There is a vast difference between "trust" and "faith", although we often confuse them. Trust is built by a process, by experience; we trust people only on the basis of recent past behavior. "Trust" on any other basis is an illusion. "Faith", on the other hand, is a decision. It is an act of the will, like love. You cannot gather enough evidence to prove (or disprove) it. Of its very nature, faith is based on what we cannot know empirically. As usual, greek is much clearer about this than english is. It actually used different words to express these different ideas. the greek verb ginoskeo (γινοσκεο) means "to know", but it implies knowlege gained through experience...it is a relational word more than an intellectual one. Pisteo (πιστεο) is "to have faith" or "to believe", often with no extensive experience to substantiate the belief. This is the topic of Hebrews 11, and the examples that follow it display this clearly. There are still other words in greek that further subdivide the meaning "to know" into other specific catagories of knowlege.
Both trust and faith require a decision from us, and both must be maintained in some way. Certainly there is intentionality in both. When we're not intentional about the process behind building trust, the problem is not usually that we don't trust anyone...it's that we trust everyone. This is an unbalanced and unstable situation that has a tendency to lead us to disappointment and cynicism. interestingly, when we're not intentional with faith, the opposite thing happens. We wait and wait, searching for more and more evidence, and when nothing happens (because we're missing the point), we become more and more sure that there's nothing to have faith in. There's nothing more frustrating than to not be trusted by someone against all evidence to the contrary. I see it in relationships more frequently than I'd like. As the result of bad past experience, one partner simply refuses to take the final step and trust the other, no matter how faithful the other has been. The hard part is, no matter how much counselling they get, the essential "fix" never changes...he/she will eventually have to take the step into trust. We can make it easier perhaps by dealing with the reasons why trust is so difficult, but we can't change the solution.
Someone at the Mission made this comment today: "I don't feel bad about not wanting to trust God...what I feel bad about is that He can't trust me." I had to think about that one for a while. Does God "trust" me? What does that mean in the context of my fallenness? I think the answer is that it's a meaningless question. God is infinite; God is perfect and sinless..."trust" on those terms would require me to be the same. Jesus already paid that penalty for the fact that I'm not, and never will be. He doesn't have to trust me. Paul makes it clear in Romans that that doesn't give us license to do whatever we want, "that grace may abound", but it does allow us to take a deep breath and be truly "sure of the things hoped for..." (Heb 11:1).

It's hard to love people deeply and genuinely because to do that, you have to love them as they are without any hope that they will change. If you can't love someone as they are, right now, at this moment, you will never love him/her. The mistake that's made all the time by Christians, with all the best intentions, is loving pre-Christians for who we hope they will become, post conversion, rather than who they actually are right now, at this moment. Unfortunately, this is anything but love, and the other person, particularly postmodern pre-Christians almost always experience it as a bait and switch. The end (conversion) is worthy, but the means by which it is achieved can easily end up hurting the object of our well-meaning affection far more than never knowing us could have, and who will they blame? Us? Not usually. Typically they blame God, directly or indirectly.
That doesn't mean that we condone poor behavior. I teach at a local Mission, and I see poor behavior all the time. It breaks my heart when one of the resident students goes out and lets loaded or something. I hate it, and it never gets easier, no matter who it is. Sometimes they come back though, or I run into them on the streets, so I get a chance to love them a little. I resist the urge to scold the behavior. Instead, we talk about why it happened. I'm far more interested in that. The addiction is just a symptom of the real problem..this is true for lots of behavioral stuff. The thing is, in almost every case, this person already knows that he's screwed up. His sense of failure and shame is very, very deep. I can love him deeply and genuinely if I can love him at that moment, not trying to change him, but at the same time understanding that God is at work. If I can understand that, then I'm free to love anyone at any time, at any point in their journey to Christ.
This will take some practice. Be quiet, inside and out. Try to connect with how much, how deeply God loves this person, exactly as he/she is right now, at this moment. Step into the cage. This is your chance to love someone without any hope that you'll get anything in return. This is love. This is mercy. This is Jesus.

The book of Job actually has two story lines, not one. The first layer is the well known story of Job, his trials and his righteous relationship before God. The next layer down is the story of Job's three friends, and this tends to get lost because the point is much less obvious. you can be sure though, that the author of Job intended for both stories to be told at the same time, which is typical for any Semetic writing of that time or now. Jesus employs this same story telling technique during the parable of the Prodigal in Luke 15. We make the story about the Prodigal, but Jesus makes it about both sons. Read Luke 15...the NIV starts with, "Now there was a man with two sons...". Same technique here in Job.
So, back to his three friends. At first they do the right thing. Confronted with Job's suffering, they go and they sit with him in the ashes of his home. There are a lot of interesting things happenning here linguistically that we completely miss in english. One of them is the use of a greek word that's used very broadly to mean "to comfort" or "comfort" or "comforting". In this case it's parakalesai (παρακαλεσαι). It comes from the same word that we get parakalete from, which is the word Jesus used when he tells the disciples he's going to send a "helper" after he leaves...the Holy Spirit. It's the same root word that Jesus used in Matthew 5 when he says that those who mourn will be comforted. Culturally the word literally means "to draw alongside" or "to sit beside", and has little to do with our idea of "comforting" now. It has a very intimate, personal connotation...it involves suffering with someone. As Leah Coulter puts it, stepping into the cage rather than dragging them out. This is the biblical idea of comfort, and it can only be worked out in community, person to person.
So, Job's friends start off pretty good, but they just can't resist the temptation to "fix" it. There's a couple of other things going on here too, but we need a little background to understand them. Job could be the oldest book in the Bible...opinions vary on the subject. The theology and cultic understanding and pracitice are very ancient though, that much is clear. At this point their theology would have been that a person was either blessed or cursed by God based on the person's behavior. If you do good things, God blesses you with a good life. If you do bad things, you get sick, your animals die, etc. It's a bit more nuanced than that, but you get the idea. This is Job's friend's starting point theologically. Their actions are motivated by a couple of things:

