It is here where we find all along we were holding ourselves back from a life that we could have only dreamt of before giving ourselves over to trusting Him with it
That’s all God ever asks of us.
Just one more small step.
He handles the heavy lifting. He handles the bigger picture and all the small pieces coming and fitting together masterfully and wonderfully in His timing. He takes care of us as a gardener would tend to and take after their beautiful garden. He does not delay, nor does He reluctantly become bored and neglect us. From the surface, it seems too good to be true, that we would only have to take a small step at a time.
But do we?
Do we always?
Personally I battle every day with the idea of taking a small step and leaving the outcome to Him. I want so badly to take what I see around me and make assumptions and speculations to anticipate where each “point A” will lead to find exactly where each “point B” will end up being.
Often times I wrestle with a small step being so seemingly insignificant that I can’t manage to pull myself to take it at all.
I fight and grapple and find God standing strong, not budging in what He wants . . . and He does this because He loves me more than I love myself. I do have the choice I have found to not take the step at all. But all my begging for Him to somehow change His mind fails miserably as I sink into wanting things to go the way I am imagining them going in my head.
How sneaky the enemy of our hearts is, taking something that should be organic and tailored exactly to fit us, that is allowing God to lead, and turning our hearts to doubt Him rather than trust Him like a child would their loving parent.
How awful and tragic it is that we would war with God’s heart as we second guess Him constantly to know where we would be best going in our life’s journey.
I respond, maybe not out loud but in the quietness of my restless thoughts I struggle with, “I just don’t know what possible good thing could come of me doing what You want me to do, Father. How is this even going to get me anywhere?”
“Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the rock and strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
“But as for me, it is good for me to draw near to God; I have made the Lord God my refuge and placed my trust in Him, that I may tell of all Your works.”
-Psalms 73:25-26, 28
I have been shocked at where each small step of obedience to His leadership has taken me in life . . . yet I still wrestle. I still fight. This is to be human, yes that is true. We fight and storm inside because there is no peace without our Creator’s touch to calm our fear and raging appetite for self-preservation.
This is to be human.
Yet, something in our hearts longs desperately for a connection with the One whom has given Himself to have us. That is why it is indeed good to draw near to Him. To trust Him with even the smallest of steps that may seem as though they will lead and are leading us absolutely nowhere.
Have you felt stagnant or even stuck where you are?
Draw near to Him who wants you to be led onward.
I have found over and over again without surprise that it is typically me and not my circumstances that have held me back from so much. It hit me the other day the weightiness of how much that is true in my life. Whether it is me thinking I am inadequate to do something specific or if it is just me doubting anything would come of me taking a small step towards a dream I have had for so long, I get caught in my head. My thoughts become the leader of my life rather than God’s voice.
My own understanding of the embarrassingly small perspective I have sadly becomes the captain of my vessel, leading me to fall short of the decisions that were meant to be opportunities to take me somewhere I never thought possible. It is almost like God allows our lives to not make much sense sometimes and even keeps our eyes from seeing what He alone wants to show us. The thing is, we have to seek Him for it all.
He longingly desires for us to pursue a relationship with Him in the utter closeness that is the very definition of true intimacy with someone.
It is here where we find all along we were holding ourselves back from a life that we could have only dreamt of before giving ourselves over to trusting Him with it.
“It is God’s privilege (and glory) to conceal things and the king’s privilege (and glory) to discover them.”
- Proverbs 25:2
He has never let me down.
I can say He has not given in to when I wanted things and how I wanted them to be . . . but He has never even left me alone to deal with my own self-inflicted disappointment in my expectations not being met.
He is God and will not play our petty games, but He is also full of un-conditional love and will not leave us un-disciplined and taught to see what He sees if we allow Him to. And if we do, our hearts and souls are washed over to be made into something new.
We are led to becoming someone we never would have thought we could be, perhaps even the man we had always wanted to be. Through His fathering we end up doing things we never would have thought we were able to do, and to be frank, we weren’t able to without Him. As a close friend mentioned to me recently, this is where the natural part of our abilities meets the supernatural of His. That is not the reason we love Him, for that is not the reason He first loved us.
It was all for relationship.
We ought to carefully enforce that our eyes don’t become distracted by the mere things we can do with Him to lose what the whole point of it all is, that we would live to be with Him every day.
It takes patience . . . not because God is slow moving but because we are so naturally inclined to wonder off-track from His will.
