"Imagine life without faith! Were nothing left but pure reason, it wouldn't be life." ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, We Agnostics, pg. 54~
 

  What is faith? It is the theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will. It consists of the study of the nature of God and a coming of the understanding of the Truth. So primarily it is not really that hard to imagine life without faith because with some of us we lived that way for a very long time. 

So what we really were doing was living without life. Sounds sort messed up doesn’t it? But just think for a moment about how it was that we were living. We lived a life based in self reasoning. We really had no answers to what we were doing, but we created reasoning behind that. We lived life without purpose. 

Reason is defined as a declaration made to explain or justify action, decision, or conviction. We were going through life declaring a justification for our actions. When in a real sense we had not a clue what was going on. Reality escaped us. We were living with-in the material world but had no real explanation why or how it got that way. 

This is where faith enters the picture. It was the at the exact time that we accepted the smallest idea that God was the Power that would be able to restore us to sanity that we started practicing faith. Directly after accepting that possibility we were asked to surrender ourselves to the God that we understood and the process of living life outside the boundaries of the material world started to blend into our thinking. 

With most of us the fact that we became willing to turn our wills and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him, we were reborn. An instant change came over us and we were now ready to accept that possibly we were at fault for most of our misgivings. That if we practiced even more faith, that God would provide us with the tools to change all of that around. We now would rely on Him instead of relying upon ourselves. We began living again. 

Fear, paranoia, worry, anxiety…..were no longer things that gripped us. We were able to live life now and not be hampered with those particular imagined diseases. Oh yeah! Alcoholism being a symptom of all of that also became unnecessary too! We could live life now without alcohol, drugs, or anything else that seemed to hinder us. So that same imagination that caused us all the grief, now can imagine life without it. That is what I call a turn around!  

For those who do not understand this premise let’s look at it this way. Do you remember when you first started to ride a bike? Mom and dad would run along side of you making sure that you stayed steady. You had faith in mom and dad not to let go of you, but soon you noticed mom and dad were no longer beside you and you were actually maneuvering the bike yourself.

 This is sort of what faith is in God. You rely on God to steer you in the right direction. He is there beside you while you are riding the bicycle of life. If you believe in Him, he will not let you fall.

 Life without this faith is sort of like learning to ride the bicycle by yourself. You might actually learn to ride it, but there is never the comfort or the security of someone there to catch you when you fall. There is no one there to guide you in the learning process. There is always the nagging fear that you have never learned the right way of riding the bike.

 See with God it doesn’t matter! He will be there no matter if you did it right or wrong. He takes away the fear. It is not the fact that you are riding the bike, but the experience of riding the bike. The experience can never be right or wrong. God sees to it that it is never going to be that way. 

So with faith you can enjoy the experiences of life, without faith you will never know! Another great quote: 

     “A person who has done much of their life unconsciously doesn't know they are doing it, and you may not believe me when I tell you this is something you are probably doing, and doing quite a lot, if not all, of the time. It takes becoming more conscious to realize what you were doing”. ~ "Nine Principles for Happiness and Healing" Series by Bill Harris http://www.trans4mind.com/holosync/principle6.html

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