Okay, so this post may be one of my shorter posts, and again, I am being real with you. It is so easy for us believers to put on our masks. When people ask, we just say everything is fine, and then go back to being depressed, or sad, or angry, or frustrated. But that is not how it SHOULD be. We SHOULD have people in our lives that we can be real with, and though I don’t usually tell anyone my “realness,” I am telling a bunch of strangers today.
I hope that this post will encourage readers to fight the good fight, to stand strong, and persevere because, in the end, it will be beneficial for us to do so. I am going to be brutally honest regarding my faith journey so far in my writing career and my small business ventures.
I am so tired of trying to live by faith! For the past couple of years, day in and day out I have had to live by faith. I have had to trust God to provide what He said he would. I would really just love to give it all up and go back to an easy full-time job where I clock in, get paid, pay my bills, save up, and have that nice cushion in my finances.
Life would be so much easier for me if I just did that. Sure, I would probably be miserable like everyone else in a job that they don’t want, but have to have to pay all the bills…but it would be easy! It would be easy to pay bills. It would be easy to save up. It would be an easy life.
My faith fight has really been a hard one lately. To be honest, I have to say I do feel like God has let me down a bit. Of course, it could very well just be my interpretation of what the scriptures say, but it still doesn’t make it feel any less like He has let me down.
I haven’t been able to pay all of my bills over the past two or three months, and I feel like God has not honored His word in providing what I need when I step out by faith. But I also know that I probably made a poor choice by buying too much product at one time…basically trying to expand my business too quickly, maybe, and that has had disastrous financial ramifications for me.
So, I do get that God may have allowed me this financial situation to teach me a lesson, but I can’t help but wonder why He couldn’t have taught me this lesson differently while showing me that He will provide for my bills in the process. I know that that would definitely have solidified my faith in God’s miraculous provisions. But…. He didn’t…so, to be honest…I have questioned that whole “God will provide all of your needs.” Now, I get that paying off credit, and a few other things aren’t really needs, but they are important.
Whatever God’s reasons, it has really made me have to trust God a lot more, especially because I am learning that my expectations of what I believe God’s word says or what God’s actions are sometimes don’t line up with God’s actual word or actions. Does that make him any less God, or faithful, or good? No, it just means I still have growing to do, and that I still have to learn to lean harder when I feel like God has failed me.
You know, that whole idea that God will never forsake or leave you…well…if I were honest…I would have to say I don’t feel like that was the case these last two months. But I also realize that my own finite mind just doesn’t get God sometimes. It’s like a cockroach trying to understand the complexities of human existence when all it can comprehend is a mere fraction of human existence because its brain is so stinking small and incapable of understanding. After all, isn’t that pretty much the definition of living by faith. When we don’t understand, we just have to grip tighter to what we do understand about God and who he is.
It is hard, sometimes, though. Isn’t it!
I know I am not alone in this. I am willing to bet that every single one of us has at one time or another felt that God has abandoned us…even now…maybe…someone is thinking this. It is hard to not believe that He has left us out to dry when things just don’t seem to be lining up with what we believe the bible tells us, but I want to encourage you to find something that you can grab a hold on about God and grip it tightly when you start to doubt.
It is not wrong to doubt. I think it is a very healthy spiritual journey to doubt. When we doubt, we really have to take account of what we actually believe and why we believe it. We have to either choose to lose faith in that aspect of our Christian walk, or we have to choose to cling to our faith in that aspect of our Christian walk. Faith is more of a choice than not. At least that is my opinion.
So, when the road gets too steep, and you find it difficult to keep walking, find handholds and climb as best you can on that road. Cling to what you can, and ask for more faith to pull you up! That is what I have to do pretty much on a daily basis right now.
I know God doesn’t leave or forsake me, but it sure does feel that way sometimes, and when it feels like he does, I just have to remember all of those times before that when, in the end, it worked out.
I hope this has helped some of you readers to keep walking. Even if it is more of a crawl. Keep the faith in whatever way you can until you get to the other side, however long that might take.