When you are struck by illness, trouble, injustice, poverty, crisis, recession, when things don’t go your way; when your wishes and plans don’t come true, when things in your family take a downturn, when a priest or bishop is not to your liking, when your request is denied, when the authorities disappoint you, when your children aren’t what you hoped they would be, or even when your hairstyle doesn’t turn out well… We tend to focus on the bad and start to grumble. To grumble means to say that not even God can or wants to help us; it means becoming an atheist. It means saying that God does not guide human history, but that someone else does, and that believing in God is not worthwhile.
It is necessary to have true faith, which means understanding that not a single detail of my life happens without God. God allows a person to go hungry, to wander, to experience everything, and then He asks: “And now, what will you do?” Imagine being wrongly accused, ending up in prison, losing everything—what would you do then, you who often pray? What would you say? Would you, like Job’s wife, say, “Curse God and die”?
God is the existential reality of our lives, and even in the most difficult situations, we need to look beyond the problems and see the good. Faith is looking beyond the wall. It means seeing where God will set everything right.
We all grumble. Don’t be surprised if we don’t receive what we pray for. When things aren’t going well, we start praying harder and harder, but that’s the wrong approach. We try to make up for our weak faith with prayer. Such prayer actually increases disbelief. If we truly believed that God would provide, we wouldn’t plead desperately; we would simply present our request and wait.
We should be as confident as a little boy on a ship who feels safe in a storm because his father is the captain of the vessel. Let us ask ourselves: Do we believe like that? Are we still faithful, or have we started to believe in evil, saying things will only get worse? Prayer without faith is meaningless. It is faith that works miracles, not prayer. Jesus doesn’t say, “Your prayer has saved and healed you,” but rather, “Your faith has saved you.” Prayer with faith works miracles.
Do any of us truly believe that people can be converted through us? God isn’t asking you or me if we can do it; He’s asking, “Do you believe that I can do it?”
To be a believer means walking hand in hand with Jesus, being His companion. To have faith means leaving behind everything you have—your security, friends, resources, medications—and relying solely on God’s word. Miracles happen when you let go of everything, stop grumbling, and depend entirely on God. At that point, you have no other interest but to rejoice in the fact that God is present.
Most of the time, we have an alternative: we pray to God, but if it doesn’t work, we turn to other means and paths. The one who believes in God goes where their faith leads them—to heaven with God. Likewise, the one who believes in hell also ends up where their belief takes them.
Why were there so many martyrs in the first centuries? Not only because the emperors were cruel, but because Christians rejected this pagan, devilish world. They preferred to face death rather than live by the pagan mentality. Satan is the prince of this world, and if you don’t renounce this kind of world, you cannot enter God’s world.
We are so deceived that we constantly justify ourselves, saying things like: I also need to have something. I can’t live differently from others. I must have everything others have. I have to watch TV. I don’t have anything to give to the poor. I can’t fast because I need strength for work. What does it matter to God what I eat or drink on Fridays?
Life with God is something entirely different. It is an entry into freedom and God’s grace.
Charles de Foucauld says that if you want to become a believer, imagine yourself massacred to death, knowing that you will die today, and accept that as the truth, recognizing there’s nothing you can do about it. At that moment, everything you have becomes worthless, unable to help you, and you cannot use it. What remains is only what you have believed in.
How did the first Christians sing and walk to their deaths, into the jaws of lions? Your entire being, every cell within you, holds the Spirit, and God is within every one of your cells. If you believe this, you can feel your body straightening, like a deflated tire being filled with air.
Has God become irrelevant in our lives? Perhaps we are simply too comfortable! We have some measure of health, enough to eat and drink, and we don’t care beyond that. We’ve become armchair Christians, accustomed to sitting back, enjoying life, and saying, “Jesus, give me this, give me that.”
We fail to hear Jesus saying, It’s time to move forward. You’re not a child anymore—step out of your spiritual adolescence.
Put yourself in the shoes of the Samaritan woman. Jesus told her everything she had done wrong. Jesus also speaks to you and me, revealing who we truly are. We are unworthy of standing here. If someone from the church knew what we were really like, we’d feel ashamed, unworthy to even be there. Yet, Jesus knows everything and doesn’t dwell on it—as if it means nothing to Him. Instead, He moves on and speaks to her about a gift, about the water that flows into eternal life.
Jesus tells you that people around you will begin to change despite your past, no matter how many “husbands” you’ve had. But we resist. Jesus offers you living water, which is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a person who watches over you, asking you to let Him enter every cell of your body. He asks, Do you want to be different, to speak differently, to think differently? Do you want me to heal people through you?
Do you want to be considered foolish because Jesus is your friend, or will you remain polite, normal, and rational, without the Holy Spirit? Today, more than ever, we need the Holy Spirit. Let’s not forget that the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness and to the cross.
The Spirit calls you to fast, but you’re busy preparing delicacies! The Holy Spirit is neither water nor wind—He is so much more.
The Holy Spirit flows within you, and you feel as if someone else is speaking through you, as if it’s not you or your words. You just see how you are changing, and how the people around you are changing. It’s like when a child sits in the car with their father and goes for a drive. The child cannot decide where to go or how fast to go; the child goes wherever the father is driving. People led by the Holy Spirit are always new and different, living and working differently.
When the prophet Samuel sends Saul, he tells him that on his way he will meet prophets and become a different person. When people meet us, do they change? You were chosen to turn away from everything sinful within you and receive a hundredfold. When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth? Will He find someone who relies on Jesus?
Tomislav Ivančić
