It’s nice when we can see what God is up to in our life. And it’s generally fairly easy to follow him in these moments. But we don’t always have such clarity and we must live by faith anyway.
To be sure, sometimes God opens doors and it’s very clear the direction he wants us to walk. Like Jonah, we might have our own personal reservations, but there’s no doubt or uncertainty in what he’s asking us to do.
At other times our path is not clear. We know something is required of us but we don’t know what direction to head. And without this clarity we often hold back and do nothing.
But even in these moments of uncertainty we must still live by faith.
Faith is not about perfecting our understanding but rather perfecting our trust. And all too often we want to wait on perfect understanding before we’re willing to trust God enough to take our next step forward.
Of course, we need some basic understanding of our options. It’s hard to choose a path when we can’t even see the road in front of us. And certainly it’s good in these moments to pray for God to clear the fog.
But sometimes even in knowing the paths we could take we’re not clear on the path we should take. While we shouldn’t rush ahead and try to arrange things on our own apart from God, there are times in which he lets us exercise our freedom of faith.
But even here faith is not perfect clarity. We might not understand why we have to face these particular choices. And we might even be angry that we have to face these choices and not other ones. But we faithfully make the choices before us – trusting God is with us even when we don’t fully understand.
In the end, waiting on perfect clarity often robs us of living a life of faith. Keep stepping forward even when your understanding is not perfect – trusting God is guiding your footsteps each mile of the way.
Photo by Nathan Trampe on Unsplash
