There’s this myth that once you trust God, everything just
happens.
I always thought once
you prayed the prayer of faith and actively committed your will to the Lord’s, that’s
all supposed it would take. I believed like many Christians that God would
continue to grant me the desires of my prayers as long as I earnestly believed.
There’s even a beautiful scripture to support this thought: Psalms 37:4-5
“Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this”
Completely false.
Not the scripture, but our thinking surrounding the verse.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, yet unseen Hebrews
11:1. With that understanding, we know that our God while no respecter of
persons, rewards faith. Each man is granted a measure of faith Romans 12:3. Before Jesus and the process of believing in the Messiah,
God judged Abraham’s faith and because Abraham believed, he was saved. Genesis
15:6.
What many of us fail to realize is that the path of faith is not a straight line of believing and receiving. Faith is a long road of constantly not seeing. Then in an instant, God, after seeing your sustained belief through the tests and trials grants those desires which he has placed in your heart in the process.
Does God always work this way? No. Sometimes prayers are
answered instantly, but for most of us, it’s the things we’ve prayed the
longest about that truly allow us to testify to the faithfulness of God.
So what does the faith walk actually look like?
It looks like tears, and questions.
It feels like fruitlessness and fear.
It hurts to believe while you seem to never receive.
It pulls you, and it stretches you.
Ultimately it asks you: do you believe God is truly who he
says he is and that God will do everything he says he will do.
That’s why you doubt, and fight and question and cry and
complain.
Because ultimately when God does finally come through for
you, and in spite of you, you can only give Him glory for it all.
I encourage
you to maintain your secret prayers, especially through the tests, continue to trust God and always go back
to 2 Timothy 2:13.
“If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.”
All my love,
Obioma
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