What Determines if Faith Fails or Thrives?

In church today God reminded me of a dream I had last night.  Friends of ours recently celebrated the one year anniversary of the adoption of their daughter from Colombia.  When they adopted her, she was less than a year old, and very small for her age; however, now she is healthy and strong!  In my dream, my friends posted "before" and "after" photos on social media and said their daughter had gone, "from the 3rd percentile to the 97th percentile!"  

In case you don't know, when a young child has a check up, the doctor will measure them (height, weight, head circumference) and let you know how your child compares to other children of the same age.  50th percentile is average.  If your child was in the 3rd percentile, that would mean 97% of other children their age are bigger than them (this would be a serious situation and could mean failure to thrive.)  "Failure to thrive is defined as decelerated or arrested physical growth (height and weight measurements fall below the third or fifth percentile, or a downward change in growth across two major growth percentiles) and is associated with abnormal growth and development."*  Conversely, if your child was in the 97th percentile they would be bigger than all but 3% of the kids their age. 

Now these were not actual, real life numbers for our friend's child, and I asked God, what does this dream mean?  I thought about our friend's child: what has made all the difference in her life?  It is about position, relationship, and love.  She has come into a family where she is a daughter.  While she was well cared for until she was placed, there is nothing that will replace the importance of being in a family.  Of being someone's daughter.  Of having someone(s) look at you everyday and tell you how special you are.  This change of position, being placed in a family, put her in a place of relationship.  Being in a place of relationship made her a recipient of love.  For the last year, her growth has been both physical and emotional.  While she has been consuming food and nourishment, she has also grown because she has been a consumer of love.  She has had love poured out on her, and like a little sponge she has just soaked it up.  This is why she is so healthy now.

I felt like God was saying that there are many people who, in their faith, would be like that "before" picture of the child in my dream.  If the physician were to examine their faith, he would have to put this label on them: "Failure to Thrive".  They feel like living the life of faith is such a struggle.  Why do they feel so sick and weak and unable to grow?  It comes down to three things: position, relationship, and love.  These are children of God, but they do not realize the position they have.  They are living as orphans, trying to make it in life on their own, but all the while papa is right there.  Their position (your position) as a believer, is that you have been adopted into God's family.  Your position has changed from where you were, or would be, in the world.  You have been brought into a place of relationship.  You have a papa who loves you.  He adores you.  He looks at you everyday with love in his eyes and admiration for the work of art that you are.  (After all, he made you, right?)

If faith has been a struggle for you, God wants you to move from the 3rd percentile to the 97th percentile!  It is time to move from feeling weak and frail to being healthy and strong in the faith.  How do you get there?  It's time to live from a position of relationship and soak up the love the father has for you.  Come to him like a little child and soak up all the love he has for you.  Be like a sponge, spend as much time as you can with him and just keep soaking and soaking up that love, and then soak some more.

"15 Listen to the truth I speak: Whoever does not open their arms to receive God’s kingdom like a teachable child will never enter it.” 16 Then he embraced each child, and laying his hands on them, he lovingly blessed each one." (Mark 10, Passion translation)

"You’re like children still needing milk and not yet ready to digest solid food. 13 For every spiritual infant who lives on milk is not yet pierced by the revelation of righteousness. 14 But solid food is for the mature, whose spiritual senses perceive heavenly matters. And they have been adequately trained by what they’ve experienced to emerge with understanding of the difference between what is truly excellent and what is evil and harmful." (Hebrews 5)

God Bless You,
Lisa

*source: Stanford Children's Health