Ridiculous Faith: Experience the Power of an Absurdly, Unbelievably Good God

by Shelene Bryan, Cameron Candace Bure (Foreword by)

Overview

Why do my most profound moments of faith vanish so quickly?

What would your life be like if you could harness the rush of faith that appears in the most desperate moments? What if you could live your entire life with the kind of split-second, imminent-disaster faith that crying out to God brings? What if you could live a life of Ridiculous Faith?

True faith is vital to a vibrant Christian life. Without it, it is impossible to please God. But are your moments of deepest, most essential faith doomed to dissipate as quickly as they materialize, leaving you powerless and ineffectual?

Absolutely not. The truth is, you are not doomed to a lifetime of flickering faith.

Join Shelene Bryan on a journey to uncover the ark-building, sea-parting, lion-taming, ridiculous faith that will leave you in awe of the Creator and all He has prepared for you. Are you ready to live an absurdly, unbelievably good life—a ridiculous life of ridiculous faith?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780718021290
Publisher:	HarperCollins Christian Publishing
Publication date:	12/19/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	241
File size:	988 KB

About the Author

Shelene Bryan is the author of Love, Skip, Jump and the founder of Skip1.org, a charity dedicated to providing food and clean water to children in America and around the world. She lives in Southern California.

Read an Excerpt

Ridiculous Faith

Experience the Power of an Absurdly, Unbelievably Good God

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By SHELENE BRYAN

Thomas Nelson

Copyright © 2016 Shelene Bryan
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7180-2129-0

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CHAPTER 1

DIRECT DEPOSIT

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. – Hebrews 11:6

It was early December in Southern California, and while many parts of the country were dealing with rain, snow, and generally miserable weather as the Christmas season approached, all Los Angeles was enjoying its usual preholiday winter weather — that is, no winter at all. It was seventy-five degrees, and not a single cloud could be seen from the open sunroof of my shiny black sports car. On the passenger seat next to me rested a small blue bank-deposit bag containing a few checks, a large amount of cash, and the deposit slip I had dutifully filled out a few minutes earlier while sitting in my office at my talent management company. It was my lunch hour, and I relished the chance to get out of the hustle of the Hollywood scene for even a few minutes. The sun felt amazing on my face as I drove down Ventura Boulevard toward the bank. After negotiating my way through the parking lot jungle, I slid into an empty parking space.

As I entered the bank lobby, I realized everyone in the free world seemed to have had the same idea. So much for a quick lunchtime deposit. I stood in a line with about ten people in front of me, and it was filling up fast behind me.

Then I met Mrs. Impatient. A pretty fifty-something woman dressed to the nines in an impeccably tailored suit and expensive heels, she rushed into the bank in a whirlwind of self-importance. From the look of her jewelry, she was not shy about flaunting her wealth. A rock the size of Gibraltar adorned her left hand. She was not exactly subtle when she stepped up behind me in line and began to complain loudly to no one in particular, "Oh my. We will be in this line for an hour. Three tellers — are they serious? It's lunchtime. You would think they would be smart enough to bring on more tellers. I will never get to my lunch meeting at this pace."

"You can go in front of me," I said as graciously as I could muster, although I knew that a client would arrive at my office in about twenty minutes.

"Oh. Thanks," she murmured as she stepped into the space I had made in front of me. "Not like it's going to make that big of a difference. There are still six people ahead of you."

As the seconds ticked into long minutes, several more patrons rushed into the bank, only to be confronted with the growing line of restless customers. The young, dark-haired guy in line behind me seemed particularly aggravated. His eyes were shifting back and forth between the tellers as if he could make their task go faster by his intense gaze.

I began to wish the bank would open a separate line for deposits as I had seen in the past. Unexpectedly, as if he could read my thoughts, a teller yelled out, "Anyone with a direct deposit?"

"Me! I have a deposit!" I proclaimed, waving my blue zippered bag in the air as he motioned me forward. As I made my way past the remaining three people in line, I could feel Mrs. Impatient seething with fast-pass envy while she stared daggers at my back. I greeted the deposit teller and began to unzip my deposit bag.

