The Struggle

I have been thinking a lot lately about what it looks like to wrestle with faith.
What does it mean to wrestle, and is this a bad thing or a good thing? Thinking about how Jacob wrestled with an angel to receive blessing from the Lord...

Another wrestle is evidenced in the countless stories of Atheists who seek to disprove God's existence, or ignore him altogether, and end up face to face with the reality of God. This is true of the life of C.S. Lewis, famous for his series The Chronicles of Narnia and many other published works, Michael Reiss, a Biochemist who had grown up in a non-theistic household, and Johnny Lang, a musician who formerly hated Christianity and then was supernaturally encountered by the love of Jesus.

I am currently in the midst of staffing a School of Biblical Studies, and I watch as students struggle where I was two years ago. Ironically, I think this struggle has intensified in my walk with the Lord. Not a struggle with the thought of 'Is God real?' or 'Is He Good?' These questions have been answered with a resounding 'YES', irrevocably cemented in my mind and heart and are the reason for struggle.

This wrestle of faith I am referring to is, 'how do we respond, and how are we to walk in relationship with this God?' If what the Bible says is true, then there are countless implications in every day life.
I will narrow this down a little bit...
The greatest commandment that is given in the Bible, first in the Old Testament, expanded yet simplified by Jesus in the New Testament is to

 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

...Simple.

Right?...
But how? What does it look like to love the Lord in all of these areas, and what does it look like to love your neighbor as yourself? If as believers, we are given the Holy Spirit, and he helps us in this, how much is depending on the Lord, and how much is on us? To love the Lord with your heart- this is in the area of emotions. So, it's ok to be emotional about our relationship with the Lord. If he doesn't touch our hearts in this area, we might just need the Lord's help. 

If we are to love him with our minds - this is one that doesn't come so easy to understand for me - then we also need the Lord to help us with this. My tiny pea brain can't comprehend the living God let alone begin to work out loving him from my mind. Again- here we need the Holy Spirit. But I digress... Maybe it's just me.

Now the area of the soul? Wow. I can feel my limitations in my mind - Where to begin with this? Isn't it close to the heart? To love God with my soul - It sounds like what I feed my mind and heart is produced in the state of my soul. Ok - If I am anywhere close to understanding the meaning of the soul, then it seems I need to filter what comes into my mind and heart. Only the things that are good... Only the things that lead me to thinking about the Lord. But I live in a world that constantly assaults my senses. Is my soul affected because of this? Man... I need the Holy Spirit to do his work to sanctify me in my process of learning to love the Lord in this area of my soul.
My strength - I can see that the Holy Spirit gives strength to our mortal bodies. But this is the most interesting to me. We don't just sit back and say 'I love the Lord' and hope it to be true or to be cleaned up and transferred through the Holy Spirit to God... in our strength - we fight to love the Lord. It doesn't seem like these things are all that separate. But it is the 'how' that is produced from the struggle; how all these fit and how they should look.

The wrestle comes through how I examine my life, how others help me to examine it... and how I instruct others to live their lives in discipleship relationships.
May we wrestle with this as our aim... may our love for others be out of a place of walking out in this wrestle. May we not forsake loving the Lord with our hearts when we love him with our minds. May we seek the Holy Spirit's help to not become imbalanced or dichotomized in walking out loving God. May we struggle until we make steps and see the things that we don't know how to fit together operate as loving God with our entire being. This is what we are commanded to do.