You think you know the direction God would have you to go. You believe you have clarity about your next steps to do what God designed you to do. You may even want to leave your current job and step out in a new direction. But your spouse doesn’t see it. What do you do?
A reader actually sent me this question recently. It’s one I receive fairly frequently from Christians trying to figure out God’s best for their lives. And it is an important one.
Stepping out before you know how it all turns out—that’s what faith is all about. But many Christians embrace the false notion that it should be easy, or at least simple. And if it’s not, God isn’t in it.
But when we look at Scripture, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, there is one thing we know we will encounter every time we change direction in life—resistance.
It’s been called the green monster. Invidia in the Latin texts. A deadly sin. And a common one. Envy.
I confess to falling for it at times. Far too many times. No matter how much success I experience, it’s never enough.
The book launch could have been bigger—like hers. The traffic could be higher—like his. The number of speaking engagements could be more—and so it goes. More. Always more.
As we strolled through our neighborhood last night, my wife and I noted features we liked about other houses, and I felt envy creeping in again—even though we have a beautiful home with more room than we’ve ever had before.
Envy, you see, is not rational. It doesn’t make sense when we think about it. But then we usually don’t think about it. We just go with the feeling and end up in a bad place.
But usually by the end of each day we’ve encountered more than a few people who appear to be enjoying success. More than we’re having, at least.
And that’s all it takes. We see it and we want it for ourselves.
Ever feel alone? Jesus did, too. That’s right. Messiah. Creator. Savior of the world. Even he dealt with loneliness. After all, one of the reasons he became one of us was to understand what we go through each day on this terrestrial ball. But unlike us, Jesus refused to give in to the temptation to fixate on that feeling.
How did he beat it? Jesus beat loneliness by speaking the truth to himself.
It matters greatly how we talk to ourselves. Let’s face it, we are the one person we can never get away form—no matter how hard we might try at times. So what we say to ourselves is critical when we are tempted to feel alone.
It happened at least once to Jesus, most noticeably as he gave his disciples a final briefing just prior to his crucifixion.
Smack dab in the middle between real life and real faith is—real fear. Fear of failure. Fear that we’ll look foolish. Fear that everyone will laugh when we do fail. Fear that __________ —fill in the blank with your own fear. There’s no shortage of reasons to be afraid. But how can we stop being afraid?
I believe that for those who have trusted in Christ as their only hope, God has not left us to be paralyzed by the unknown.
Instead, His Word gives us 7 steps for overcoming fear and rising victoriously above the challenges that come our way.
That’s not to say it will be easy.
No one ever said that fulfilling your purpose in life and living a story worth telling would be easy. Or if they did, they didn’t know what they were talking about.
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In Episode 18, I share a candid review of the 5 most common options to the resistance we encounter when we start anything new.
It’s been said that when the going gets tough the tough get going. But let’s face it: it’s easy to say we believe until we face a faith challenge.
Only when we face a challenge do we discover what our faith is made of. Only then do we realize that growing our faith will take some work.
It might help to think of our faith challenge as a growth curve. When we first begin to step out by faith and test both ourselves and God, we’ll meet resistance.
Resistance doesn’t mean right or wrong, it just means we’re moving in a new direction. Easy doesn’t mean we have God’s green light. In fact, if we’re trying to grow our faith in response to a faith challenge, we should expect it to be difficult at first, especially early in the curve.
When I first started on the path to becoming a professional writer, nothing was easy. I mean nothing.
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