If you’re a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don’t call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it’s something only God can do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift.
Romans 4:4-5 MSG
I am praying that others will accept God’s gift of healing and peace faster than I have, and without having to endure a lifetime of struggle first. Learn this: It’s not by what we are able to accomplish that we earn God’s favor, it’s by our faith in his ability to do things that in all other ways appear impossible that God blesses us with all of his promises.
I may have been a slow learner to realize that by giving up everything of this world, it was ONLY THEN that I would be able to gain everything in all of the heavens and earth for eternity! By loosening my grip and handing every relationship, every possession, every plan, every concern, and every talent over to God, it was ONLY THEN that he was able to bless me with so much more!
GOD SETS ALL THINGS RIGHT.
My life may appear to everyone around me that it is all messed up, and that I am making a terrible choice to continue to follow God even while most people turn against me, even now as I write this.
I am the sheep who only follows the voice of my Shepherd, and I am being led away from the herd on a journey that hasn’t been made clear to me yet. As I walk alone on narrow paths with steep cliffs and wolves ready to devour me on either side, the other sheep are watching me from the comfort of their green pasture surrounded by a fence for protection. They call out to me loudly and ask me to come back. They mock me and call me crazy. They whisper behind my back, even the ones who can hear the voice of my Shepherd that I am following.
Nothing is wrong with the fenced pasture and staying in the company and safety of all the others, I have spent almost fifty years there, and I have learned a lot in that place of protection and training, but God is calling me now to walk out in faith. He is testing my obedience to listen to his voice, and he is rewarding me greatly, with things I had never imagined, along my journey.
I am not my own, and I no longer live for myself, so I will keep walking. I will keep following his voice. I am not afraid of falling to my death because I trust God to set it right. If he wants me to live, I will live, and if my time on earth is done, then God will take me. I have looked death square in the eyes and in that moment of anguish and anger, I boldly declared that Jesus Christ was more powerful than even those scary eyes of death that I was looking into. As I saw the bottomless pit that I was falling quickly into and the arms of Satan that I had allowed myself to get complacent to that had a grip on me, I had NOTHING ELSE besides my faith.
Nothing?! Nothing except faith in Jesus Christ, who had defeated death and bought me with a price! That kind of nothing is EVERYTHING!
I will keep walking away from the others, keep following my Father’s voice, and I will even be blessed to have others mock me and gossip about me behind my back, because then I know that they are watching me and my growing bold faith. Soon others will traverse the path that I have, and then even more, until the Kingdom of believers have all been gathered together again.
GOD SETS ALL THINGS RIGHT.
You’ll see.
Just don’t wait and watch too long. Listen to where God is calling you by name, brothers and sisters in Christ, and step out in faith. You’re about to embark on an adventure that you will wish you had started on sooner, and that is a promise.
GOD’S PROMISE to all who believe.
(Originally published by Steph on May 1, 2023 on Medium.com)