Through the gift of the Triune God’s Son and Spirit we learn to think, love and rejoice as God. The Spirit of God is the cognitive and affective life of God that is the origin, ground and destiny of all creation.

The life story of Jesus expresses what God thinks, loves and enjoys. He has given us the gift of his Holy Spirit to remind us of what he thinks, loves and enjoys that we may participate in thought, love and joy of the Triune God.

Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God, is the living parable of God communicating what God thinks, loves and enjoys. The parables that Jesus tells are, likewise, an expression of the thought, love and joy of God. Jesus tells them for a twofold reason: to liberate of from ignorance about the thinking, loving and joy of God; to enlighten and encourage us with true knowledge about the thinking, loving and joy of God. Jesus not only tells the parables for our instruction, but gives us his Holy Spirit enabling us to participate in or share in God thinking, loving and joy.

To participate in God’s thinking, loving and joy is humanly impossible apart from God’s self-gift in his Holy Spirit. Only through the grace of God do we know that all things are possible for God, even our sharing in the interiority of his cognitive and affective consciousness.

To have faith in God means that we believe that the unfailing the power, wisdom and goodness of God is the only basis for our lives, and that he calls us to share his life/Spirit for our happiness. To have faith is actively to participate in the power, wisdom and goodness that is our peace and fulfillment. Negatively, through faith we recognize that only God’s power, wisdom and goodness are unfailing. In that respect, Jesus affirms that God alone is good (Mark 10:18).

To base our lives on any other power, wisdom or goodness is the self-destructive idolatry that substitutes a creature for our Creator, Ground and Destiny. Jesus could not work miracles for people without faith in the power, wisdom and goodness of God.

We cannot please God without the faith that confidently trusts and counts on God. Persons of faith are open and receptive to the future that God wants for their happiness and fulfillment. Knowing that God keeps his promises, they believe in future that they do not yet see. They believe that God wants them to have and enjoy a life for which he will provide the means. They believe that God has plans for them, and that for God all things are possible. They believe that a caring and generous God is always providing for their ultimate peace and happiness, regardless of their mistakes and limitations.

If our faith in a God that we do not see convinces us that we have a future, our fears, generally based on the limitations and evils that we do see, deprives us of the future God plans for us. Aware of the concrete limitations within all the contexts of our relational life – intrapersonal, interpersonal, social, national, international and cosmic – we can easily succumb to the fear and insecurity that precludes our decision and action for realizing the plans that God has for our happiness and fulfillment. Our faith is that loving confidence in God that overcomes both our fear of living and our fear of dying.