Day 2345 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.
Proverbs 3:5 NIV
Yesterday we discussed the story of God calling Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac and how impossible that must have seemed. He had wanted a son for so long and God had finally fulfilled that dream and given him one, and now He was asking Abraham to kill him! Can you imagine what Abraham must have thought? You just gave me this son that I have dreamed about, prayed about, and held out hope for and now you want me to kill him? Yet even with how impossible that must have seemed, Abraham loaded up and headed out to do as God had asked.
That's the hard part about trust. That's the hard part about our faith. It will lead us in directions that we would never consider going. It will shove us way outside of our comfort zones where we have to finally realize that we can't control anything and have to trust in the only One who can. It will completely turn everything we know on its head and force us to learn a new way of thinking, a new way of living that makes no sense to us. But that's what faith is. It's not about doing what's comfortable or what we understand. It's about admitting that we can't see the full picture, but that we have a God who can.
Faith goes against everything we're taught by this world. It goes against our human nature. You see, we think we know everything. We think we can handle everything. We love to think that we're in complete control and can dictate how things unfold going forward. Faith reminds us that we can't. It reminds us that this is bigger than us, bigger than our plans, bigger than our dreams, and more important than our pride and our comfort. Faith leads us where we have no idea of what's going on and tells us that it's okay because God always knows what He's doing, and even more importantly, that we can trust Him!
Our biggest hurdle to actually walking by faith as we're called to do is our selfish nature. We want things to go a certain way. We want all of our exciting dreams and plans to unfold. We want to avoid pain, and discomfort, and every other scary thing because we prefer what's easy and pleasant. We want life to go our way, the road to be smooth, and the gifts to be plenty. But what we have to get through our thick skulls is that what we want and what God has planned are often totally different things. And at some point, when those paths diverge, we each have to choose which one we're going to follow.
Trusting in ourselves seems the more natural choice. Doing what we want to do is by far the most popular and egotistical option. Stubbornly holding onto our dreams, our plans, our desires, and our illusion of control is definitely the one that most choose. But that's not where faith is. That's not where we learn to trust in God. That's not how we live out this faith we claim to have and experience the story that He has written for us. While His path may seem more scary and more uncomfortable, it's the only one that leads to His promises for us. It's the only one that leads us to something that our minds cannot begin to imagine.
At some point we each have to choose to either keep holding on to our desires and leaning on our understanding or letting go and trusting God. We can't do both. We can't stay in the driver's seat and still expect Him to lead the way. We can't focus on what we selfishly want and still expect to find our way to His promises. We can't do this thing our way and follow His path at the same time. Just know that while what we want and what we understand makes sense to us, they're both infinitely smaller compared to what God can do when we place our trust in Him and get out of His way.
It may not be easy. It definitely won't make sense. It will probably be uncomfortable and seem completely impossible at times. But friends that's okay! God is faithful and He has never let us down. He has never led us away from something without leading us to something better. He has never failed to fulfill His promises. AND HE NEVER WILL!! That's a promise that we can always trust in!
This is just one of those verses that make you realize how hard we make things on ourselves. We can and should let it go and let him have it. Our hopes, dreams, plans, fears, concerns, illness and everything that we hold onto. He knows better then we do about every thing there is to know and he loves us, always has and always will.
ReplyDeletePretty much said it perfectly! We make it so much harder than it needs to be because we try to do it ourselves so it can go our way. But it will never work out like that. Letting go and realizing that we can't control any of this is scary at first, but then we can see that we get to trust in God. And then we can finally understand that we have nothing to fear after all. He loves us and will fulfill every promise and every plan. That's all the reason we'll ever need to have hope!
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