*Chad Jarnagin

by Chad Jarnagin



Everyone has probably had questions without answers, been puzzled and frustrated at something that we just can’t make sense out of.

Almost everything in society is fact /control oriented. We as humans tend to get a form of temporary satisfaction from the control, facts, information we receive. Who likes to be left hanging on the edge of something unresolved? I mostly HATE it! I am seeing a trend in the way I live that involves almost every aspect of my life. I WANT RESOLVE and CONTROL! I don’t know many people that don’t.

There was a time not so long ago that I enjoyed life’s mysteries. I would basically embrace things that I didn’t fully comprehend. The world has tried to poison me (and YOU) to believe that we will find the peace and satisfaction we need in facts, logic, and control. In doing so this takes the magic out of faith.What if we decided that we weren’t going to let society tame our childhood belief in mystery the way that Paul talks of in Timothy 3:14? The Message translation says that “this life is a great mystery, far exceeding our understanding.” The life that follows Jesus will fall prey to the comprehension game if we don’t surrender ourselves to the mysterious awe of God that is possibly being beaten out of us by life itself.

We might be able to get a form of comfort from knowledge, but there will come a longing for supernatural mystery. That’s when I want to step back and let awe for the Creator overwhelm me. If He is the beginning and the end, we should have peace knowing that HE KNOWS ALL, and that we don’t have to. That probably won’t stop us from trying to know it all though. I guess we can hope and trust that through walking out our faith in a real world, God will meet us where we are and guide us with His Spirit to mystery, reality, logic, and truth.

I wonder what would happen if we would live impassioned to follow Jesus and not men. I wonder what would happen if men didn’t live by ego, pride, and control. Yeah it’s a mystery but it’s a mystery that I want to try and live with. “Faith is the evidence of things unseen”.

“Man can’t do without God. Just like you’re thirsty, you have to drink water. You just can’t go without God.” -Marley 

The NY Times posted an interesting article about changing faith and religion. 

More than a quarter of adult Americans have left the faith of their childhood to join another religion or no religion, according to a new survey of religious affiliation by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

 Read entire article HERE. 

 If this is the case, maybe there is a bigger picture to be seen here. So church culture, and religion as we know it is changing /evolving.

LONDON-University of Oxford researchers will spend nearly $4 million to study why mankind embraces God. The grant to the Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion will bring anthropologists, theologians, philosophers and other academics together for three years to study whether belief in a divine being is a basic part of mankind’s makeup.

“There are a lot of issues. What is it that is innate in human nature to believe in God, whether it is gods or something superhuman or supernatural?” said Roger Trigg, acting director of the center.

He said anthropological and philosophical research suggests that faith in God is a universal human impulse found in most cultures around the world, even though it has been waning in Britain and western Europe.

“One implication that comes from this is that religion is the default position, and atheism is perhaps more in need of explanation,” he said.

The study will be funded by the John Templeton Foundation, a U.S.-based philanthropic organization that funds wide-ranging research into questions that deal with the laws of nature and issues of spirituality. 

“The reason why many are still troubled, still seeking, still making little forward progress is because they haven’t come to the end of themselves. We’re still trying to give orders and interfering with God’s work within us”. A.W. Tozer