Faith motivated Abraham to obey God’s call and leave the familiar to discover the territory he was destined to inherit from God. So he left with only a promise and without even knowing ahead of time where he was going, Abraham stepped out in faith. Hebrews 11:8 TPT
How many of us spend a good portion of our lives waiting and preparing to be ready. Ready to do what you may be asking? Well you name it, ready to enter the workforce, ready to find a place to live, ready to get married, ready to have kids, ready to retire, ready to move, ready to. . . Only to find out, we’re never really ready and so we find ourselves languishing in the land of “What Could Have Been”, because we never saw ourselves as ready. Why is that? Because we’re slow to see that all this temporal life offers will never be enough. Never enough finances, never enough education, never enough faith, never enough patience, never enough stability, etc. Thinking like this for too long will even make what are good reasons for a time and turn them into excuses that will keep us stuck.
Now, I can understand how this might happen to those who are still living by the standards of the world. But what about those who have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior and received His Holy Spirit. Why do we so often suffer also with “readyitis” (my new made up word)? From listening to myself and others I believe it’s for two reasons. 1) We’re not sure we’re hearing God correctly. Now it is not always easy to know and discern God’s will, but it’s also not impossible. But this thought of stepping out and missing God’s will terrify us to the point of not doing anything! If you’re like me, I’ve heard that God won’t bless us if we don’t follow His lead. What? We don’t walk in God’s favor because we always do everything right. That’s the law mindset, trying to “earn” His favor. We have God’s favor because of Whose we are, joint heirs with Jesus. It’s not what we do, it’s what He has already done. It’s because of His favor that we can step out and even if we heard Him wrong and missed it, He will still honor our trust and faith in Him and get us to where He needs us to be. Maybe it will take a bit longer, but we’ll get there. Remember we are fulfilling His purposes not ours. 2) We fear God will get angry with us and punish us. Again, what are we, that are His blood bought believers thinking? Stop! He does not get angry with us for trying to exercise our faith. Instead He wants to use our missteps to teach us and develop our faith and trust in Him that will take us farther than we ever thought we could go. What He can’t honor, is us doing nothing. And this type of thinking breeds doubt which leads to discouragement and in all honesty is just outright disobedience because God is saying “Go” and we’re saying “Not Ready”.
If you think I’m making this up, I want you to think of Abraham. He might have stepped out, but on day one, he disobeyed. The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. Genesis 12:1 Look at what it says he was supposed to leave; everything. Did he? No! He took his nephew Lot along with him and he only proved to be a Lot of trouble. As a matter of fact the name Lot means veil in Hebrew. He stepped out, but not exactly like God instructed. God didn’t kick him to the curb and “make him pay”. Instead God used this to teach and develop Abraham’s total faith and trust in Him alone. God still blessed him even when he lied and when he tried to move God’s plan along quicker. All of this happened before the Law was given. Abraham and his family were walking in God’s grace and favor, just like every Believer. Every time Abraham heard God he stepped out sometimes He followed the instructions, and sometimes he didn’t. But he still walked out with “crutches” so to speak. And God honored his faith because he was willing step out into the unknown, even when he didn’t understand or know the outcome.
Just like Abraham, God is calling you to step out into the unkonwn and to trust Him. Do it! Don’t just sit there! After all who knows what we are all missing when we don’t.
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