Suddenly a deep voice shouted, "Everybody down!"

Spinning around to see what was going on, I saw the dark-haired, fidgety guy who had been in line behind me throwing a T-shirt to the ground. The T-shirt, which I had not noticed before, had been wrapped around his hand to conceal a black semiautomatic pistol, which he now had raised to shoulder level. Amid gasps, shrieks, and screams, every person in the bank lobby hit the cold, polished floor as if a concussion wave had struck them, knocking them to their knees.

The gun menacingly swept across the room as if searching for its first victim. Suddenly the man leapt over the top of the teller counter and demanded that the tellers fill a bag he handed them.

The room went eerily silent, the shrieks of customers and commands of the robber seemed to fade away, and there I was kneeling on the floor with my hands cradling each side of my face as I leaned my forehead on the back side of the teller counter. I felt strangely alone as I began to pray silently: Dear God, save me, help me. I don't want to die. If he does shoot me, God, please make it a clean shot. I don't want to be a burden to anyone.

I was brought back from my thoughts by a tapping sensation on my leg.

Oh no. This is it. He's found me.

But as I peeked out from between my fingers I saw it was not the robber who had tapped me on my leg, but was Mrs. Impatient. Apparently she had been called to the teller window next to mine before the robbery began. And now, as the robber was collecting cash from each teller's drawer, we were right next to each other on our knees. She was knocking my leg with her hand, trying to get my attention.

As I looked over at her, something seemed different. Her face seemed slightly misshapen, somehow bigger. She looked at me with bulging eyes, staring at the wedding ring on my left hand and nodding as if she was trying to tell me something. I stared back in confusion, wrinkling my brow and slightly shaking my head as if to ask, "What are you saying?" She looked me right in the eyes and opened her mouth. I immediately realized why her face had seemed misshapen. Her open mouth revealed a cavern of treasure that would have made Blackbeard the pirate proud. She had stripped her gold-laden fingers clean of her rings, including the giant rock of Gibraltar, and stuffed them into her mouth.

"Yo wing," she tried to whisper, pointing to her mouth as what looked like a diamond bracelet tried to seep out the side.

"Shhhh," I whispered back, terrified that her muffled voice might attract unwanted attention. Then, seconds later, feeling bad about my scolding, I pointed at my own earlobes while nodding toward her ears.

She reached up to her ears in a panic. Her fingers closed around the unbelievably large diamond studs she had forgotten to devour. She immediately yanked them off and, incredibly, managed to successfully stuff two more rocks into her mouth.

There we sat, Mrs. Impatient and me, huddled on our knees awaiting our fate. I could hear the tellers one by one opening their cash drawers and I could hear the robber stuffing the cash deeper into his bag. Then I heard him jump back to the lobby side. As his footsteps clomped closer and closer in my direction, I pressed my body deeper and deeper into the wall.

Just blend in, Shelene. For once, just blend in —

The footsteps persisted, closer, closer — then stopped.

"And you with the deposit."

What? Me? Frozen in fear, I didn't move. In that split second I imagined what was going to happen next. He was going to grab me under my arm, lift me up, put the gun to my head, and say, "Open the safe, or I'll kill her!"

At that moment I cried out to the only hope I knew of. God.

Dear God, please save me. Don't let this man kill me.

A hand reached down and scooped up the bank-deposit bag I had been clutching tightly. The bag came free from my hand. My eyes stayed closed. Don't look at him. If you don't see him, you can't identify him. If you can't identify him, he won't need to kill you.

Reverberating footsteps once again filled the silent room, but this time they trailed away from me and toward the front doors of the bank. As they progressively faded into the distance, we were all still frozen; no one moved a muscle in the silence. I did not dare look up.

" He's gone. You can get up now," one of the tellers announced in a shaky voice.

Could it be true? Did we survive? Thank You, God. Thank You.

I took the first breath in what seemed like minutes. Relief rolled over me like a wave.

