I had lunch and got to reconnect with an old friend and business acquaintance this week. It has been many years since we last spoke but we both realized how much we had in common and rekindled an old friendship very quickly.

What I also realized is what a strong man of faith he is. As we talked it came out repeatedly just how solidly planted in his faith he was. It gave me pause for reflection on my own faith.

For quite some time I have been on a journey of strengthening my faith. I still am prone to anxiety and fears which does not show a profound faith. It is one of my many thorns.

However, as we continued to talk about business and other topics we kept coming around to what was abundantly clear with my friend; He simply believed what God said he would do through the promises in scripture.

He was living SimpleFaith.Life!

This is something I have been considering for some time. The idea that we simply over complicate the idea of faith and spirituality.

The scriptures are pretty straightforward. Religion can complicate the message. This is why, too often, people get turned off by religion. We stack dogma around simple scriptural truth. Then we add in a dose of worldly complication until we feel lost, alone and confused. Which could not be further from the truth.

My friend was teaching me during our discussion just how much dogma and complication I had stacked around what should have been SimpleFaith.Life.

I put it in this format because we seem to need things formatted in “dot” format for them to be meaningful and relevant any more.

However, the way I have it denoted here you should read it as “Simple Faith is Life”.

When we begin to add anything to this equation we are only complicating that which was meant to be simple. And it was made simple because God knew we tend toward overcomplicating life when left to our own devices. He also made it simple so anyone could easily understand the message and the promises.

Why is this so? Why are we given to complicate life? Do we not realize that this complication is what divides us? We overcomplicate our lives and then we wonder at why we feel so confused and stressed. It is this that creates the have’s from the have not’s. It is boundaries we put up around sections of our lives that we do not want God interfering with. Because we think “I got this” right up to the point where “I don’t got this!”

I get it. It is easy to allow all of this to become what it is and forget the simple promises made in scripture. The world is continually marketing the next best way to get you what you want. Be it a better body, more money, better looks, more stuff, feeling better…whatever…

It’s all Snake oil!

Do you know what that is? It originated in the orient as an actual topical ointment for pain. However, by the time the concept reached the Americas it was nothing more than tonic traveling vendors used to sell in various forms. It was a placebo. It promised everything and delivered nothing.

Media is replete today with Snake Oil and we are buying into it more and more every day.

Instead of looking toward the things that are most valuable in our lives we are continually looking for the next best thing. Not the friends we have, the friends we want. Not the relationship we are in the one that beckons. Not the stuff we have but the stuff others have. It is a never-ending cycle of want, want, want.

Then we come to scriptural spirituality and God focus upon giving us what we most need and that is what is within us. What we need not what we want. There is no seeking to complicate life, just the opposite. There is a desire to make it peaceful and simple. To grant favor and succor where fear and pain currently reside.

Yet, we think nothing can be this simple. It must be Snake Oil. Nothing is so simple as to believe and to live life based upon the promises of scripture.

No, because we read into those scripture often more of what is not there than what is. We look to God as our magic genie to grant us our wishes, not fulfill only our needs.

I realize now, as my daughter and her husband are taking those scriptural promises to the world, how much I need to take them to heart. How much my friend showed me in a brief meal together that Simple Faith is just that…Simple.

Simple Faith is Life

SimpleFaith.Life