A Letter to Friends Who Don't Share My Faith

Dear Friend,

I have something to say that might come as a surprise to you: You don't have to believe for me to be okay. Yes, you heard me right. You don't have to share my faith for me to be okay. Do I want you to share my faith? Do I pray for your salvation? Yes. But your belief or lack thereof does not effect my salvation.

You see, my friend. Christ died for all. His substitutionary atonement is sufficient to cover all of my sin and reconcile me to him. My salvation depends not on my proselytizing you or winning you to salvation, but on His finished work.

Sure, your lack of faith may cause me distress. I want to share eternity with you! My connection with Christ does not depend on your salvation, though. It depends on the presence of the Holy Spirit, which God the Father gifted me at the moment of my conversion.

What do I see as my job, then? I want to share the truth with you in love (Ephesian 4:15). I want to, with God's help, live out a faithful life before you. I want to allow God to comfort me when my heart hurts because you don't believe.

What don't I want to do? Take out my distress on you. Make you think that you have to believe to somehow pacify me or up my accolades in the kingdom. My faith is my faith. If you choose to believe on Jesus for salvation, your faith will be your faith. 

Our friendship, I believe, is because Christ put us in each other's paths. Will it be for your salvation? I sure hope so. But if it isn't, I still value you. I believe that you are a unique creation of God, saved or unsaved, and I want you in my life.

Inspired by:

Chef Kibby. (Host). (2025, February 12). Escaping the distress cycle. (No. 5) [Audio podcast]. In Hungry for connection. https://chefkibby.com/podcast/episode-05-escaping-the-distress-cycle

Dear 2020

Dear 2020,

You have not been the year we'd dreamed you'd be. And you're not over yet. I didn't expect your year to be easy, but I had vision, goals. After all, 2020 is perfect vision, right? So far, it seems you have been anything but.

My word for 2020 was faithful. The end of 2019 was challenging and I felt unprepared for all 2020 would throw at me (even before COVID). I wanted to be faithful in what was set before me, though. Faithful to God. Faithful to my husband. Faithful in my work. Faithful to challenge myself and have some adventures. Well, let's just say 2020, you have been giving me a run for my money.

This year has been one of the hardest years of my faith yet. Maybe it is because I am finally feeling my feelings instead of dissociating from them. Maybe it is because I have been separated from people who helped keep my faith on track. I don't know. It's just been hard. I've felt so guilty for my selfishness. I've wondered if my seeming inability to get over my selfishness means I am not saved or incapable of being saved. I have had many dark days and nights. I have struggled with hopelessness. I try to keep up with spiritual disciplines like prayer and Bible reading, but even those sometimes seem empty. Faith full? I'd say not. Faithful, as in walking with what I believe? Maybe in action, but often not in words to myself or my emotions.

I knew marriage would be hard, but boy is it! Not because I married a hard person, but because I am a hard person. Marriage constantly exposes my selfishness. I find myself angry at or with the man I love far too often to count. I don't approach marriage as team. I try to go it alone too much of the time, and then get ridiculously needy. Have I been faithful to my husband? Yes. He feels like family now more than ever! Have I been faithful to my marriage, committed to improving it? In some ways yes. In some ways, no. I definitely don't get an A grade.

Work, well, it's always been hard, but this round especially. Balancing marriage and work has been more than I bargained for (still on my side, not my husband's). I wanted to be faithful, though, to put in my time and hours well, and leave the rest up to the Lord. Then came COVID and move to online work. I am still working, but faithfully? Most days are a struggle and I pray for strength to get through.

Adventures, oh adventures. I signed up for two big races (to me!) this year and was more aggressively training than ever before. Then one and both got cancelled. I quit running for a month. I haven't quite picked back up where I left off. To be honest, my body continues to show signs of stress and strain and I don't want running to add to it. I miss the races and tangible goals, though. Maybe someday. Whether I am being faithful to adventures and faithful to my body and its needs is up for debate.

Perfect vision? Nah. 2020 hasn't been a year for that, at least according to my vision. It has been a year for seeing myself and my sin more clearly. It has been a year of realizing more and more how much I need Jesus and salvation. Have I been faithful? No, well not as much as I wanted to be, could be, or should be. But this year is showing me how much I need faith, and need to be full of faith. And if that's what life is all about, maybe 2020 is a year that will help me see more clearly after all. 

*This post was inspired by Debra Fileta's August 28th Instagram post.

Is COVID-19 the Death Knell?

In the midst of rapid rises in the number of COVID-19 cases in my county, I have been contemplating my own mortality with increasing regularity. I ask myself:

-Have I done everything I wished to do? 

-If I die, will my husband have what he needs? 

-Do I want a DNR? 

-Do we need a will? 

These thoughts nearly bring me to tears. But then I remember that COVID-19 is not a terminal diagnosis. I don't even know for sure that I've been exposed to it yet. It isn't a sure death knell.

As I thought further recently, I thought of the verse, "To live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21). I pictured myself at heaven's door, with my life being weighed on the scales. I saw the weight of my sin thud my side of the balance to the floor. But then I saw the weight of Jesus' perfect sacrifice land on the other side, catapulting my sins far, far away. (Psalm 103:2 says that God removes our sins as far as the east is from the west.) That comforted me. Should I go, when I go, I know where I am going: to heaven, a place where no trace of COVID-19 or its wrath remain.

