TO THOSE OF FAITH
(Your Contract With God)
In this book, I had hoped to reach a destination which provided a clear, well integrated, accessible understanding about a life of faith. Because of a concern that the train never reached the station where many people reside, I thought one final attempt to summarize would be in order.
You shouldn't find it difficult to believe you and your soul have been designed and that you should live a life true to that design. After all, it's exclusively how you can experience anything and everything of personal value and significance. Let's assume you spend the necessary amount of time, effort and money to learn how you are put together, what you have to offer the world, and want from it.
As a person of faith, your experience with a sense of God may be limited to occasional times in a church service of worship, during crises, perhaps in quiet times of Bible study or meditation, or when you see something that strikes you as revealing the divine acting in human affairs. Most people in our country believe in God but see their faith as separate from their 'living'.
When a Pattern of Giftedness emerges from your lifetime of deeply satisfying achievements, you hopefully will conclude that God is offering you a living contract to embrace as your mission in life. In this agreement, God promises to faithfully help you fully realize that mission. Your obligation is to be faithful in pursuing it and remain accessible to His Spirit for needed correction, instruction, encouragement and forgiveness (all of which you will need). These are the essential terms. So all of your life becomes part of an ongoing relationship with God.
Seeking advice on a troubling issue; praise for unexpected blessings; forgiveness when confronted about the tackiness of your behavior; working through a difficult decision which you can't avoid; request for patience to take up a tedious but necessary process; a deeply felt prayer to be released from fear about a child's health, a competitor's success, a trace of blood; courage to take that step, that investment, that commitment, or to refuse that promotion, that deal, that affair, those easy pickings; gratefulness over a great meal and old vine wine to savor; an unforgettable experience where a boy was healed apparently because a praying woman simply would not let go of God; or when you lost a crippling anxiety haunting you for years in a few seconds of your personal visitation; more and more trust in God's mercy; more and more delight in your calling as you shuck off more and more what isn't you.And you simply can't stop praising your Jesus.
Copyright 2007 Arthur F. Miller
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