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Where to Find Lasting Faith

August 6, 2018 by Alyssa Poblete Leave a Comment

Where to Find Lasting Faith

There is a cool and unwavering confidence I sense from people who have walked closely with God for decades longer than I have. It’s like speaking to someone about a mutual friend whom they happen to know far more intimately than I do. And after walking so closely with him they know his character, they have seen his word ring true time and again, and have sensed his fidelity to them through all the seasons of change. They trust him.

Although they speak with great faith, they aren’t exempt from pain or hardship and never pretend to be. These are friends who are battling cancer, loss of a spouse, infertility, wayward children, financial stress, and caring for a loved one who has long since lost their faculties to mental decay.

Their words of hopefulness and assurance are not merely platitudes they recite to others to avoid the harshness of reality. No, their confidence is something tangible, familiar, and hard-won.

In the wake of losing his spouse, a friend once said to me, “Alyssa, God has been faithful to me thus far, and he will be faithful to me until the end. I have no doubt that he is still good.” I’ve often asked these friends of mine how they can respond with such an unmoving sense of assurance in light of the hardness of their circumstances. Many have often insisted that this confidence comes in waves, repeated reminders that God is really as big and powerful as he has been in the past. But that they are not exempt from moments of doubt. The thing that has always bolstered them up though, given them a more solid and unwavering confidence, has been a consistent and aggressive pursuit of knowing God. The more they know him, the more they can say, “thy will be done,” because they have tasted and seen that he is better than anything else their hearts may desire. I long for this kind of faith.

What my friends have taught me is that the pathway to great trust is not to ignore the realities of life, nor is it to blindly agree to trust in some unknown source of good. To trust in someone or something you must know the character of the one being trusted.

Over the past year, some friends and I started a challenge called the #biblestorychallenge. Our goal: simply to read through the whole Bible from cover to cover for the purpose of understanding the overall storyline of scripture—to grasp the unifying plot that weaves itself through every book. Our hope is to know Him more.

What I love is that the Bible is not just a nice story, it is a history that has marked the character of our God for centuries. What I didn’t realize when I started this challenge was how real, tangible, and confident my faith would become from rehearsing God’s faithfulness to others.  I have seen who he was to the to the wayward and sinful Israelites, the rebellious and passionate King David, the confused and longing Abraham and Sarah, the ignored and silenced prophets, the locked up and abandoned Joseph, the timid and unfaithful disciples. To all of them, he was faithful.

Over the years I have often feared the reality that the great common denominator among all of us is that we live in a fallen world, where we will meet trials of various kinds. We are guaranteed hardship in unique ways, no one is exempt. But we are also guaranteed a faithful God.

This is why Bible intake is so necessary. I love how Jen Wilkin said it recently: “Devotional reading is like chamomile tea—a soothing drink before slumber. But no one drinks chamomile tea before going to war. We need stronger drink to combat the world, the flesh, and the devil. We need battle cries as well as lullabies. We need the full counsel of Scripture.”

So brothers and sisters, feast on his word. Pour over its pages and watch with eager eyes as God proves his faithfulness to you. “Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him” (Proverbs 30:5).

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Haddon took me on a date this morning. He bought m Haddon took me on a date this morning. He bought me a vanilla latte from my favorite coffee shop, took me to the petting zoo, humored me with endless rounds of “Would You Rather,” and talked about his goals for the summer (which include convincing @chrispoblete and I to get him a hamster 🤦🏻‍♀️🙅🏻‍♀️😬). The entire time he kept saying, “I just want to do what you want to do mom. It’s your day.” He’s going to make one amazing husband someday, but for now I’m soaking him up all for myself. 😍
Parenthood requires a whole lot of grit and grace Parenthood requires a whole lot of grit and grace these days. It is hard work and even our best efforts leave us face to face with our lack at the end of the day. We have weeks where the physical and emotional demands mean that we hardly get a chance to exchange a few intelligible words to one another. But we do get a whole lot of time to observe each other and I’ve never gotten a better picture of your character than I do now.
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I catch you laughing at our kid’s corny jokes and jumping in whenever they throw an impromptu dance party. Scratch that, I see you initiating impromptu dance parties even on the days you’re exhausted. I see you taking time to stop and answer every “why” question even though it would be so much easier to say “because I said so.” I see you working late into the night just so you can join us for family dinner, even though I try to insist you get your work done so you can get a good night’s sleep. I love watching you teach our kids about Jesus and how you take the time to explain even the hard things that would be so much easier to bypass for some other day when they’re older. You are unflinching in your resolve to be a present parent and show up even when it requires so much sacrifice to do so.
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The hard parts of parenting are often unseen and unapplauded but I see you and I couldn’t be more grateful and more in awe of you than I am today. I love you so much Chris Poblete. Happy Father’s Day!
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👆Wrote this two years ago but I’ve seen this fleshed out on a million more occasions and it feels more fitting today than it even did back then.
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@chrispoblete
A stomach virus hit our home this week. It took us A stomach virus hit our home this week. It took us all by storm. Our schedules were cleared, our laundry pile turned into an avalanche (I’m not kidding it toppled out of all the  hampers as we used up every towel and switched out soiled outfits every couple hours), and we spent our days doing the dance between caretaker and patient depending on who was feeling worst. When I was at my weakest I had the best caretakers in the world, including little Haddon serenading me in bed. There is nothing better. 😍😭💛
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Sickness has a way of reminding us of our utter fragility. We are far more vulnerable than we care to admit. When our bodies break down, it thrusts us into the great reality that every ordinary day that our body functions as it should, it is an act of abundant mercy.
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Anyways, the Poblete family is sobered by the reality that our bodies, as intricate and incredible as they are, may not always serve us in the ways we hope in the days ahead and we are rejoicing in the gift of health we have today. 🙌💛
If you would have told me a few years ago that I’d be homeschooling my kids for the 2020/2021 school year, I would have shuddered. Nothing sounded less appealing to me.

But when it became plain that this move was the next right thing for us, there was grace there for the work ahead. 

What began as a duty quickly became one of my deepest delights.

We spent this last year learning how to read books and solve math equations. We wondered at God’s handiwork in the water cycle and our galaxy. We took countless nature hikes and trips to the zoo with friends. We prayed a whole lot and rehearsed phrases like “Pobletes do hard things” and “practice makes progress” over and over again. 

It was a good good year filled with grace and new expressions of dependence, and there is no one more shocked about it than me. #gracealone
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Homegoing is the online home of Alyssa Poblete, a writer in Southern California.

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