These tree remnants lean together in cruciform, reminding us that we will bear the weight of a broken one, a collapsed and fallen one, not because we are whole and strong, but because we are nearby. (Ridgeline Trail, Eugene, Oregon, 2022)

Read time: approx. 2.5 min.

I believe in God. I believe in Jesus.

And of course, I believe in the Holy Spirit.

But I find it easier to believe in Jesus. He calls us friends. Yet I instinctively draw back from the presumption of such closeness.

Still, he puts the invitation out there. Delivers it, directly, to my heart.

I deeply believe in Jesus—Teacher, Healer, Prophet, Son of the Most High, fully given to his mission of love and redemption.

But do I believe Jesus? To actually believe Jesus demands of me an audacity of faith, which impels the audacity of action.

Being baptized, as I am, and anointed in the Spirit of the risen Christ, I must audaciously dare to believe him, or just go away.

Something shifts when I move from asking myself: Do I believe Jesus? to stating clearly: I believe him! I am free to accept the invitation to go where he goes, to live by the same moral compass, to love fiercely with the same divine love.

I am free to wonder what this means, and free to take the next step. I am free to be led by a curiosity at the core of me that impels me to go beyond myself.

I believe Jesus when he says, to me: I am the Resurrection, and the Life. And I understand that resurrection comes only after I pass through the many forms of dying.

When Jesus says to me, as he once said to Peter, Come! I am free to lean with all the weight of my being into his invitation.

As he did with Peter, he bids me to hoist myself out of the boat of all that is predictable, and familiar, and comfortable, and safe. He bids me to walk toward him, now, across new uncertain surfaces.

Why? So that I can be where he is, and go where he goes.

Taking Jesus at his word is not complicated, unless I make it complicated with all the reasons why I can’t, why it’s impractical, why it’s not the right time, or just too risky.

But I take him at his word. And therefore I am free to rise up in joy, and free to act. 

Free to believe. Free to be changed. Free to rise up to act.
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Have you experienced this shift from “believing in” to actually “believing”? Has it emboldened you? Shifted your priorities, your ways of showing up? Send me your stories. I welcome your comments.

Sample and download the spoken-word version of “I believe Jesus” here on my album Free To Be Free.