Mrs. Impatient began disgorging her mouth of rings and jewels. As she did so one of her earrings fell and rolled along the floor. I stooped to pick it up and handed it to her. "Well, I guess now you have a good excuse to be late for lunch."

"Thanks," she replied. "I was looking for that."

CAPTURING FLICKERING FAITH

In the months that followed, the perpetrator was eventually caught, but not until he completed a string of similar robberies up and down the Highway 101 corridor from Ventura to downtown Los Angeles. Over time, I gradually recovered from the trauma of that experience, although residual anxiety would haunt me for years to come.

In the nearly twenty years since that bank robbery experience, I often have had a nagging question about how I reacted. Why is it that in moments of true desperation we instantaneously acquire faith like we have never had before?

No, it doesn't happen to everyone. Apparently Mrs. Impatient was way more concerned about her jewelry than she was about God. But it definitely happened to me. That robbery happened at a time in my life when my relationship with God was barely an afterthought, and yet my instantaneous reaction to that moment of terror was to pray. God became my only thought.

Even the most hardened hearts tend to look to the heavens in moments of life and death. In those instances when we feel helpless and powerless, we instinctively cry out to our Creator. There is even a term for the phenomenon: "battlefield conversion," a reference to soldiers who cry out to God when their lives are on the line. But more often than not, the changed perspective that caused us to look heavenward quickly fades and we settle back into our not-so-inspired lives. That certainly happened to me. It would be quite a few more years before I made a serious commitment to God and opened my mind and heart to a different kind of faith.

Hebrews 11:6 tells us that "without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him" (emphasis added). If that's true, I have always wondered, why does faith sometimes seem to disappear as fast as it came? Are we doomed to have flickering moments of faith — when we cry out to God in desperation — that later fade, leaving us powerless and ineffectual and sometimes terrified?

After years of failure and knuckleheaded trial and error, I am confident the answer is a very simple but definite no. I have learned that when we seek a true view of God's unseen faithfulness to us and get serious about claiming His amazing promises, even the tiniest seed of faith in our hearts can become an unstoppable force for love in our lives.

How to capture that tiny seed of faith is the quest that has driven my pursuit of God and has compelled me to write these pages. His faithfulness is something I will not fully comprehend until the day He discloses it to me. Someday He may show me a little blue bank bag riddled with bullet holes that never existed because of His unseen intervention in the bank that day.

I certainly don't have all the answers. I have barely been able to put my finger on a few of these in the years that have passed since the robbery. But I do know the One who has all the answers. And not only the answers — He even knew I would be asking the questions long before I did. And for the privilege and the promise of the opportunity to get to know such a faithful God, I am grateful.

Heavenly Father, open my eyes to Your unseen faithfulness. May my view of You be deepened and expanded so that in response to who You are, I can live a life of ridiculous faith. Amen.

CHAPTER 2

TO THE MOUNTAIN

Then Moses entered the cloud as he went on up the mountain. And he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. – Exodus 24:18

The summer our son, Blake, turned thirteen, my husband, Brice, announced he was going to take Blake on a backpacking trip. This trip was exclusively for "men," Brice said. By turning thirteen Blake was entering manhood, so they were going to mark that occasion with a serious rite-of-passage trip to the mountains.

I was thrilled about this man trip, because as difficult as it was for Brice to take time away from the demanding task of leading his law firm, I knew the intentional time he invested in our son would create the bond of trust every young man needs with his dad. I was also thrilled because I did not have to be dragged along on another "adventure" involving sleeping bags, tents, and bug repellant. I figured the boys could go do their "man" thing and our daughter, Brooke, and I would go shopping and get our nails done, celebrating our "girl" thing.

The boys began to make the preparations. They decided they were going to take a trail to see a place called the Great Western Divide in the southern Sierra Nevadas.

Shortly before the trip, Brice was looking over a big trail map he had spread out on our dining room table. I asked him, "Honey, do you need a guide or something? How do you know where to go or what to do?"

"Dooon't worry," he said. "I have spent weeks in the wilderness. I have this little backpack trip under control."

"But that was years ago. Are you sure you don't want to at least consult a guide?"

