Looking More Deeply

Within our minds, we can be convinced of the authority and reliability of the Word of God and purpose to abide by His truth. In 2nd Peter 1, we can find these words:
2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord,
3 as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,
4 by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

When we have our doubts, we can press in to Scripture and call upon the Holy Spirit to show us more about Jesus. Instead of running from God in our times of crisis, we can make sure that we are running toward Him, opening our hearts to what God wants to do inside of us. His Word tells us about a faithful God who loved fallen humanity so much that He sent His Son in order that we might be redeemed through Him.

+++++

We have the opportunity to grow in the Lord and to renew our mind with the truth of His Word. 2nd Timothy 2 invites us to experience His faithfulness and grow in faith; it says:
11 This is a faithful saying: For if we died with Him, We shall also live with Him.
12 If we endure, We shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us.
13 If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.
14 Remind them of these things, charging them before the Lord not to strive about words to no profit, to the ruin of the hearers.
15 Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Everybody knows Ray Romano, right? Or at least know the name or who he is? Ray was the star of the long-running TV series, Everybody Loves Raymond.  But, probably very few know his brother, Richard. That may be about to change - even though Richard took a decidedly different path that his show-business brother, he has a movie that was released back in 2013, but has a new life through its release through streaming service, PureFlix.com.

CBN.com reported on Richard's journey as a policeman who served in New York City.  The article relates:

“I wanted to be a police officer and help people,” he said during an interview with Pure Flix.

And while Romano proudly served as a New York police officer, the harrowing experience taught him a lot along the way. There were some truly difficult lessons that deeply impacted him.

“I was kind of like a naive kid … when I got in there, I was in for a shock in the sense that just seeing the sometimes dark side of humanity and the sadness and the pain of people,” he said. “It was an adjustment for me.”

Eventually, Romano came to a place on his journey where he started to doubt his faith — a real-life story that serves as the basis of “The Investigator,” a movie he wrote about a veteran police detective who becomes a criminal justice teacher and baseball coach at a local high school before embarking on the “most important investigation of his life.”

The article recounts that Richard began to doubt "the existence of God." He says, “[I wondered], ‘How can God be here when all these innocent people get hurt and whatever happens to them?’ … It was depressing for times and I struggled to keep my faith and sanity.”  This caused him to do his own investigation.

Richard was teaching at a school, and a student asked him about Jesus, and he was frustrated that he couldn't give an answer. He shares: “I was so despondent and sad because I didn’t know the answer and I had my doubts,” adding, “I felt something, in that moment, with God saying to me, ‘I am real and you’re going to do an investigation on it and you’re doing to write a screenplay on it.'”

The Investigator is now on PureFlix.com. 

I think there's a real challenge here - Richard Romano experienced what appears to be what is called a "crisis of faith."  And, he set out to do something about it - and he crafted a movie that parallels, it seems, his own faith journey.  When we have questions or experience doubts, we can be motivated to look more deeply, to allow those to propel us to learn more about Jesus, not to walk away from Him or "deconstruct" our faith.  As I've said before, if our faith isn't working for us, it's not God's fault - He invites us to learn more about Him.  His Word is true, His claims are accurate, and the fact that He is risen from the dead after a cruel death is a compelling piece of evidence that He is who He says He is. 

The Bible directs us to study the Word, we must prioritize and press in to Scripture - we can see ourselves and see the human condition.  We can learn about a loving God who came to earth in the form of a man, His only Son, so that we might have a relationship with Him.  We see a God who has given us what are termed "exceedingly great and precious promises" and who has fulfilled them. We can conclude that He is totally faithful and His Word is authoritative, infallible, and reliable.