If someone asked you what your story of faith was, what would you say? How would you respond? My guess would be that you would start talking about your individual journey through your own faith. You would probably begin by telling them the way that you started your own personal faith journey. Your specific story is important, but when we narrow down our story of faith to only the things that we have experienced, we lose a significant element.

Faith based on personal experience eventually buckles under the weight of personal experiences. Our faith isn’t meant to stand on its own with only our personal truth holding it up. We need to be aware that when we only have ourselves holding up our faith, it will fall. Sometimes the circumstances that get thrown at us cause our faith to collapse because the only thing keeping it up is our own personal stories and our own personal convictions. When we rely purely on ourselves for truth then we are limited, biased, and without an anchor.

Marcus Garvey says it like this, “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.”  So that is why we need the history. It keeps us grounded and gives us a more clear understanding of who our God is.

Three major faith traditions all claim the same starting point in history. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all recognize the fact that God created humanity in his own image, meaning that there is something divine in each of us. All three traditions agree that God gave humanity the ability to say yes or no, which we call free will. At a point in history, somebody said no to God. Through this sin entered the world and humanity’s relationship with the Creator became strained and broken.

When sin entered the world it ruined the harmony in relationship that God had with humanity. So God had to decide whether to walk away from the mess of human-kind or wade into the dysfunction. God chose to wade in. He began this process through one person. God’s starting point was through one man: Abraham.

• Have your personal experiences ever caused you to doubt or change your beliefs?
• When you see a mess do you have a tendency to walk away or wade in?
• What do you think of God choosing someone as imperfect as Abraham?