Hey Friend,
I’m so glad you came across this entry today. While I don’t know where you are in your walk right now-- in the midst of a storm, just got out of a storm, or about to go into one-- I want to encourage you that God is inviting you to trust Him more.
My local church is conducting a corporate study of the book Experiencing God: Knowing & Doing the Will of God by Henry, Richard, and Mike Blackaby. As I was reading, I was struck by this simple illustration that explains our walk with God.
We THINK that our walk with God will be as simple as seeing God at work in our lives, obeying Him, and then experiencing His goodness (the upper road). But the truth is on the lower path. We see God working, and then he invites us into a loving, often deeper, relationship with Him. Next, we are invited to partner with him on this Earth, and then He speaks to us. Finally, a crisis of belief happens where you will learn to adjust how you’ve been living and ultimately, hopefully, choose to obey Him and experience Him in a new and more profound way.
Remember, Moses experienced several crises of faith while going to Pharaoh to let his people go and being repeatedly denied (Exodus 4-13).
This is also what Dr. Bri speaks of when she says God invited her into more when He led her to quit her job as a tenure-track professor.
It is also what God asked me to do when he showed me the hard season my marriage was about to enter.
Now I want you to think about your own walk. What has God told you to do? Does it seem like there is no way for it to happen (crisis of faith)? You might even feel like the prophet in Isaiah 49:4, “But my work seems so useless! I have spent my strength for nothing and to no purpose.” But even in that verse, he ends with, “Yet I leave it all in the Lord’s hand; I will trust God for my reward.”
I want you to hold on to this nugget of Biblical truth: Hebrews 13:8 reminds us that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore. He doesn’t choose favorites (Romans 2:12 NLT) to bless and leave the rest of us to fend for ourselves. This verse explains how this ancient principle, used for Moses, still works for Dr. Bri, myself, and you and will continue to work for countless others to come.
God is inviting you to trust Him and lean on Him for direction and the strength to make it through.
This is exactly what I needed today. I just told my therapist yesterday that I feel like I've done everything God has asked me to do and obeyed, and yet I still have not received the things he's promised me, and I waiver between feeling delusional believing this thing God has told me but not having evidence of it after 20 years. I have been in a crisis of faith, yet pushing forward trusting that i will receive the reward he has promised me.