My husband and I have been married for nearly 31 years, but thirty-three 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 or something I had seen in the relationships around me so I didn’t know if or how it could be done, even though that is what I wanted my life to look like.
However, as I decided to make choices that would enable me to move towards what I wanted and God obviously had planned for me all along things started to change and my life started to be reshaped to look like the dream I had in my heart.
I took the step to date the guy who God had brought into my world, then get engaged, then married, then have one child, then another and another until we had six children, and as I did I realised something. We don’t take hold of all that God has planned for us all at once.
God knows that it will take faith and trust in who He is rather than what we are capable of by ourselves to access the life He has planned for us. All He asks is that we trust Him, take a step at a time, and choose to keep walking as He leads.
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 become parents. There was a process of learning, trusting and facing our fears and issues. We recognised our strengths together and had to acknowledge where we were weak and needed God to come in, where we had to grow and what areas of our lives we had to humble ourselves and ask for help.
When we choose to trust God, it does not mean being blind to the facts, challenges, or 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 led 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 how often do we desire guarantees over trusting God’s goodness and who He is and then invariably run the risk of missing out on the life God so wants to give us because we won’t take that first step?
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 how to take that first step, I recommend that you:
Calculate the risk and determine if the regret of not stepping out is worse than the risk of failing or being disappointed.
2. Pray and seek God’s Word and His wisdom on what’s in your heart.
3. Make a plan of how you will make your move 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 not to be someone who watches life pass me because of my fears, desire for guarantees and needs for security. Please help me to take a step into what you have for me today. In Jesus name Amen.
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