Circumstantial Faith

Circumstantial faith...This term hit me like a brick yesterday.  My struggles lately are all tied to two words that have been eluding me for four months.  It was a condition I knew...could verbalize...but didn't really know what to call it.  Pastor T explained it like this:  When things are going great and life is smooth, we are basically leading the God cheer!  We could sell the Christian life to anyone.  We are strong in our faith and we believe God is in control.  But when things start to slide South, we begin to waver in our faith a bit and start asking questions like, "Where are you, God?"  "Do you care about what I'm going through?"  But, when things hit rock bottom, we often begin to question the very existence of God and His love for us.  I have been on this wild faith teeter-totter for too long.  If I want the faith of the Legends of the Bible, I'm going to have to stop allowing my circumstances to rule my attitude.
If Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow (Hebrews 13:8)  That means that He is all-knowing and all powerful when I'm watching my kids sleep peacefully, and when I'm holding them while the house crashes in around us.  He is God when friends are showing His love to us with their kindness, and when we jump out of bed with night terrors.  He doesn't change, even though our circumstances do.  And I have to believe that He will be faithful and take these circumstances to shape us and grow us for big things.
If anyone ever tries to sell you the lie that Christians are guaranteed an easy life...run!  run far away.  That just isn't true.  We live in a fallen world.  And bad things happen to good people.  But, the difference between walking the road WITH Christ and WITHOUT is the difference between faith and bitterness.  I don't want to be bitter!  I want to lift my hands up in the air and ask God to pick me up and  keep me on the path of faith.  I want to go forward and chase after the things that matter to Him.  I still want to adopt!  Hubby still wants to adopt.  The kids still want to adopt.  I have no idea how our story will play out.  I don't know what the adoption story will look like.  We'll let God write it for us and orchestrate the events for us.  We'll just wait...with obedient hearts....for the next great thing. :)