1. They obviously think that Job's done something but he's hiding it. It's a reasonable assumption on the surface of things. It's been my experience that people do exactly this all the time. Welcome to humanity after the Fall. The problem is this: what we know about people we know from past behavior. We can say, "I trust someone until the person gives me a reason not to", but that's not trust...that's faith. Job's past behavior should indicate to his friends that he's telling the truth. They have plenty of experience with Job, and have no reason not to believe him. So something else is going on, which leads us to...
2. Here's the thought between the lines, the one Job's friends are truly motivated by but don't want to express: If Job is as good as they know he is, and he's suffering for apparently no reason, then what about me? Ahhhh, now there's a motive that justifies the interrogation in the next 33 chapters. Of course, what they're missing is perspective, which God, in a grand theophany, offers beginning in chapter 37.

In this age, as the Kingdom has come, but not in its fullness, we still experience suffering and see a world "groaning" under the weight of it, as Paul puts it. We want to "fix" things, but this is almost never the right thing to do. God fixes things...Jesus shows up, he touches someone, and that person is never the same again. All we are is the warm-up act. What Jesus wants are comforters and helpers...hoi paraκaletoi (οι παρακαλετοι). What we get when we have a whole bunch of people trying to fix each other is generally a whole bunch of messed up people. Sit. Be quite. Listen, don't talk. Resist the urge to fix it.

So, my first entry into the wide world of blogging. Now you'll know what the pastor *and* the worship leader are thinking. More than you ever wanted to know, I'm sure.
I'm Frank, the worship leader here at the Vineyard Church of Savannah. My wife, Hannah and I planted this church with the senior pastor, Kent, and his wife Janna just about 3 years ago.
What a journey this has been. The first thing I learned, and probably in the top 5 most important things was that there is intention in relationship. I was confronted immediately by how difficult it was to feel engaged by God, or to engage anyone else in a Kingdom sense outside the context of a large crowd. When there's no crowd energy to draw on, you find out just how well you really know God. I learned quickly that I didn't know God like I thought I did.
I also learned how dependant I'd become on cues to tell me how to react. I spent all of my time waiting for God to engage me. It was very much as though I wandered around my house, waiting for my wife to engage me, but never making any intentional move to engage her. Sure, I guess my needs would get met occasionally in a kind of minimalistic way, but there would be no relationship. A relationship requires 2 willing participants free to engage or not, as they choose. God is gracious, and he meets us where we are...he meets our deepest need simply by existing and loving us. The question that formed, then grew and grew over the next couple of years was, "What am I missing? What is God saying to me right now that I'm simply not hearing?"
One quarter in VLI (Vineyard Leadership Institute...the Vineyard's organic leadership school) was focused on the leader's self development and spiritual disciplines. That was the wake up call I needed. I began to devour writings by Thomas Merton, St. John of the Cross, Richard Foster, and others. I felt an immediate and intense connection with a life filled with disciplined intention.
Next to my actual conversion to Christianity, this has been the biggest turning point in my life...pretty much everything has changed in the last 9 or 10 months. God has taught me to be quiet through consistent times of disciplined quite, prayer, meditation and contemplation. He has taught me what "faith" actually is, as Hebrews defines it. He continually reminds me what it is to truly rely on Him, and not on what I may be feeling at any one time or another. He has taught me to love Him affectionately, intensely and consistently. I spend very, very little time shouting in the dark for God to reveal Himself because he's taught me to turn and find Him anywhere.
All of this has had implications for every single area of my life, and for every other relationship. They are all a part of Him, and He is a part of them. This divine love is God, who is the source, and this love all emanates from the Trinitarian self-dedication of Father to Son and Son to Father, of which the Holy Spirit is evidence and expression. The love I have for my wife is not separate from the Trinitarian love; it is an expression of it. This conversation I'm having is not removed from God's divine life; God is speaking to this person and to me right now. Right this very instant. I have a quiet assurance that God is with me.
I pray and journal every morning from 6:00am to 7:00am, and this is what I will share here. They are my reflections and contemplations, usually written in a pretty mentally "flexible" (read: sleepy) state...I'm much less protective and anylitical, which is great. I can over think something in a real hurry. My journaling covers a wide variety of topics, but most are focused on working through an intentional life with God. More tomorrow.