Faith and the Bride

It is officially less than one week until I leave for Trek! Besides the many shopping lists, packing lists, loads of laundry, and stacks of things to place into suitcases, I have been doing a lot of spiritual preparation for this upcoming season. I have been reading John Piper's Don't Waste Your Life, and was really struck by one passage on faith. Piper states:

"...We need a definition of faith. Ordinarily faith would mean trust or confidence you put in someone who has given good evidence of his reliability and willingness and ability to provide what you need. But when Jesus Christ is the object of faith there is a twist. He Himself is what we need. If we only trust Christ to give us gifts and not Himself as the all-satisfying gift, then we do not trust Him in a way that honours Him as our treasure. We simply honour the gifts. They are what we really want, not Him. So biblical faith in Jesus must mean that we trust Him to give us what we need most - namely, Himself. That means that faith itself must include at its essence a treasuring of Christ above all things."

Faith in Jesus Christ is not based on the physical; rather, it is based on Him - trusting that He will give Himself to us, what we truly need. As I grapple to understand what it truly means for the church to be the bride of Christ, I realize that my view of this has been rather one sided, and that my definition of faith will influence by ablity to see this. My faith needs to be a faith that trusts in Him to provide not the physical, but the spiritual. A faith that trusts Him to provide Himself. I desire Christ to desire me - I want Him to know me and to love me. I'm realizing more and more that although I seek to know Him, rarely do I try to understand and know His heart. If we are the bride of Christ, and we desire Him to know our innermost thoughts, should we not also be seeking His? If we want Him to seek our hearts, should we not also seek His?

This is what faith is; trusting that Christ will provide Himself for us, and seeking after Him with that expectation. That is my desire as I go to Trek. Not that the Lord will see my heart, but that I will see His.