Fairy Tales

For the first time in my life, I can say it and mean it: I am going to have a great marriage. That may seem odd, because thousands of couples get married each year, believing they'll have a great marriage. They think, "he/she will never hurt me," "he/she will make me happy," and "no disasters will ever befall us." On that premise, they marry, convinced they'll have a great marriage.

But they don't.

And I'm here to tell you, they weren't speaking in faith, they were speaking of a fairy tale. There is a difference.

There are people who live in blissful ignorance of both the truth and the facts. The fact is, he/she will hurt you and won't make you happy, you won't agree often, and disasters or at least "bad" things will happen. The truth is, the Lord is able and willing to heal all your hurts, you can have joy in the Lord, you can resolve your disagreements, and the Lord is able and willing to make every bad thing work for good.

Unfortunately, the multitude of couples who marry in ignorance soon wake up to the facts. They realize they have a lousy marriage-or at least one party knows it. Now, bogged down by the facts, they become blinded to the truth. It's easy to be blind to the truth, in the face of the facts. When everything around you looks bad-be it in a marriage, job, health, or financial situation-it is very difficult to see beyond that. It is too much work to see beyond our circumstances, and the self-discipline required to focus on the truth, even when we have seen it, is of Olympic-competition proportions.

The simple truth is that you don't really have faith until you have faced the facts and still accepted the truth of what God has promised. Abraham knew the fact that Sarah couldn't have a child. Right in the face of that, God told him that it was Sarah through whom the promise of a great nation would be fulfilled. When they first were married, it wouldn't have been faith to expect a large family from Sarah, it would have been blissful ignorance of her infertility. But now they've known the facts for years, and, aside from that, Sarah is beyond the age of having children, and now they're being asked to believe they'll be the parents of a multitude.

This same principle is true in any area. Individuals can start their own business, blithely believing the economy will be great and they'll have no problems, but that isn't faith. Faith is knowing the economy is bad, and knowing there will be problems, and taking hold of a word from God and plunging ahead anyway, confident that God will do something beyond what is humanly possible.

Now that I think of it, though, the fairy tales were filled with impossible scenarios, too. So face the facts, and then live your own, God kind of fairy tale.

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