Welcome to the launch of Buoy, a Life in Deeper Water podcast.
Episode 1. Faith is a gift from God.
Hello human.
(click here to listen)
It’s Tough to Sink a Buoy
To render it motionless. A buoy is designed for changing conditions and low visibility. It can be anchored or move with ocean currents. It helps guide, mark, protect. It offers a resting place, a warming place. Ask a sea lion. It gives navigational direction; it tells us how shallow or deep the waters are.
There are 1,300 weather buoys throughout the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. These buoys can track and forecast cloud formations, hurricanes, precipitation, wind gusts, extreme temperatures, and high surf. Buoys know how to read wind direction and onshore and offshore coastal winds. Swell period, swell direction, and wave height.
My point is this:
A buoy thrives in open water. A buoy needs push back, wind chop, raging swells to do what it does.
Buoy is about moving through life with a resilient, unsinkable witness. My goal is to provide perspective anchored in the power of seeking God’s nature. A perspective that gives you something to navigate around with for a while, that strengthens your spiritual stamina for deeper water.
I am in that water too.
The Pier I Jumped From
So, what pier did I jump from to land in this water? Two years ago, my husband and I moved from New York City to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. If you are not familiar, the Outer Banks is an ever-changing sand bar framing one of the most beautifully native coastlines in the world. North Carolina meets the Atlantic Ocean. I live soundside on Kitty Hawk Bay, a winding 9 minutes to the Atlantic oceanfront. And just a few more glorious miles south to the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
I grew up in a churchy setting. I can appreciate a good folding chair. If you grew up in the church, you know that chair. I double majored in English and religion in college, took three years of Greek, the original language of the New Testament). I completed graduate school with a Masters in English with a practicum in writing. To help finance my degree I taught undergrads personal essay and research writing as a teaching assistant. Good times.
I spent 14 years teaching dance and working as a choreographer and nearly 30 years working with high profile folks to raise money for underserved populations in nonprofit organizations. Inner city youth. Emerging artists. Amazing experiences, with so many memories to draw from for my testimony.
I lived and worked in New York City and Los Angeles for the past 20 years. Having lived on both coasts and in the mountains, I love urban life. Everything about it when it becomes your daily grind.
But now I find myself in the middle of a natural environment so full of divine reverence, and wild abandon, that I am left to seek who God wants me to be in His ocean. Open water.
I still have a heart for the underserved. What does Buoy have to do with that? I believe we are all underserved by God’s word. His voice. His nature.
Life is tossed about by the mental, spiritual, emotional squalls of being a human. A daily life with sand, wind, water, keyboard, sand, words—praying, questioning, seeking. My testimony.
Writing was the marrow that filled my birth bones. It comforted me as a child and anchored me through young adulthood. I love words. Until there are too many. Buoy is a few minutes to go deeper. Here’s why. You can stand on the beach—see the swell rolling over itself, hear the roar of the waves crashing forward – getting closer, smell the salt air for just a few captive minutes—and find yourself at sea.
My Obsession with the Deep Blue
It probably makes sense that I have become obsessed with the deep blue. It’s an obsession with the size and force of swells. A swell does not start with what most of us see from the shore. A swell is a collection of deeper waves produced by storms raging hundreds of miles out at sea.
This origin has me swimming. I seek God’s distant swell.
But how to get to that swell. The first three episodes chart the launch of this BUOY podcast, in an ocean inlet of sorts, three spiritual concepts as defined in God’s word:
Two nouns. Faith and Free will.
And a verb. Follow.
We need to get out of the shallows, past the breakers.
(click here to listen)
Faith is a Gift from God
All my life I have heard faith characterized as unmovable, anchored. This rings true, that our faith allows us to stand firm in God’s promises, that His promises don’t change in the face of earthly adversity.
But if I am being honest, I want my faith to move through the lives of others. I want my faith to help guide, inspire, and sometimes simply provide a resting place for fellow sojourners.
We are not meant to tread water; we are created to move through the power of God’s swell. 1 Corinthians 2:5 says, “That your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”
The opening question: What does our faith have to do with God’s divine persuasion?
According to Strong’s concordance, faith (4102/pistis – “peestees”) is always a gift from God, and never something that can be produced by people. In short, pistis (“faith”) for the believer is defined as “God’s divine persuasion.” It is distinct from human belief (confidence) yet involving it. The Lord continuously births faith in the yielded believer so they can know what He prefers, i.e., the persuasion of His will.
Ephesians 2:8-9 says, 8 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.”
