100 % cotton

I’m pretty picky about what goes in the dryer when it comes to my clothes. Just ask my wife what a fanatic I can be. A lot of my clothing is 100% cotton. As a rule, unless it’s been washed about 50 times then it’s not dryer worthy as I don’t want risk any shrinkage. We did laundry last night and one of my newer t-shirts found its way into the dryer. This morning as I was folding clothes I found it. You know that music in horror movies when something bad is about to happen that goes “eeeeeek eeeeeek eeeeeek,” well that was went through my head when I saw the shirt in the pile to fold. I pulled it out and held it up. I can’t say for sure that it shrunk but the length of it did look shorter. Yes, I was bummed.

So I’m thinking about this shirt shrinkage while I’m working out this morning. I think about God a lot when I’m working out too. Today I was thinking about my level of faith and it hit me how that tied in with the laundry. I was pretty bummed about the shirt that appears to have shrunk. How does God feel when my faith appears to shrink? Is He bummed too?
How am I affected when my faith shrinks? What changes? I think first and foremost, it opens the door for selfishness. It can lead me to believe more in myself than I do God. I’ve found that when I rely on myself for things in my life the results are rarely (ok never) as positive as when I take them to God. What can be confusing though is just because I tell God about whatever it is, it doesn’t always mean that I’ll get the answer I want. But, I get the best answer.
When I rely upon myself to resolve challenges in my life, I might get the answer I want, but there always seems to be a hole in the plan somewhere. There have been numerous times where I’ve felt I had the best solution; it was ‘my way or the highway’ only to be humbled later by digging deeper to see what God really wanted to happen. What if I had sought God first?
I recalled a verse that reminds me that even the smallest amount of faith call produce the most ‘ginormous’ results:

Luke 13:19
19 It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air perched in its branches."

I have to be conscious of growing my faith. I have to take steps to increase my faith. There is a worship song we sing at church and the chorus says “You must increase, I must decrease” The issue is clear. When I let my faith ‘shrink’ I become the increasing one.

No matter how much I seem I can put my faith in the dryer I’m so grateful that it never shrinks beyond God reach.

What causes your faith to shrink?