Plopping In Hover Chairs

Let's just say that we're sitting here together today having coffee when the conversation begins to turn to something that I have been working on lately and excitedly I begin to tell you about my new invention, the hover chair!

Sounds amazing, doesn't it!  

Still, you remain skeptical, as you should; all of the chairs that you know of have legs firmly planted on the ground.  I begin to bore you with scientific details of gravitational pull and magnetic forces, bore you with engineering specs and diagrams (yes, if you know me at all, you have to do quite a bit of imagining at this point).  I do begin to peak your interest a bit, however, when I start to explain how you will never feel more comfortable in a chair, more supported, more secure, more in correct bodily alignment, than in the hover chair.  Can it be?  A chair that finally doesn't hurt that achy back you have been living with all this time?  Finally I go into my back room and bring it out, the hover chair!

It's amazing!  Here is an actual chair, hovering above the floor.  You get up out of your "chair from the past" with its "legs" and walk over to examine more closely.  You get down on your hands and knees and look underneath.  You move your arm back and forth, under and around and over the top of the hover chair; you find no hidden strings or attachments of any kind, and yet there it is, just hovering.  

I invite you to try it out; "go ahead, sit in it."  

Visions of walking in the front door after a long day at work or school, dropping your things by the door and plopping down into your favorite chair come to mind.  It hits you now that not once have you ever thought about that chair holding you up, it just always has, but this is different, this is new.

You may not be able to plop your full weight down in the hover chair without thinking about it, but you do push on it.  You start with one finger, you test the chair's ability to stand up under just a couple of pounds of downward pressure.  Then you try your whole hand, so far so good.  You lean on the chair, still it doesn't budge.  Now for the commitment.  You stand beside the chair and ever so slightly shift your balance towards it.  If anything goes wrong, you will still be able to catch yourself at this point.  You slowly begin to bend lower until, contact.  You are now in that very awkward and thigh burning position of a partial squat.  You won't be able to hold it for long, but you can still recover if everything goes crashing to the ground.  First it's just contact, then one cheek is solidly on the chair, your weight is beginning to shift past the point of no return; if this is a prank, you won't be able to save yourself now, and...nothing.  The chair is holding you.  It works!  It's actually quite comfortable.  Of course your muscles are still tense, you're ready to spring forward if anything gives way, but it's holding.  Now you begin to shift your weight back and forth, you bounce up and down, everything is good.  The hover chair works!

I offer to let you take it home with you, try it out for a while, see if you like it.

You get the hover chair home and you can't help but show it to your family and neighbors and friends.  They come and see it for themselves, test it out, slowly sit in it.  It's the talk of the neighborhood.

Over time you begin to notice that the anxious feeling, the tense muscles, the little surge of adrenalin that you feel every time you sit in the hover chair is beginning to dissipate.  You are beginning to trust that the hover chair is actually able to do what I claimed that it would.  You are also beginning to receive comments about how you seem to have a little more spring in your step; you look like you have more energy; you seem to be standing straighter, taller even.

One day, you arrive home after a particularly grueling time at work or school, you drop your things by the door, you plop down into the hover chair, you kick your feet up...wait a second...you realize you didn't even think about it this time!  No tight muscles, no surge of adrenaline, no thought whatsoever as to whether or not the hover chair would actually hold you, you just plopped down!  When did this shift happen?  What made you stop thinking about it?  When did you decide to stop wondering if the hover chair would actually hold?

When was your skepticism replaced by faith that the chair would actually do what I claimed that it would?

Who knows?  The facts are:

1. I claimed the chair would hold under you.
2. You chose to test out that claim to the best of your ability, and a little more so every day.
3. The chair did not once ever fail you.
4. Now you have developed a new pattern in life of just plopping into the hover chair without even thinking about it.

This is how faith works.

If hope is anticipating the future with joyful expectancy, then faith is living today as if what I claim to be true about the future actually is in fact true.  

This living by faith, this living today as if my claim of a good future is actually true may well happen slowly over time, a bit more every day.  This living by faith may, and actually most likely will, come with placing a finger on it to see if it will hold up...then one cheek...still with some muscle tension...still with a slight surge of adrenaline.  Over time as I begin to exercise that faith, as I begin to put it into practice and His claims hold up under weight, then I will begin to think about the process less and less and it will begin to become a fact in my life.  He can be trusted.  He will not allow me to fall.  He will in fact hold me.

It has to begin somewhere though.  It must begin with some effort on my part.  It must begin with me choosing the hover chair over the old chair.  It must begin with repentance, a rethinking of everything.

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." - Hebrews 11:1

Faith is not blind.  Faith is not a leap off the edge into nothingness.  Faith is not a step in the dark.  Faith is having assurance and conviction that He will in fact do what He claims He will do.  Faith is not that there will be sure footing, faith is that He will hold me up even when the sure footing is gone.  Faith is not that I will be able to see the outcome, faith is that He will lead me to the best of all outcomes.  Faith is not that all of my problems and pains and difficulties will be resolved like a Disney fairytale, faith is that He will use troubles of all kinds to develop in me the character to handle the worst that life can offer and still have joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and self control and gentleness and faithfulness and love and love and love...

Faith is where the rubber meets the road.  Faith is dirt under our fingernails.  Faith is sore muscles.  Faith is daily crucifying my TV and magazines and self help gurus with all of their velvety advertisements and vague promises of salvation found in money and toys and retirement packages and vacations and...and...and...

Faith is having the hope that God does in fact have a plan for all of His good creation and I want to live today joining with Him in His work to bring it about.  I don't just pray "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in the heavens" but I actually order my day to be a part of that happening in the very space that I occupy.

This is why James can claim that "faith without works is dead." (James 2)  Faith is simply the meat, the substance of hope.  If your claims of hope do not change the very course of your day; how you look at your circumstances, how you treat those around you, how you order your finances, how you do your business; then you don't have faith, you are simply posturing.  

Jesus called us to something more wonderful and more grand than we have settled for in most of our religions today.  He called us to be a part of something new and yet old.  He called us to join with Him in His Kingdom movement.  He called us to repent, to rethink our whole approach to our lives.  He called us to lay down our lives, to join Him on our own crosses as we crucify all of our wrong thinking and selfishness and self preservation and self-centered desires for something bold and powerful and new.  His promise, His guarantee by leading the way Himself on His own cross, is a new life.  A life beyond compare with these shallow shadows of lives that we so desperately cling to now.  He calls us to give up our chairs with legs for hover chairs that redefine "the way things should be".  He calls us to embrace a new normal.  He calls us to embrace a new reality.  He calls us to embrace that which is unknown that we might become a part of making it well known. 

This is faith, it's plopping in the hover chair and realizing that you didn't even think about it this time.  You weren't able to do it at first, but you were willing to try, and He was very ok with that effort.  After all, He is the one that gave you the strength to try in the first place...and that is grace.

We'll talk about that next...