"If it makes you feel better, we are following the same trail the REI guides take on their group events. See this brochure?" He thrust a brochure at me with a flip of his hand. I looked through it and quickly grasped that REI is an equipment and outfitting store that does group hiking trips. While perusing the brochure, I saw he had highlighted the trail route in it.

"Are you sure you don't want to go with REI? They have professional guides to show you the way."

Brice glared at me with a look that said, "Stay out of man business!"

I knew not to push this any further.

"Okay," I said, "I'll leave you alone."

The next day Brice and Blake made a trip to REI to get everything they needed for their trip. Apparently they thought the living room was a great place to deposit their purchases. When I walked in, the floor was littered with their gear: backpacks, pads, a tent, freeze-dried food, a tiny stove, ultra-light cooking pans. You would have thought they were going for a month.

"What's that?" I asked, pointing to a black plastic barrelshaped canister.

"That? Oh, that's our bear can."

"Bear can?"

"Yes, a bear-proof barrel. So bears can't open it. All our food goes in there."

"You are going where there are bears?"

"Yes, honey, there are bears in the mountains."

"Seriously? Now I have to be worried about you guys being eaten by bears?"

"Actually, there haven't been any fatal bear attacks in California in decades," Brice said emphatically. "In fact, in all of North America there are only three deaths per year by bears. Whereas last year there were twenty-six deaths by dog attacks and ninety deaths by lightning strikes."

"What ... are you a walking encyclopedia of bear statistics?" I asked.

"No, I just figured this would come up. Let's just say I'm prepared. And to put your mind at ease, take a look at this." He proudly held up what looked like a small fire extinguisher with a red trigger spray gun on top, still in its plastic packaging.

"What, may I ask, is that?"

"This is the latest in anti-bear technology, a high-powered spray-stream bear repellant. Basically it's pepper spray on crack."

"God forbid if you get close enough to a bear to hit it with that stuff," I said.

"You could call it a 'bear necessity,'" he said with a smile.

I rolled my eyes and left the boys to finish their packing.

* * *

The next day they woke me at 5:00 a.m. to say good-bye. Why do man trips always seem to start much earlier than normal trips?

I gave them each a kiss and said, "Please call when you get there."

"Okay. We love you!"

The following is what happened on the man trip, as it was told to me by my husband and son.

* * *

The road trip from Thousand Oaks, California, to the Wolverton trailhead in Sequoia National Park was uneventful except for a few made-up road-trip songs and limericks that had father and son cracking up.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Ridiculous Faith by SHELENE BRYAN. Copyright © 2016 Shelene Bryan. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword, ix,
Ridiculous? Really?, xiii,
Chapter 1 Direct Deposit, 1,
Part One: Going to the Mountain, 9,
Chapter 2 To the Mountain, 11,
Chapter 3 A Voice from Heaven, 23,
Part Two: Seeking the Face of Jesus, 35,
Chapter 4 A Full Car, 37,
Chapter 5 A Full House, 49,
Chapter 6 Coolio's Faith Walk, 63,
Chapter 7 Free to Go, 75,
Part Three: Finding Power in the Promise, 83,
Chapter 8 Hidden Promises, 85,
Chapter 9 Naturally Noah, 95,
Chapter 10 The Hands of God, 105,
Chapter 11 Message in a Blanket, 119,
Chapter 12 A Father's Ridiculous Faith, 131,
Chapter 13 Mountain-Sized God, 139,
Chapter 14 It's Only a Scratch, 149,
Part Four: Putting Faith into Action, 155,
Chapter 15 Can You Spell That?, 157,
Chapter 16 The Master Bedroom, 163,
Chapter 17 #Seniors Skip, 173,
Chapter 18 Texas Hold 'Em, 187,
Part Five: Leaving a Legacy of Faith, 197,
Chapter 19 First-Class Seats, 199,
Chapter 20 Life Story, 209,
Chapter 21 Marvelous, 217,
Chapter 22 Back to the Bank, 227,
Acknowledgments, 231,
Appendix God's Promises, 235,
Notes, 239,
About the Author, 241,