So glad to have my guest blogger, Jill Hart, with me this week!
Check out her ministry at www.jillhart.com
VERSE: “He went out, not knowing where he was going.” Hebrews 11:8
OSWALD: “Living a life of faith means never knowing where you are being led. But it does mean loving and knowing the One who is leading. A life of faith is not a life of one glorious mountaintop experience after another, like soaring on eagles’ wings, but is a life of day-in and day-out consistency; a life of walking without fainting (see Isa 40:31).” (March 19th)
MY THOUGHT: I don’t know about you, but I often feel as if I’m walking forward in life, doing what I believe that God has asked me to do, but with no clearly discernible direction. I keep getting caught up in the thought that I should be able to sense or feel where parts of my life are headed. In my heart I think I believe to some extent that I must be “doing it wrong.”
My thoughts look something like this:
If God loves me and cares for me, He wouldn’t ask me to walk blindly, would He? He would understand that I need to KNOW where I’m going. How can I possibly plan things out if I don’t know what’s next?
But that’s exactly it, isn’t it? He doesn’t want US to plan things out. He wants us to learn to live a life of faith. Like Abraham in the verse above. We often think of Abraham offering his son Isaac as a sacrifice (and being provided a ram by God), of his belief that God would provide that very son through Sarah, even in their old age. We don’t think about Abraham in the early years of his faith – having to walk out his faith in a real way. Literally walking away from everything he’d ever known – the land where he had grown up, his family, his friends.
FROM JOANNA: Jill’s entry reminds me of one of my all-time favorite entries from March 11th. It became especially precious during a transitional time of ministry when, like Abraham, we were doing our best to follow God, but without knowing where He would lead us.
“Watch God’s cyclones,” Oswald writes. “The only way God sows His saints is by His whirlwind… Let God fling you out, and do not go until He does. If you select your own spot, you will prove an empty pod. If God sows you, you will bring forth fruit.”
In other words, God was saying to us, “Let Me fling you out! But then trust Me to choose the place where I would have you land.”