Tag Archives: walking by faith

January 16, 2017 · 5:37 AM

Our Guide


If you’ve ever been hiking or mountain climbing, there’s a couple of ways to do it. You can do it on your own or you can have a guide. I’ve tried it both ways, and having a guide is far more enjoyable. When I’ve done it on my own, I didn’t really know the right path, how long it would take, where the best photo ops were, or where good places to take a break were. Having a guide took a lot of stress out of the journey.

Each of us are on a path in life. The truth is, we are all trying to make our own way, but we don’t know if we are on the right path, where to rest, how long it will take, or where the most scenic places are. We make mistakes, go the wrong way, and are often the blind leading the blind through life. We know there has to be a better way, and there is. We can have the Lord as our guide if we’re willing to follow.

Psalm 1:6 says, “The righteous are guided and protected by the Lord” (GNT). With God as our guide, we can trust He knows the right path to take us down, when to have us rest, and where we are going. When I trust my guide, I don’t have to know where exactly I’m going and can enjoy the journey more. I simply follow where the guide leads because He knows the best way. It’s really about trusting the guide to get me where I’m going.

Whatever path you’re on today, stop and ask God to be your guide. Commit to following where He leads. It may not be down the paths you expect, but He knows the best way to get you where He wants to lead you. Trust the guidance you find in Him and in His Word. He’s the one who leads us beside still water and restores our soul. He knows the way we should go. It’s time we walked by faith, trusting in Him and His path to where we’re going.

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October 15, 2015 · 5:30 AM

Miracles In The Wilderness

  
There were two instances where Jesus wanted to feed a large crowd. One was a crowd of 5,000 and the other was of 4,000. In both instances, they were away from the city with nowhere to buy food. In Mark 8, we find the story of the 4,000 people who were following Jesus and it says they ran out of food. Jesus had compassion on them and indicated he wanted to feed the mass of people. The disciples were incredulous and asked, “How are we supposed to find enough food to feed them out here in the wilderness?” (NLT)

They knew that Jesus was looking to them to feed the people. I’m sure the “we” in that sentence had some inflection in it indicating they thought He should be the one finding the food. He was the Son of God after all. But Jesus didn’t waiver. He stayed true to who He has been since the beginning of time. He looked to them for an act of faith. He wanted them to be the ones who looked at an impossible situation and to offer Him something to multiply. 

When their faith saw only the impossibility, He threw them a hint. In verse 5 Jesus asked, “How much bread do you have?” He was looking for them to trust Him with their own bread so He could do what only He could do. He wanted them to see He could perform miracles in the wilderness if they just put what they had in His hands. He didn’t have to be in a lush environment or around a lot of people in a city to perform a miracle. He just needed to be by a few people with enough faith to trust Him with what they had.

You may be in a wilderness right now wondering what God is doing. You may look around you and think you don’t have anything to offer God to take care of the mass of problems in your life. I believe God would say to you what He said to them, “How much bread do you have?” What is your bread that God could multiply? What is it that you can offer Him in the wilderness that He can multiply? Remember your multiplication tables, anything multiplied by zero is zero. God has to have something from you to multiply. If your faith can’t see what your bread is, ask God to point it out to you like He did with the disciples. Then when you put it in His hands, He’ll perform miracles in your wilderness. 

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June 11, 2015 · 7:19 AM

Quit Playing It Safe

I once had a boss whose favorite question to ask in an interview was, “Tell me a time when you took a risk. Did it pay off or not?” I asked him about it one time and he said, “I don’t want people working for me who are afraid to take risks. I’d rather have someone on my team who has taken a risk and failed miserably than someone who was too scared to even take a risk in the first place. At least the person who took a risk learned something. The one who has never taken a risk will never change his results because he’s too scared to try something new.”

He helped me to understand that taking risks is a Godly trait. Each time you or I step out in faith, it’s a risk. Will God step out and move on my behalf or will I fall on my face? We don’t know, but God asks us to do it anyway. I’ve seen God ask someone to take a huge risk and then allow them to fail. It sounds weird at first, but God needed them in a place of failure to be able to grow them beyond what the risk could have ever offered. His reward for their risk was delayed.

When you risk it all for God’s sake, you put yourself in a place that is totally dependent on God. Your risk speaks volumes to God. It says, “I’m not satisfied with what I’m producing for you. I want to do more for the Kingdom and I’m willing to risk what I have for a chance to offer you more.” It’s in those moments that your faith grows and produces more than it ever has. If you fall on your face, you let God know you’re not going to play it safe. If He catches you, the rewards are eternal.

