I have heard before that the strength of our individual faith does not matter so much as the strength of Him whom we put our faith in. It is not faith itself that saves, but faith in a God who saves. Yet I didn’t realize the sweetness of this truth until wrestling with my own doubts and the weakness of my faith.
A year ago, shortly before starting my senior year in high school, I began to worry. I have always been prone to fear and anxiety over the uncertain future. My fears revolved around the possibility of falling away from the Lord because of the busyness of schoolwork, extracurriculars, and stress. For the first time in my life, I held to daily quiet times, but I knew my consistency was aided by the virtual school year and summer break.
What would happen when I went back to in-person school, attempting to juggle a challenging courseload, leadership positions, dance, and college applications? What if, as my fears proposed, I gradually stopped finding the time to meet the Lord in His Word and through prayer? What if my faith slowly waned, growing cold and hard, proving that the grace I had come to know was a figment of my imagination, proving my faith to be false? What if I fell away?
These fears are not entirely unfounded: we should be aware of our tendency to drift, testing our own salvation (2 Cor. 13:5). Our hearts are “deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jer. 17:9). But my worries centered on my own ability to hold fast to Jesus. I forgot it is Christ (and not I) who holds me (Jn. 10:28). I could recite the five points of Calvinism, but I had forgotten the beautiful, efficacious, preserving grace that extends beyond mere doctrine and addresses our own doubts and fears.
Indeed, by His grace, I found myself in the opposite situation. I did have a busier schedule, and sometimes I did fall behind on my reading plan or cut my quiet time short. I did have many more late nights, cold mornings, and pressures. But it was in darkness, exhaustion, and anxiety that I saw my own weakness and turned to Him in greater desperation and dependence. My relationship with Jesus grew deeper and richer as I learned to trust Him in my particular struggles. Praise God that He works all things together for our good (Rom. 8:28)!
I write this to remind myself of His faithfulness to me as I prepare to start college. I am painfully forgetful of both biblical truths and my own experience of His grace―the very same fears that I felt last year have begun to gnaw at me again. Will my faith survive the tumult of moving across the country? Will I be able to rejoice in Him when I am so far from my church family? Will I fall away?
Yet His grace has already abounded to me as I face these doubts. In bringing them to Him and finding sustaining truth in His Word, He is drawing me nearer into a childlike, trusting faith. So I can say with Paul, “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:3-5).
Yes, He will keep me. My faith is small, but it is in a big God.