Faith In A Crisis

I’ve had a lot of battles to fight, internal and external ones. Out of the internal ones the biggest of these was a battle in my faith.

It wasn’t a battle in my faith that God was real or that he sent Jesus Christ to die for me as those are truths I believe and that can never be shaken in my life. However, what tickles me is that if those truths can never be shaken in my life, then why does my world shake when things don’t go as he says? Why do I suddenly question God’s promises over my life when the reality I experience isn’t in sync with the word I received?

Why do I question whether God really knows what he is doing in my life when things don’t go according to what his word says?

Notice how I didn’t say “When things don't go according to plan” but, when things go according to his plan, because, I thought, his promises never fail? His word will not return to him void so why am I experiencing the opposite of this? Why does it seem like the word he gave me isn’t coming to pass?

When we experience disappointment such as rejections, we try to comfort ourselves by saying, “Well it probably wasn’t God’s will” and I’m just as guilty as anyone but I’ve come to a different revelation. Maybe it was God’s will. Maybe the rejection needed to happen. God is the only one who truly knows what is good for us so, we need to trust that whether God's route is to walk through the wilderness or it is to avoid it, his destination remains the same. We read about how God delivered the Israelites out of Egypt and how they stayed in the wilderness before they got into the land of Canaan but, what some don't know is that there was a shorter route to getting to Canaan as the bible says in Exodus 13:17-18 "Rather than take the shorter, coastal route to Canaan, God directed Israel southeast toward the Red Sea. The direct route led through the land of the Philistines, and while God could have simply destroyed the enemy, His concern lay more with the unprepared and fearful hearts of His people". God lead them to take that route because he wanted to do something in their hearts before he could allow them to inherit his promises.

A lot of times in my life, I have been so fixated on the promise God supposedly gave me instead of realizing that God's promise is not the material thing. Ex. You will get that job, get into that school, marry that person, etc. but his promise is eternal goodness. I say this because God makes no promise of worldly riches, his promises are of eternal riches. A lot of times, we cry out to God about a disappointment he never promised us. God's will remains the same and his will, will forever be good as he is a good God, but what I've come to realize is that God's will has no one given path; it’s a destination with many routes. So, while God saw his plan working successfully, I saw failure......In God’s omniscience, he knew that going through what I’ve gone through will birth a new me that could never have been birthed by having an easy path. Why don't we leave God who is all-knowing to determine what's good for us, after all, he has been right for all these years, what makes you think he is going to start getting it wrong now?

I realized that my definition of God's goodness was based solely on what I thought was good for me and therefore I was limiting God's works to my own interpretation of his promises. The Bible says God can do infinitely more than we can ever ask or think of so why do I think that because I haven't experienced it, he is no longer that same God? Your revelation of who God is and what he can do in your life should not be based solely on your experience of him or other people’s experiences of him but in the truth of his word. A lot of us limit God by looking at what he has done or not done in our lives or in the lives of those around us and even worse, we limit him to the stories of his works in the Bible. But he is not bound by human limits, he is limitless.

Notice how people’s lives are being used as testimonies that equip us, making our walk easier so we can, in turn, go through our own things and pave way for others.

You can’t experience God as the provider if you’ve never lacked.

You can’t experience God as the comforter if you have never experienced pain.

You can’t experience God as a friend if you never experience loneliness.

Writing this it seems kinda contradictory to say that your revelation of God shouldn’t be based on your experience of him. But, what I’m trying to get at is your perspective in the middle of your crisis. You proclaim that God is your comforter because he said so and because his word says so; His word is the truth, your experience is a fact but we all know that facts can be interpreted the way you want and they do not always equate to the truth. So, set your eyes on God’s word, it is this Holy Perspective that can cause you to proclaim who God is even though you are not experiencing that truth at the moment.

Change the way you look at your situations. Look at them through the lens of faith and watch the miracles of God unfold before your eyes.

Stay Blessed.