How often do we value safety over growth and guarantees over adventure, fulfillment and stepping into our best life in God?
The thing is God actually knows that it will take faith and trust in who He is, rather than what we are capable of to access the life He has planned for us. He is fully aware that we will need to walk closely with Him, because we are not created to do it alone.
Take for example how my husband and I have nearly been married for 30 years. 31 years ago when we first started dating I’m sure I looked at people who had been together for 50 years and wondered how they managed to be married and happy for so long. It wasn’t really in my frame of reference. However on taking the step to date, then get engaged, then married, then have one child, then another and another until we had six children I realised something. We don’t take hold of all that God has planned for us all at once. I didn’t become a wife and mother of six kids all at once. We took a step and trusted that with God we could be married happily and be parents. There was a process of learning, of trusting, of facing our fears and issues, of realising where we were weak and needed God to come in, where we had to grow and where we inevitably had to humble ourselves and ask for help.
We receive and inherit the life God has for us one step at a time. When we choose to trust God it does not mean being blind to the facts, challenges or our own weaknesses. Rather trust recognises and assesses the dangers, threats and challenges and looks beyond and sees God.
Peter could only walk on water because Jesus stepped forward as Peter stepped out. Gideon could only defeat a 130,000 strong army with 300 men because God’s hand moved to help him. Joshua lead several million people to march around the walls of Jericho and saw them come tumbling down as God honoured His promise and Joshua’s obedience. (Joshua 6; Judges 6; Matt 14:22-33)
None of them could have experienced victory in what they were asked and desired to do unless God was there to meet them. Yet when we desire guarantees over trusting God’s goodness and who He is we invariably run the risk of missing out on the life God so desires to give us.
If we want to experience and live that abundant overflowing life we know is possible in God, we actually have to take a step forward trusting God will meet us as we do. Peter had to get his feet wet, Gideon had to come out from hiding and gather his men, Joshua had to march around the city for six days with no sign of change, trusting he’d heard right.
Yet all of these men of faith experienced something that all those who sit back spectating never know. They knew the freedom and exhilaration of experiencing God’s power at work after taking an enormous risk. They came to know God – to really know Him as the one who provides, sustains, rescues, fights for them and works miracles.
Today where is Jesus calling you to take a step? Because wherever and whatever it is you can be sure He is waiting to meet you there. As you consider I recommend that you take some time to calculate the risk, determine if the regret of not stepping out is worse than the risk of failing or being disappointed. Pray and seek God’s Word and His wisdom on what’s in your heart and then go on and “take that first step!”
“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” (James 1:5-7)
“For God gave us not a spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control“. (2Tim 1:7)
Prayer: Lord help me to not be someone who watches life pass me because of my fears, desire for guarantees and need for security. Please help me to take a step into what you have for me. In Jesus name Amen.
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