There’s a difference in taking a risk and making a calculated move. If you’ve got a 90% chance of success, that’s not really much of a risk. It’s a calculated decision made to look like faith. God is looking for those who are willing to go all in and risk it all for His Kingdom. In Matthew 25, he gave three different people three different amounts of talents. To the one who risked nothing because he was afraid, the master said, “That’s a terrible way to live! It’s criminal to live cautiously like that! If you knew I was after the best, why did you do less than the least? (MSG)”

Later on He said, “Get rid of this play-it-safe who won’t go out on a limb. (MSG)” God gets angry when we live life with the goal of arriving in Heaven safely with no bumps or bruises. He put the desire for risk in each one of us. We can either take a risk or allow fear to cause us to play it safe. If you know the parable I’m referring to, the ones who risked it all stayed with the master, but the one who risked nothing was cast into darkness. God calls us to live by faith, not by sight. What risks have you taken for His sake? What is He asking you to risk right now?

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January 15, 2015 · 7:48 AM

Spiritual Discipline

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I was visiting a friend recently who was working on a LEGO project with his kids. They had hundreds of LEGO pieces neatly arranged on their table and a step by step guide. I watched as they looked at each step, found the pieces, decided where they went, put them on there and moved on to the next step. Each step took a while because you had to find the right pieces in the right color and then look at a cartoon drawing of where they went to help them place them.

After watching them build for about twenty minutes, I began to get curious. What were they building? I couldn’t tell from where they were in the project. They showed me the picture on the box so I could see the final outcome. I looked at it and where they were and quickly realized this was going to take days to build. It was not your average LEGO building project. It was going to take multiple steps to get through it along with time and dedication. It reminded me of the spiritual discipline it takes to walk by faith.

For many of us, God has put a dream in our heart or has given us a promise of where He wants to take us. In essence, He’s shown us the picture on the box. We then have a series of steps to go through in order to achieve that picture. Each step takes time. First we have to get the courage to take the next step. Then we have to find the pieces of that step and find where they go. Once we get them in place, it can be a while before God shows us the next step. When He does, the process starts over.

After a while of following the steps God has laid out for us, we can begin to see what He is doing and how those parts fit into the overall picture. In the beginning though, it’s tough to see how any of it relates to what God is doing, but these are the foundational pieces. If we don’t get these in the right place, the rest will not work. It takes spiritual discipline to follow the steps God gives us. That discipline produces the patience and endurance needed to get us where we’re going because it’s easy to want to quit along the way.

If you’re looking at your life and wondering what God is doing, ask to see the box. Let God remind you of the final outcome. To make something incredible, it requires a lot of small steps and intricate details. Don’t get so lost in the steps He has given you that you lose sight of what He wants to do in and with your life. Also don’t worry about the next step until you’ve completed this step. God will reveal each step in His time not yours. Psalm 37:23 says, “The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their life.” God knows the details of each step of your life. Trust Him and follow where He leads.

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July 1, 2014 · 7:36 AM

The Fog Of Life

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Have you ever had to drive in the fog? Some days I have to go through fog so thick it seems my headlights only light a few feet in front of my car. Even though I know where I am, it creates fear. What if there’s a wreck I can’t see? What if the road turns and I miss it? What if there’s something in the road? High beams, that help you to see far when it’s clear, only make the situation worse. You have to slow to a crawl just so you can feel safe in moving forward. You have to take your time in getting to your destination. You have to accept that you aren’t going to get where you are going when you planned on getting there.

Faith is a lot like driving in a fog. It’s dangerous at times. It requires us to slow down and pay attention to everything. We don’t always see what’s right in front of us. It gets revealed to us little by little. God wants us to slow down and to make each move purposefully. He doesn’t want us to get in a hurry. That’s when accidents happen. We have to trust that we will get to where He wants us when His timing is right. That’s one of the hardest parts of being in a fog. We have our own ideas of when we want to get where He has us going and we try to get there as quickly as possible.

I’m learning just how important the journey is. It’s not always about getting to the destination. The fog, the slow times and the detours are all part of God’s purpose for our lives. They build our faith and give us the seasoning that we need so that we are ready when we finally do arrive. I’ve seen how the slow times and the hard times in my life have prepared me for where I am today. I know that as time goes on, I’ll have a better perspective on the foggy times. It’s in those times that I didn’t rely on my headlights to see what was ahead. I used God’s lights to light each step of the path as I took them one by one.

It’s easy to get frustrated when your vision is clouded by the fog of life. It’s hard to slow down and wait. I understand completely. I’m a person who likes to move. I like the sense of accomplishment I feel when I get to my intended destination. That’s what’s comfortable to me. Taking a detour and a route I’m unfamiliar with isn’t comfortable. Slowing down isn’t easy. Taking in the journey isn’t what’s natural for me, but it’s in those times that I trust God the most. It’s on the detours that I learn more about who God is and who He wants me to be. It’s when I slow down and take life one step at a time that my vision really becomes clear. I don’t have to worry about tomorrow or my destination. I’m called to be in this moment.

