Step 2: Believe

We come to believe that God is the One whose power can fully restore us.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

Psalm 103:2-5

We’re all familiar with to-do lists, but what about done lists? Here’s mine as a good Christian girl: Perfect attendance at church. Vacation Bible School. Invite Jesus into my heart. Baptism. Domestic mission trips. Foreign mission trips. Youth leadership. Christian camp every year. Retreats. Purity ring. Marry a minister. Disciple high schoolers. Disciple college kids. Move across the country to help start a church. Study at seminary. Disciple women. Bible studies. Check. Check. Check.

But… believe in God? (Crickets)

Of course I believe in God! Right? Wait… right??? Faith is one of those areas I’ve taken for granted and rushed past, settling for the shallows when there are boundless depths to fathom. If it’s possible to mistake familiarity for experience, I know too much for my own good. Step 2 of recovery serves as a beginner’s course on God’s nature and character—a course which I’ve taught several times but never actually taken. Now here I am, designing advanced content for others while sensing an inner emptiness. Well, this approach to the Christian life is obviously lacking. I might as well put away my lecture robes and embrace a new student vibe.

Thus began my journey through Step 2. My favorite days were these:

Understand “Belief”

True faith includes knowledge, agreement, and trust. If you know God truly, agree with God, and trust God, your actions will align with His will. When your actions do not align with God’s will, it is often because you do not know the truth of God, disagree with God, or doubt God … Actions, rather than what you claim to “believe,” can be a better indicator of where your faith rests.

Week 1, Day 1

I appreciate how simplicity yields clarity once again. What started out as an amorphous idea—faith—crystallizes when broken down into these three pieces.

• Knowledge: Church culture excels at strategically conveying information; many of us brought up in the pews could drown in our solid theology. And that’s not a bad thing if knowledge is accompanied by agreement and trust. As Jen Wilkin says, “The heart cannot love what the mind does not know.”
• Agreement: Meanwhile, American culture is becoming surprisingly less hostile to spiritual things in general: “Oh, yeah, I believe in [a] God.” We’re all willing to agree with our personal version of deity; the trick is to make sure we’ve chosen the correct one.
• Trust: Where do we leap when faced with a choice? My typical problem isn’t one of facts or acceptance but of suspicion. What ifs multiply, fear takes over, and my inherent leavability feels more sure than Christ’s promise to stay. As ugly as it is, my own understanding (plans, ability, resources, control) often carries more weight than the Lord of the cosmos about who sits on the throne of my heart.

Investigate Questions About God

If the Bible is true, that God has revealed Himself through creation and wants you to know Him, then no amount of study will disprove Him. You will not have to set aside your intelligence to know Him truly.

Week 1, Day 4

Desiring spiritual and intellectual integrity will require grappling with some uncomfortable concepts. Sadly, however, many believers have learned to view their natural curiosity as a threat. Good Christians don’t think like that—shame on you! Stop asking questions. Where is your faith? So we bury what was meant to draw us closer to God’s heart and deeper into awestruck wonder. Instead, let’s examine any forced periods and carry our question marks to Jesus. This isn’t unbelief; it’s pressing in, trusting that the One who is the answer can handle our uncertainty. Whether it’s our first or sixty-first year as a disciple, we all need a protected space to process inconvenient truths. One feature of Christian maturity isn’t how few questions we have; it’s how quickly we bring them to Christ.

For those of us who grew up with “sword drills” and a felt board Jesus, we’re not exactly covering new territory here. But my soul needs a fresh chance to embrace what I’ve wrongly viewed as elementary. God, whom I’ve “known” since childhood and thought was a two-dimensional triangle, is actually a larger-than-life diamond with a million different facets. May I never outgrow the magnitude of His nature and character.

So I’m throwing out my Christian “checked” list and beginning again. Forget everything I’ve accomplished for the Lord; as Paul says, it’s dung, rubbish, filth. All that matters is knowing Jesus. The best spiritual resume without genuine faith is only a great big pit of quicksand. Have I come to believe that God is the One whose power can fully restore me?

Finally and freely and forever, yes.