrated and empty.
Photo by ConvertKit (Soon to be KIt) on Unsplash
