Faith defined as Hope and Belief in Love

What is a promise without the hope of it becoming true one day? And do we hope or do we believe? Hope defined is a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen, and a belief is the state of mind in which a person is confident in the idea that something is already true without proof that it exists.

• Hope = expectation for something to happen

• Belief = state of mind that it is true without the evidence

• Love = intense feelings of deep affection

• Experience = practical contact with or observations of facts or events

This particular blog on Faith was very hard for me to write. In the small amount of time that I've been blogging, it's brought up a lot of repressed emotions for me. It's amazing how a simple act can allow me to reconnect with the hurt that is still lingering in my heart. Which was all brought on by re-opening my heart, over and over again. And each time that I opened my heart, it got broken a little more. I questioned, is it not enough that I communicated my story, forgave my situations, and stop being angry?

This sadness . . . it's a lot on me.

What I am learning is that the road to love requires faith and forgiveness on an ongoing basis.

How can you love, get hurt, forgive, then love again, then experience hurt (devastating hurt) and pain, and then believe that you will love again?

Faith is the belief of the hope that you can love again, purely and unconditionally.

God said, "If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing." ~ 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

"And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." ~ 1 John 4:16-18

So in doing my research and trying to understand the idea of faith, what came up was love. Faith has no value if love is not present.

How can I love someone I just met? How can I love someone who I barely even know? How can I love someone knowing that in loving them, I am exposing myself to being deeply affected in the most negative of ways?

Here is the message about love as it ties into faith . . .

Focus on your healing and you will get over your phobias, whatever they may be (that feeling of losing something very valuable to you). Let it go, for your highest good, so that you can focus on your goals this life time. Your Divine mantle is in place if you need it, call on the help of God. Get over your present fears and phobias as they relate to love. Learn to forgive.

The purpose of your relationships is to open your heart even more, so that you can understand how God the Father loves you. Those strong feelings that's emanates from you when you feel that you are "in love", multiply that by infinity, that's how God loves you. We need to understand that this life time. We need to understand love. The only way to even partly comprehend the idea of love is to experience it with one another. Because it's a part of our mission, which is to break the barriers that's blocking our success. That's the missing link.

Love is God. Love is God-like, love is a promise that brings hope and togetherness and forgiveness over and over, the way God continually forgives us.

Someone once told me that I broke his walls down long enough to get inside, and then I built the walls back up again. He let me into his heart space and I let him in too. Can you see the beauty in this?

Making yourself vulnerable to someone else can seem scary. All of those "what-if" questions come up. You get nervous. You become afraid. Then your fears make you insecure. Our goal is to heal from all of our insecurities, guilt and fear. And the only way to heal from it is to pull it from that place where we stuffed it.

So when you have that conversation that triggers pain in your heart, remember this is God providing the opportunity for you to look at that hurt, feel it once more, knowing that there is something greater on the other side of it, if you can just get past it. But it takes courage to look at a situation for what it is, and not the way you wanted it to be. It takes faith for you to know that you will get past it, and there will be better days ahead. There is nothing to fear, it's only opportunities to understand with compassion from someone else's point of view. Once you do that, the fear dissipates from your mind and your heart and you look at the situation for what it was, an experience, a practical contact with someone or observation of facts and/or events in your life. These experiences are to be taken as life lessons. Are we going to learn from them or ignore them? Are we going to heal our hearts and minds or stuff the situation somewhere and let the fear of it going wrong (not according to our standards) destroy us?

As Auguste Rodin once said, "Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely."

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I appreciate you all hearing my stories. It's like you are my counselors. For me to share so openly with the intent of helping someone else, I come to find that I am really helping myself. It's all connected.

Light and Love

S.L. Harris

Written and copyrighted by S.L. Harris

©2018 S.L. Harris