His will is perfect for our lives, yet ours for our own is not.
Therefore we must have patience, not with Him, but with our own hearts that are sometimes farther from His than we want to admit or acknowledge. He is so patient with us though, so we should be with ourselves just as well.
Whether the step seems small or even bigger than we can handle, timing is everything. All He asks from us is that we take that step. If we are wise, we will fight to exchange our own heart’s impatience and steadily take to His heart’s perfect rhythms. But as we are not meant to figure out the outcome of a small step, we also are not meant to carry the burden of it. We are meant to enjoy life, finding, every day, new aspects of who God is written in everything around us.
It is incredible to me just how much He is . . . well, everywhere.
He is in the atmosphere even when I am surrounded by those who have not chosen Him.
I am surrounded by His graceful care in the midst of challenges that seem to come completely out of nowhere.
I find His brush strokes in the delicate colors that seemed to have been painted unto the glimmering skin of a rainbow trout.
I have seen His favor time and time again assuredly gone before me as I have taken the small steps He led me to take, one step at a time.
That’s all He ever asks of us. That’s all He wants. That we should enjoy life more with Him truly is His passionate desire towards us.
It was like that in the beginning of time when man walked with his creator in the cool of the day.
Although there is so much more to explore here in walking every day with our Father, why don't you take some time to now explore less of the knowledge and more of your own experience, for experience is the language of the heart.
What small thing have you thought of doing for sometime now?
Has it almost haunted you in the "back-burner" of your thoughts, constantly resending the same message of something you feel you ought to do?
It might be something you have called a far-fetched dream that you deemed too large to ever reach. Maybe the first step towards it is small enough to assume it won't get anywhere towards it . . . but that is not for us to decide. The measly perspectives we have towards our lives cannot be trusted any more than we can trust a young child to drive us into heavy traffic down town in a busy city for a meeting.
At least for this moment, be free of all your own thoughts on whatever it is and tell Him all the doubts and fears that are holding you hostage. Tell Him right now . . . and be free from them. Allow God to have a say in what to do by releasing all preconceived notions and imaginings of what you have speculated for the end results of your decisions. Let Him tell you to lay it down or to take the small step maybe He has been gently nudging you to take all along.
It actually may have been Him all along . . . whispering to you to take a small step.
My mom has gotten into something called Dirty Pour painting. It is a form of painting that literally means you mix paint with an oil-based solution and pour it into whichever way you the artist would like. In moments back-to-back it can be both incredibly therapeutic and rather stressful in that the paint sort of goes and does what it wishes, regardless of how hard you may try to control it. Doesn't that sound familiar? Doesn't that sound just like life?
My Mom had been wanting me to try it out with her so we did over the weekend.
She also was basically letting me do it myself after teaching me the proper mixes and processes. Honestly I found myself getting frustrated because it just wasn't turning out the way I wanted it to. I really struggled with taking it one step at a time. I couldn't get passed how awful it seemed to look during the process and to be even more honest, I wanted to just quit. I didn't however because I knew it meant the world to my Mom to be doing something she loves to do and doing it together.
Here is why it appeared to look so awful to me.
It was not finished.
In my impatience and unrealistic expectations of something I couldn't wish to control, I took it as it was mid-process and not for what it was going to become after I was finished.
It looked terrible to me and I struggled with it ever looking better than it looked then. I didn't want to take the small steps partly because those small steps were messy . . . literally in the case of painting with my Mom.
How often do we do that with our own lives?
How often do we do that with those closest to us . . . with friends, family . . . our wives, children, and even parents?
Those small steps are rather difficult to take on. It isn't even because they are too difficult in and of themselves, but rather because they sometimes just don't seem to be leading anywhere. They can be messy. But they can also be apart of a bigger picture so beautiful we could not imagine it until we finished the process of where they are meant to lead us to.
About a week ago I took a long walk with God. I had become frustrated from taking small steps and them seeming to lead me absolutely nowhere. I desperately needed to get it all out from inside of me and into the open. After ranting and venting, He reminded me of something I had forgotten.
He didn't say much . . . but then again, He rarely needs to.
"Son, don't despise the start of something that seems small . . . the days of humble beginnings. Humility now will save you from pride later."
"Just take one more small step."
(Photos: the trails are from a trip to Montana hiking through the Ousel Falls Park. I did the painting because I was inspired from my time fly fishing in Montana)
