I am amazed at how God is so faithful in the midst of my own anxiety. I mean, I’ve always had a head knowledge that God is faithful, but my heart is finally beginning to understand. We always pray for a “peace” about situations as a way to know whether or not we are in God’s will. While peace is a good thing, and God grants it to us, and it *can* be a way to know whether or not your decision was a good one, God doesn’t always use peace to show us we’re doing things the right way. Two accounts that have been inspiring me so much lately are about Abraham and Peter.
Abraham lived for a long time without a son. Finally God promised Abraham a son, who he later named Isaac. When Isaac was still young, God called Abraham to sacrifice the promised son. You can’t say or do anything to convince me that Abraham had a peace about that. Nevertheless, he knew that God would not ultimately kill Isaac and kept walking up that hill, even to the point of raising the knife to his son’s chest.
Peter didn’t have to kill anyone, but he had to do something that was also kind of crazy and absolutely impossible. Jesus had sent the disciples ahead of him in the boat and promised to catch up later. During a really bad storm, they saw Jesus walking on the water. Not too hard a task for the Son of God, right? Then Peter, in his all-too-impulsive ways, cried out to Christ, “If it’s really you, call me to yourself!” So Jesus did, and Peter stepped out of the boat. In the middle of a raging storm, this mere human began to walk on the surface of the water. We can see that Peter didn’t have a “peace” about it because when he realized the storm he was in, he began to sink. Why? Because he took his eyes off of Christ, the one who was calling him and leading him.
So you can see that there’s a precedence already set for real, Godly leading without a peace to back it up. In cases like this, I like to call it more of a “confidence” in God’s leading. I may not have a peace, but I have a confidence. Enough confidence to say “God, I don’t know where you’re going with this, and I don’t know what might happen, but I know you’ve called and I’m willing to follow.” I think that’s where faith gets exciting. Even a peace can make faith seem kind of easy. But when the storm’s a-ragin’, it’s a lot harder to not be frightened like Peter. I only pray I can be as confident as Abraham when he told Isaac, who asked where the sacrificial ram was, “The Lord will provide the lamb.” And even if I get a little scared, like Peter, I know that Christ is right there to grab my hand and pull me up to Him. Because after all, once I’m back in the boat, the storm will be over.
-j
I'm Jason, and I like to write.