Leap of FAITH

Tonight while talking to an old friend through text message, my friend asked what I thought it meant to have faith or to take a "leap of faith" in life spiritually as well as in relationships. This is a question I really did not have an immeadiate answer for and I had to think about. "What does faith mean to me?" My mind autimatically went to a familiar verse,

Hebrews 11:1
" Now FAITH is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."

I pondered this verse for a bit and had to ask myself what this truely meant because often times in my life the Bible and scriptures can just become a bunch of words that I have memorized. I asked my grandparents what their defnition of faith was and my Grandpa shared something with me written by a bishop for the Pentacostal Church of God that really made sense to me and this is just a bit of what it said:

"its the fear of foolishness that keeps us from raising our hand in fourth grade. The other kids may laugh if i get the answer wrong. It is the fear of foolishness that keeps us from asking someone out on a date. I don't think I can handle the rejection if they say no."

it goes on to say that people throughout the Bible people who accomplished great things often looked foolish while carrying out the tasks. For example; Noah building the ark, Sarah buying maternity clothes at 90 years of age, Peter stepping out of the boat into the water, and Jesus hanging half naked on a cross beaten and bruised.

After I went through all this in my mind combining this Bishop's knowledge and knowledge of what the scripture has to say I have come to one conclusion;
Having faith does not mean you will never fail it does not mean that you will never experience pain or hurt. The phrase "leap of faith" is worded like that because sometimes you just have to jump not knowing what is going to break your fall. Yeah it could be broken glass and you could come out with a few scrapes, and having to get back up and try again but what if you are caught by God's grace and everlasting love? Is it not worth the risk. To me faith is jumping in head first and knowing God will be there despite the outcome. Who would have thought that a simple five letter word could have so much meaning.

Never Alone

All of my life I have been nothing but blessed by the people around me. I have an awesome family, amazing friends and a boyfriend who means the world to me. Though I know these people would do anything for me just as I would for them, there are times in my life when things become very overwhelming and they are simply not able to make me feel better no matter how hard they try.
These last few days have been that way for me, school is keeping me insainley busy, I am trying to search for a job all this amidst a million other things and I have felt, on a few occasions, that I was alone and no one understood what I was going through because no one lives my life obviously. Well today as I was listening to music and reading my Bible I found a couple scriptures that really encouraged me.

First is the second half of Proverbs 18:24 which simply states
"but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother."
Second verse is Hebrews 13:5 also the end of the verse
"Never will I leave you, Never will I forsake you."

Thses verses are encouraging to me in many ways but mostly because it shows me that even when I feel like no one is ever going to understand or even really cares about my problems and struggles no matter how big or small, I KNOW my God does and he is going to stick by me on the mountains and in the valleys and he is NEVER going to leave my side no matter what I do because he loves me.