This is the part where I need to make sure I am aligned with what God wants for my life. I want to strip my belief system right back to the fundamentals and make sure the “skeleton” is all aligned…sort of like taking a trip to the chiropractor I guess. In the same way that the skeleton is the foundation for keeping the rest of the body in shape, so my belief system is what keeps the intangible parts of my life in shape and on the right track. There’s no point hitting the gym to build up my “muscles” if my skeleton isn’t up to the task of supporting the extra stuff that I’m adding to it. I’ll end up hurting myself!

So…I’ll be asking myself all sorts of questions like these ones…

• Why do I believe what I believe?
• Why do I act the way I do as a follower of Jesus?
• What if the way I’m doing things isn’t the way God intended it to be? What if I’ve turned someone off God because I’m not living the way I’m supposed to?
• What if some of the things that I hold to as truth are just traditions and not really biblical truth?
• What if there’s something else I should be doing with my life that would be more effective in making God’s love real to people?
• How do I live with a Kingdom building focus?
• How am I supposed to understand the Bible? Do I have to go to Bible College before I’m ever going to understand the context it was meant in?
• Why does it hurt so much more when you’re hurt by a fellow follower than when you’re hurt by your regular everyday person?
• Why is there so much hypocrisy in the church and am I contributing to that in any way?
• Why isn’t my life that much different to my non-Jesus -following friends when I know it should be?
• How did I get to the point where I was too busy doing church that I didn’t have time to connect with people who needed to see God’s love lived out in action?
• Why is it so much easier to sit and be a “church person” than to get out there and make a difference for the Kingdom of God?
• What is the purpose of the church and why is there so much division, particularly between generations and even denominations? Why aren’t we working together to build the Kingdom instead of having turf wars?
• What is Christian community supposed to look like in modern times and in our western culture? It’s not like we can all live together and share everything like the first century believers did.
• How do I balance serving believers and fulfilling the command to go and make disciples?
• Why are Christians so intent on making sure the world knows what we hate and what we stand against rather than making sure people know that God loves them with no ifs, buts, or maybes?

My close friends think that I think too much…and that might be true in some cases …but sometimes you just have to ask yourself the hard questions if you are going to grow and be effective!  Asking these kinds of questions doesn’t mean that I am questioning my faith. And it doesn’t mean that I am a heretic simply because I am choosing not to idolise tradition. I want to be a REAL follower of Jesus…not one that plays at it… and to do that I need to explore and question and strengthen my beliefs. I know people are going to think I’m losing my mind, but that’s OK.

You’d better believe that God is not going to crumble under close scrutiny…there may be some other things that will…but not God!

I think this phase of my adventure may well last the rest of my life!

Do you ever ask yourself questions like these ones? What sorts of questions do you ask?

Related posts:

1. The restoration phase

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