Grace is a gift from God through faith—God’s divine persuasion of our hearts. We do not save ourselves, and we do not persuade ourselves, and when we try, we fail. I see belief and faith consistently used interchangeably. I am sad and annoyed by that. They are not. Belief comes from human capacity, as having confidence that something is true. And we also often characterize faith as something we do for ourselves.
- “Have faith” as if it is something we have.
- “Keep the faith” as if it is something we keep.
- “Strengthen your faith” as if it is something we ninja our way to the buzzer.
Mental affirmation is something I have the power to do. I believe in God. I believe in His Son, the crucifixion and resurrection. I believe in the Holy Spirit. But the “knowing”, the conviction, the persuasion of the heart, is not of human origin.
- In a troubling time, we need more than a slogan, we need conviction.
- In a celebratory time, we need more than a hallelujah, we need conviction.
- In a gray-day time, we need more than a “have patience” haiku, we need conviction.
If left to self-persuasion about the power of God’s divine love, we lose the debate. If left to God, we gain the conviction of the heart to motivate us to definitive action. Persuasion is God’s power play, not ours. So, what is the consequence of that? We bear witness. This happens by His divine persuasion. This happens by Him continually birthing faith in the yielded believer.
Romans 12:3 says, “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.” In accordance with, and another translation says, “by the measure of faith” God has distributed to each of you. If we make the choice to believe. In His Son, that He saved us, God will provide the conviction of the heart to live out our witness.
Our faith is the impact God’s divine persuasion has on our witness, our lives.
I want to be clear. I am not creating a word salad, or a theological discussion. This is a critical distinction I need to make between God and me. If I try to own the things of the spirit, attain those things, by my own human nature, I will continue to fail. I need to know what faith is and isn’t. Who has the power, and who doesn’t.
When we “know” faith as His divine persuasion we continue to look to His nature for direction, wisdom, inspiration.
We got nothin’. And I can’t possibly express how much this motivates me. And gives me peace.
We live in a self-centered culture flooded with influence and persuasion. We are constantly the persuade “e”. The more trust we have in the person, or the brand, or the organization the more readily we listen. The stronger the case presented, the more adept the persuader’s skills, the quicker we align. And we act on that persuasion. We are artisans of persuasion. We can’t help ourselves. We buy something. We watch someone. We imitate shamelessly. I can be persuaded to make a recipe from a 2-minute video. I can be persuaded to listen to a 60-minute podcast from an 88-word podcast description. I can immediately commit to do something if you put a clock counting down the deadline for my decision on my screen in front of me. Good or bad, I can be persuaded to decide by someone else’s clock.
Think about someone in your life that you think absolutely rocks life for whatever reasons are important to you. You will turn to that person for guidance, inspiration, and motivation for a next step. Your inner code says this person has your best interests at heart. You may not want to hear the truth this person shares, but you are persuaded to listen. When this person says, “Hear me out” and lays out the argument, or demonstrates the approach, you pay attention. Your trust of this person comes from previous experiences that yielded reliable results you could count on. This is rationale, predictable, assuring.
So how much more when we are divinely persuaded by the Master Debater? When God says, “Hear me out.” How does God divinely persuade us? How does God’s divine nature persuade the hearts of other believers through our personal witness? How does He make Himself available to the non-believer through us?
This is what Buoy is all about. Buoy is not a place we seek for shelter. We are completely exposed to the elements, in the center of God’s distant swell.
In Peter 1:5 he says, “5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.” Faith unleashes God’s miraculous power in the life of the believer. God is the giver of faith. God sent His Son. As Hebrews 12:2 says, 2 “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.” Our witness illuminates our faith—it is how we represent God’s divine persuasion to each other. It is when we act in response to His persuasion.
This brings me to the first of three personal affirmations I want to share with you as we launch BUOY:
Affirmation No. 1: My faith is solely defined by His divine persuasion in my life.
It is as strong, deep, and wide as the divine revelation of Him in my actions. Solely. He is the only source.
Free Will is a Gift from God. So that is why, counterintuitive as it may seem, I need to turn back toward my shore for a minute, back to the deeply personal gift God gave me when He created me: My free will. This is what I bring to His ocean. He made me free to love Him.
God gave you this gift too. But hey, you know that. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you are someone who has never felt you had any choice over your life, yet you ARE a seeker.
Join me for Episode 2. Free will is planted in your garden.
Why does God give us the freedom to choose?
(click here to listen)
His grace. My gratitude.
See ya on the Buoy.
I encourage you to speak up human. If Buoy brings value to you take a moment to share it with someone. Write a quick review so we reach more seekers. Comment, ask questions.
You can find me at kathrynbise.com and @buoykathrynb on Instagram.
Buoy is a Life in Deeper Water podcast.
Music: Both of Us – Madirfan.