God is asking you to follow him in a way that will require your faith. You&#8217;re not going to understand it. You&#8217;re not going to be in control of it. Can your mind make peace with the unknown? Can your hands remain open in full surrender? And girl, will your feet move forward to destination UNCERTAIN.
Faith would not be required if you had a complete plan with confidence in the next 37 steps. Faith would be unnecessary if your future were certain and the steps there were clear. But that is NOT the life you were created for. That is not the future you&#8217;re being called to. Faith will be required here, my friend. Why? Because Hebrews 11:6 says, &#8220;It is impossible to please God without faith.&#8221;
So, these uncertainties you face and the struggles with control you feel are your path to pleasing God. This is your path to faith. You are called to a place where you can&#8217;t see everything, you don&#8217;t understand it all, and it&#8217;s beyond your control &#8230; all for the purpose of growing your faith.
Look around, you are in the faith growing field. The uncertainties and struggles are God&#8217;s divine recipe for your faith to grow. You can&#8217;t do this on your own. You don&#8217;t have all the answers. You can&#8217;t see how it&#8217;s going to work. But you have a God who is calling your next step. Will you take it in faith?
Next steps are quite practical. The next step is always right in front of you. It&#8217;s quite literally doing what you can, where you are, with what you have &#8230; and (this is big) &#8230; not allowing what you can&#8217;t do, what you don&#8217;t know and what you don&#8217;t have, to keep you stuck.
Our last devotional together was episode #2006, &#8220;Will You Be Different&#8221;. Studying the story of Noah, we see how Noah was different and God was pleased. Humans had become evil in thought and action, but Noah was faithful to God. Noah had a close relationship with God and sought to walk closely with him. God tasks Noah with a job so big that it would take him 120 years to complete &#8211; build the ark. This ark would house the only living breathing things through the flood which God would use to start over again.
And this is what God says to Noah in Genesis 6: 17-19, &#8220;Look! I am about to cover the earth with a flood that will destroy every living thing that breathes. Everything on earth will die. But I will confirm my covenant with you. So enter the boat &#8211; you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring a pair of every kind of animal &#8211; a male and female &#8211; into the boat with you to keep them alive during the flood.&#8221;
Imagine receiving this kind of impossible mission. God, how do you expect me to do this? But, Noah lets God continue. He doesn&#8217;t interrupt him with his questions. He doesn&#8217;t insert his own emotions. He listens. And here&#8217;s what God says next &#8211; verse 20, &#8220;Pairs of every kind of bird, and every kind of animal, and every kind of small animal that scurries along the ground, will come to you to be kept alive.&#8221;
God gives Noah a task he can do &#8211; he can build a boat. Right where he is, with what he has, he can start building. But, what Noah couldn&#8217;t possibly do is gather a male and female of every single air breathing animal. How would he ever do that? They didn&#8217;t even have tractors and trailers back then. There were no semi trucks to make a route to gather up these animals. This was beyond anything Noah could do. But God didn&#8217;t expect him to do the impossible. What God expected was for Noah to get busy doing what he could do in building, and trust God to do the impossible work.
Girls, I can&#8217;t stop thinking about that. Who else has been prompted by the Holy Spirit to do something, but you&#8217;ve talked yourself out of it because step 5 is so far out of reach that it overwhelms you. So, you never moved beyond step 1. Maybe you started step 1, but you gave up. You got discouraged. You got scared. And instead of finishing that step in faith, you never completed what you could do.
You could have built that boat, and if you would have built that boat, God would have brought the animals. IT WOULD HAVE COME TO YOU. You wouldn&#8217;t even have to go out and chase it, God would have brought it to you. But you stopped building, honey. And when you stop doing what you can do, using what you have where you are, then God withholds those impossible steps from coming right to you.
You don&#8217;t have to chase what God has for you. It will come to you. But you do have to do the work to prepare for it.
For my single ladies, you never have to chase the man God has for you. God will bring him to you. It will literally happen &#8230; but there&#8217;s work for you to do right where you are first. And that work is ON YOU. Your faith, your space, your priorities. If you will put in the work where you are, God will align the best things for you next.
For my girls who know you have a calling on your life to start or build something &#8230; start it, build it! Yes, for real. Start small. Start simple. Start for free. Be bad at it long enough to get good at it. You don&#8217;t have to have your business plan perfected with the budget to support level 10 of this &#8211; honey, you&#8217;re at level 1. What if level 10 requires a divine movement of God and he has it planned, but you won&#8217;t see it until you get there. Faith is required to work here on level 1, knowing you could never pull off level 10 on your own. That work is pleasing to God!
Noah had no way of gathering a pair of every species of animal. How in the world would he do that? If he would have been worried about chasing lions and tigers and bears, he wouldn&#8217;t have been building a boat. His job was to build the boat &#8211; God would bring the animals.
Your job is to do what you can, where you are with what you have. Your job is to be faithful with little. Your job is to stay in relationship with God as you grow. Your job is to be so absolutely sold out to God that what you&#8217;re doing will NEVER work without God doing his part. THAT IS FAITH!
And let me tell you something &#8211; when you settle for a little safe life where you can easily predict how 5 years from now will work out because you have a plan and you can control that plan &#8211; something crazy happens. YOU FEEL RESTLESS. You feel unfulfilled. Life starts closing in on you and suddenly you feel anxious without understanding where the anxiety is coming from.
What we&#8217;ve missed is the root of anxiety is often a gift to us. It&#8217;s a warning sign that something isn&#8217;t right in our lives. Anxiety can be a God-given emotion to make us feel so uncomfortable in our settled comfort, that it forces us to do something different.
God wants YOU to be different &#8211; and he wants you to DO something different. He will allow you to feel the anxiety of a settled, little life so you wake up and seek more. Honey, you were created for more. Settling for less isn&#8217;t supposed to feel good. If you don&#8217;t feel good, stop and ask God why. Maybe it&#8217;s because you&#8217;re not doing what you could do, where you are, with what you have, as a step of faith toward something bigger than you.
There&#8217;s an old saying that says, &#8220;Don&#8217;t put the cart before the horse.&#8221; It means doing things out of order. And maybe you&#8217;ve been focusing on and stressing over something that&#8217;s supposed to come AFTER something else. Maybe you&#8217;ve missed God&#8217;s order in this. God said, &#8220;Noah, you build this boat. I&#8217;ll bring all the animals.&#8221; Order. If Noah would have focused on gathering animals, he would have never built the boat.
Here’s what that could mean for you today:
1. Stop rushing the outcome before the foundation is ready.
We want the result —the success, the relationship, a life change— before laying the foundation that actually makes it possible. Your foundation is a relationship with Jesus. It starts there so you literally MUST start there. Success will build on that foundation. Visible changes will happen after the foundation is set.
2. Stop stressing about the future instead of taking the next right step.
If you let your mind run ahead of you, you&#8217;ll become too overwhelmed to take today’s simple action that would actually move you forward. The next step is always right in front of you. Future steps are held in the future, God will reveal them when you get there. You&#8217;re not there yet.
When the horse pulls the cart, everything moves smoothly. When the cart is in front, everything gets stuck.
Maybe you&#8217;re stuck because you&#8217;ve put your cart before the horse. You&#8217;re doing things out of order. You&#8217;re worried about things that God will do, but he will only do them after your obedient POSSIBLE steps here.
What CAN you do today? Do it. Do it in faith that God will either strengthen you for what is next, or he will supernaturally do the impossible for you. Faith is required to please God here. Faith builds the boat while not worrying about all the animals.
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