COVID-19 is serious. We are taking precautions we can, but we still may get it. But even then, COVID-19 it isn't a sure killer. You know what is the death knell? Sin. We're all infected by it. We all test positive. Sin separates us from God here on this earth and in the life to come unless we have a relationship with Jesus.

Maybe this seems a bit serious or even preachy, but seriously, if you don't know Jesus, take care of it now. I have. We're all going to die, of COVID-19, or something else. And if we die without Jesus as Savior, we're going to experience even greater suffering than we currently have.

So please, if you don't know Jesus:

-Repent of your sins.

-Believe in Jesus and his perfect atoning sacrifice for salvation.

-Confess that Jesus is Lord.

Do this today. Do it before COVID-19 or something else takes you from this life. Salvation by grace through faith in Jesus is the only thing that can save you from the sure death knell of sin.

The Happiest Day of My Life

It’s been many months since that blissful (I mean nerve-wracking?) day. It seems like eons ago...the preparations, the family, the friends, walking down the aisle. That day, our wedding day, was a special day. It was a day of a lot of firsts. It was a day of a lot of change. But it was a good day, a special day, marrying the man I loved in front of so many people I loved. But that day wasn’t the happiest day of my life. A happier day had to come first.
The happiest day of my life is a day I actually don’t remember, the day I accepted Jesus as my Savior. The day I accepted Jesus was the day I changed from old to new. The day I accepted Jesus was the day I traded this temporal life for eternal life. The day I accepted Jesus was when the Holy Spirit filled me.

I wouldn't have met my husband had I not known Jesus. We wouldn't have been able to make the commitment of marriage without the model of Christ's love for the church. I wouldn't be able to keep on keeping on in the hard days of marriage without the conviction and power of the Holy Spirit.

My wedding day wasn't the happiest day of my life. But since marriage images Christ and the church, I’d say that my wedding day was the second happiest day of my life. My wedding day gave me a chance to participate in Christ in His glory and glorification here on this earth, and that's pretty awesome.

It's My Birthday!

It's my birthday! No, not the anniversary of the date I came into the world, but an arguably more important date: the date I was reborn and received the gift of eternal life. I don't remember that day 27 years ago, but my Mom does. She says that we were playing in the front room one day when I started up a discussion with her. Apparently, I had a tendency to ask the question “Why?” about anything and everything. We got on the subject of Jesus, and Mom asked me if I wanted to have a relationship with Him. I said yes, and she prayed with me to ask Jesus to be my Savior, forgive my sins, and secure eternal life in heaven. Mom says that my life changed after that. I would come and ask forgiveness for being bad. I would pray. I lived differently. Mom viewed October 9, 1991 as a red letter date, and it was.

Because I don't remember the day of my salvation, I have at times doubted my salvation. I have wondered if my prayer was "enough," and if I needed to pray it again. I did pray the "salvation prayer" again at least once, and I also rededicated my life to Christ in my pre-teen years. Through it all, God was and has been constant. He has been my rock in the storm, my light in the dark, and my hope amidst the hard.

Though I have been a Christian for as long as I can remember, I didn't really worry about dying until I got what I refer to as the "death plague" while in graduate school. It was a stomach flu that lasted a week, taking me to the ER and leaving me so weak I could barely walk. I literally prayed for God to take me home that week, and for the first time, I really felt confident in my salvation. Thank goodness God didn't take me home, and I am still here, but I was ready.

Believing in Jesus doesn't necessarily make my life easier. In fact, sometimes it makes things harder, because I know how good God created life to be, and how bad it often feels. But I believe in Jesus anyway, not as a crutch, but as The Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). Because without Jesus I have NO life.

So here's to 27 years of the gift of life eternal, and to many more should the Lord see fit. Thank you, Jesus.

Who I Serve and Where I'm Going

Arizona lost a public servant this past Saturday. Regardless of political or religious party, I think it's hard to argue that John McCain was anything but a servant. He was first a member of the United States military, then a POW, a senator, and a presidential candidate. As Arizona and the nation have mourned his loss, I have seen his likeness and life story posted everywhere. And the one burning question I have is, "I wonder where he is now."

John McCain was not overtly religious. He was more about politics than asserting his personal beliefs. But he is still a human with a destiny, and I hope He is with Jesus.

McCain's daughter Meghan posted the following on Instagram and it gives me some hope:

But in my mind, stating that McCain is with the "Author of All Things" still does not make it clear what he believed. It's not my place to judge, it's just that I care where he went.

As I've reflected on the uncertainty of McCain's whereabouts, I've thought about my own life. I am not always open about what I believe, nor overtly expressive about whom I serve. I have faith in God through the Lord Jesus Christ, but I'm not shouting that from the street corners. I believe that I'll go to heaven because of what Christ did on the cross to pay for my sins, but I don't want to beat people over the head with it. Rather than advertising my faith on back of my t-shirt or the rear window of my car, I hope live in a way that demonstrates Who I worship and where I'm going. 

Whenever I go, I want people to know that I serve Jesus 

and that my forever home is in heaven. 

May the Holy Spirit continue His work in me to make that truth evident.