Maybe you’re like me and you don’t like it when you can’t see very far ahead of you. We can learn a lot when life gets foggy. Don’t panic because you can’t see into the future. Don’t let fear of the unknown consume you. Our God knows your future better than we do. He sees through the fog and will guide us. Trust Him completely with each step. This uncertainty that comes from the unknown is meant to grow your faith and build your relationship with the Father. Don’t rush though it trying to get past it. Be in the moment and trust Him to use the foggy moments to get you where you’re going right on time.

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June 24, 2014 · 7:30 AM

The Blue Prints Of Faith

Due to my schedule, I’m reposting one of my most popular posts this year.

In our small group last night, we were reading from Genesis 6 where God gave Noah the blueprints for the ark. He told him it was to be 450 feet long, 45 feet high and 75 feet wide. He told him what kind of wood to use, how many levels to have, how to waterproof the wood, to build stalls and even told him why he was to do it and how it would happen. I got a little jealous of Noah as I read all of that because he got a blueprint of exactly what God wanted from him with each step.

I’d love for God to do that for me. Instead, I feel more like Abraham who God told, “Leave your native land and go to the land that I will show you.” There were no blueprints, no reasons or navigational directions. He was simply told to pack his stuff, leave his relatives and everything he’d known for a land that he would be shown without being given a reason. I don’t know if he felt the doubt, frustration and fear that I do from being in those shoes.

At first, I started to think that Abraham was the one who really acted in faith. After all, he didn’t get a step by step guide like Noah. The more I think about it, the more I see how much faith it took from Noah to accomplish his task even with a blueprint. When God shows you something you’ve never seen or heard of and asks you to do it, that requires a lot of faith. Even with a blueprint, you are venturing into the unknown, the uncomfortable. It requires faith to start building.

Another thing I see with Noah is the sheer enormity of the project God asked of him. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with how much God asks of us, but just like with Noah, it starts with one board and one nail. It took him a hundred years to complete what God asked of him. As our group leader pointed out last night, imagine Noah on year 33. After all those years, he was only a third of the way done. He’s worked night and day every day for over 39 years and only has a little of the project to show for it. Most of us would have quit. By faith, Noah got up the next day and kept following the blueprints.

Whether God has given you a set of blueprints or has asked you to follow Him with blind trust, it requires faith on your part. Faith to pick up that first board or faith to pack your bags and take that first step. Which of these two do you identify with? Has God asked for endurance from you to see His plan through in the face of ridicule and a seemingly lack of progress? Has He asked you to leave everything you’ve known to do something He’ll show you later? Either way, it requires faith and He has faith in you to accomplish it or He wouldn’t have asked you. Take courage and do something today that moves you in the direction of what He asked you to do.

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October 16, 2013 · 8:01 AM

God’s Flashlight

One of my son’s favorite songs right now is from Psalms 119:105. He marches around singing how God’s Word is a lamp to his feet and a light to his path. He doesn’t really know exactly what all he’s singing means, but I do. Him singing that song is a great reminder of when we’re lost, can’t see the future or in a dark place, that God’s Word is the light we need in order to see.

I like how the Message puts it. It says, “By your words I can see where I’m going; they throw a beam of light on my dark path.” I like to know where I’m going. I like being able to see what my next step is before I take it. I can tell you from experience that it’s easy to get hurt when you walk in the dark. It’s easy to get tripped up when you can’t see what’s in front of you. It’s the same in the physical as well as the spiritual. We need light to be able to see. Yet, how many of us put that light in us?

The Bible is not just a book of rules and regulations. It’s a book of light for our lives. If we aren’t consuming it, we are wandering in darkness. It prepares us for the road ahead of us and shows us what is right in front of us. I saw a photo the other day of hikers going up a mountain at night. The side of the mountain was dotted with little, white lights from top to bottom. I thought to myself that it was a great image of what the Christian life is all about.

We are all on this journey in life seeking the summit in the dark. So many try to find the top of the mountain without any light. They try to get through without knowing what’s in front of them and they have no direction. God’s Word provides direction, light and peace. It’s what we need in order to find our way through steep inclines, low valleys and when we’re walking on the edge. God didn’t want us to walk this life alone in the dark. He wanted us to learn to trust Him so He gave us a light. The problem is we don’t use it as often as we should.

Are you in a dark place right now? Are you not sure which way to go? Let me encourage you today to get into the Bible. It will cast a light on your path and be a lamp to your feet. It will give you the wisdom you need to make the decisions ahead of you. It will show you people who took the wrong path and how God helped them. It will remind you that even if you’ve stumbled in the dark, God is still there willing to help you get back up and to point you in the right direction. Just like a flashlight is useless unless you turn it on, God’s Word can’t help you unless you open it up and read it.

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