One of the things that has always inspired me is watching people walking through hell and still maintaining confidence in God. Even if you are struggling to believe or you don’t believe, there is something noble about it. I’ve been fortunate to have a front row seat to watching so many people respond with extraordinary faith during extraordinarily difficult times.
It’s so inspiring because we all know how hard it is to do. It can be so easy to want to question God as soon as our plan doesn’t work out. Maybe a business fails, a marriage ends, a dream dies, or a difficult diagnosis comes. We might have the desire to trust but in those life circumstances it’s natural to doubt God’s love, faithfulness, or activity instead.
So, here is my question. How do you get the kind of faith that endures through the hardest parts of life? How do I get the faith that my parents displayed when my oldest brother was tragically killed? Where does that come from?
My conclusion from the Scriptures: It is born out of a million small moments where you are willing to trust God. It grows out of all the small decisions we don’t put much emphasis on. Decisions to trust God with a step of faith when we don’t know the outcome, decisions to say no when it’s unpopular, decisions to risk something for the sake of obedience to God’s plan, or those moments of surrender when you don’t want to surrender. On the other side of those decisions, we experience the fact that God is trustworthy. In fact, we experience God. The cumulative effect of those decisions builds faith for when you really need it most. In essence, you sow and reap your way into confidence in God that readies you for any storm. Matthew’s words are so familiar:
Matthew 7:25 “The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.”
When you watch someone with extraordinary faith in incredibly difficult seasons, it’s because they’ve been grinding for a decade building their life on a solid foundation. That kind of faith doesn’t appear when you need it, it’s grown over years. It’s in the moments of crises that you find out how deep or shallow your faith really is in your life.
The small decisions you make now to trust God or not are sowing toward your future faith. Your yes or no today will determine how your faith responds when everything hits the fan. So, what areas do you need to step out to trust God today? Maybe it’s with your marriage, your finances, your decisions, your college semester, or your dating life.
Begin building faith today that you will need tomorrow.