God gave me faith Saturday night. snap. Just like that. I was sitting in my chair writing in my journal all the thoughts and doubts when I simply stopped and asked for faith. I am often like my namesake, the Biblical Sarah, who, doubting God's promises to bless her with a child, sent her servant in to her husband; Ishmael was the result of her impatience and disbelief. I doubt and in impatience move to make things happen instead of trusting that God will make His promises true. The results are disastrous.
I asked God to make me unlike my namesake. It hit me then, that it is a slap in the face of God, to look at my surroundings and circumstances in despondency. To think that this isn't the best place for me to be, that this is not good. To wonder if things will ever be as I wish them to be, to wonder if life will turn out wrong, to fear that it will, is insulting to Him. He is the father of all good things, He is faithful, He started the work in me, He will complete it. To be discontent with anything other than separation from God is ludicrious. Where I am is absolutely where I need to be. Where I will end up living and where I will end up working and where I will be in 50 years is where God wants me and I cannot argue with the goodness of that.
God gave me faith and it was in such stark contrast the doubt of these last few weeks that I felt so retarded and so free at the same time.
4 comments:
Encouraging. And yet, awakening. What a merciful God to give us faith through whatever means!
I second the encouraging part. But faith is scary as well. I certainly trust God to provide the end results; no problem there. It is the journey of getting to that end that still often scares me. The reason being that I usually cannot see God working.
When I notice that time has gone by, and it appears that God has not acted, I assume that God must want me to make the first move. Whether it's a struggle with sin, or a decision to be made. ...Actually, now that I take another look at your post, I see that your example of Abraham and Sarah may be better related than I thought.
Even with such an example, it is still scary when it comes to the present - to my own life. It is possible for God to grant you faith, or are we expected to come up with faith out of our own free will?
At the risk of making you further jealous; but you did ask :)
Back in April, I got in touch with a group of guys in my church that were planning on taking a week-long backpacking/fishing trip in the Beartooth Mountains in Montana (East Rosebud Trail - 26 miles.) The 5 of us fly out to Billings this coming Saturday. We've taken 2 short hikes - one back in April, and another a few weeks ago in Dolly Sods. So ya... I haven't been on a trip out West since IssaCorrie and I went to the Grand Canyon back in 2002.
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