Imposter

Have you ever felt like an imposter? Like you don’t belong? Like someone will come along and say, you’re not really who you say you are? Thoughts or feelings don’t line up with your actions? Your past is a bit shady, you don’t have all the qualifications or maybe you type about the things of God and get irrationally upset about a dispute over garlic bread at dinner.

To the outside world, (or perhaps just inside the church walls), I know how to talk the talk and walk the walk, but on the inside, sometimes I feel like an imposter. Saying things I once believed wholeheartedly, now make me cringe a little at the thought of them coming out of mouth.

It kind of feels a bit like this…… I have set up a free camp at Apex Park. Free loading at Centenary lakes. Taking full advantage of the park benches, shelter and BBQ, an unlimited water supply on tap, making boats and floating them down the river with the kids, there is lush green grass and we fully embrace the beauty of the big and beautiful fig trees.

It is so good, it feels too good to be true, (especially when you are on a budget.) And when things seem too good to be true, they usually are. So while we enjoy all that there is to offer, free of charge, I glance sideways, waiting for the ranger to come and tell us to move on.

Have you ever felt like the faith you hold on the inside doesn’t match what you have so freely proclaimed on the outside? Proclaiming doubt doesn’t exactly win me disciple of the year but where does my “fake” faith fit into the Christian world? My doubting Thomas and sinking Peter?

As Matthew West so profoundly put it, 

“…..truth be told, the truth is rarely told.”

Matthew West

Just like life follows seasons, I feel like faith comes in seasons too. In some seasons faith seems so real you can touch it, in others it feels as though I am standing in a dessert with a hot westerly wind in my face kicking up a sandstorm. 

I want to live in the realm of unswerving faith, but if I am not honest with the struggle, how can God reach down and save me when i cry out “Lord, save me?” If we never get lost in doubt, if we never get unnerved by the gale force winds, we never give Jesus the opportunity to catch us and pull us back into the boat and we never know how much we really need Him.

Sometimes, even the mustard seed of faith I have can slip through my fingers.

I certainly don’t want to plant it. To choose to dig even a tiny hole and trust Him enough to place it in seems more than what I am capable of. How do I just hand over to Him what little faith I have? And you want me to plant it? Let go of it, bend over and plant it? How does one knowingly surrender what we desperately want to hold, to the deep? In a place that is personal, and dark, hidden, and unseen.

Where you now know what you held was not enough. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here. Doubting.

What if I just place it on the shelf? I will know where it is and I will know where to find it when I need it. It will be always be where it always has been and it will do what it has always done. It seems to have served me well so far. But what if I find my life has outgrown my faith? Or maybe my fear has outgrown my faith? Or maybe my faith was held in the wrong place? And then, if it can’t withstand a breeze was it even real to start with? Which one is it?

Even still, I don’t want to hand over my fear or my faith. Again, it seems so much safer just to hold them where I can see them, well within reach. Fear and I seem to have been best friends for as long as I can remember and faith just seems too costly. Faith always costs something.

I certainly don’t feel like sowing any seeds of gladness, watering them with praise and waiting expectantly with joy and thanksgiving. Ugh. 

How can one little seed sown so reluctantly even begin to fill the crevasses of one’s wandering heart anyway? How can a seed smaller then a pea become something so wondrous and astounding?

Hold on a second…. Isn’t it just like God to turn a seed mostly planted in doubt into a beautiful and majestic tree? Isn’t that the mystery of faith and the wonder of grace that we see littered through out the pages of our Bible? 

You know, we camped at such a free camp. A little country town in Tassie called Ellendale. It’s a lot more peaceful than Apex Park.

But after we had set up, I would monitor each car that slowly drove past or pulled in to use the toilets.  and there weren’t many. I was sure someone would see us and report us for camping illegally at a beautiful little park. 

Corey probably hadn’t, but I had envisaged having to pack up the camper we had just set up and somehow find somewhere else to go. However, as the days passed we thoroughly enjoyed all the luxuries our little free camp held, my mind stopped doing loops about how it was too good to be true, and instead I became so thankful for what we had been gifted.

I guess faith is a bit like that too. We can find our minds doing loops of worry and stress and doubt. How do we find the true imposter; faith or doubt?

Doubt is easy to believe and fear takes no effort on our part. It’s pretty easy just to let our minds loose as they fast forward to every worst case scenario or look back at the moment each scar was inflicted. 

Choosing faith is not easy. But since when does comfort produce trees of magnificence? And since when did gratefulness lead to an empty heart?

It is with these thoughts that I choose to hold onto to the seeds that I still posses and say this with as much conviction as I can possibly muster….. 

“Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for me with all your heart.I will be found by you, declares the LORD,…..”

Jeremiah 29:12-14a

May we continue to seek God when our faith is tangible, but also when it is not. May we, like Jacob, hold on to God and not let go until he blesses us. And in the meantime, may we be blessed enough to borrow the faith of a friend when the wind is blowing.