Keen on having a great time at the river, I will ignore possible thoughts of trouble. I will swim for hours until I realize I can’t see the sun. A sense of urgency will engulf me at which point I will bolt home. It is highly likely I will receive a beating for coming home late and taking a forbidden swim. I will promise to never swim in the river again. The promise will stand until the next time i am walking home from school and I realize I have time for a short swim, Hehe.
Now that I am all grown up and I have interacted with the term ‘self-preservation’ I sit by the bank and take photos to be shared. Part of the reason I can’t go for a swim is because I am wary of what could go wrong. I am in this comfort bubble I don’t want to burst. This very thing happens to my faith in God sometimes. On several occasions I have wanted God to move things for me without necessarily involving me hehe. I want to trust him fully yet I don’t like doing the work.
Think about Abraham when he was asked to sacrifice his only son in Genesis 22. God appears to him and makes an explicit request for him to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. He possibly had loads of questions to God but he obeyed. Isaac is curious about the sacrifice would be, so Abraham assures him that the Lord shall provide. And indeed the Lord provided, Genesis 22; 14 records 14 so Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.” Abraham walked with God to a place of unknowns and the Lord provided.
In Exodus 6; 3 God tells Moses ‘I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty,[a] but by my name the Lord[b] I did not make myself fully known to them. God wants us to know and experience his grace and power in ways we haven’t done before. God wants us to call him provider and truly connect with his power of provision. He wants us to experience his justice so when we say he’s a just God we truly can connect with what it feels like to have God be just to us.When we call him Elohim we know he’s all powerful. He wants us to experience him in the events in our lives, the personal touch of the holy one of Israel.
When you walk and talk with someone every single day you notice and associate certain things to them. These things don’t leave you for a while. God wants this personal walk with him, a walk of faith that’s unshakable no matter the circumstance; a walk of trust with the maker of heaven and earth.
The widow in 2nd Kings 4 had a little oil that she used to fill up all the jars they collected. The oil ran out only when all the jars were filled. Prophet Elisha asked the widow to close her door and fill up the jars with her sons. The widow and her sons experienced the move of a God in a way they had not known before.
On our own, we walk where we deem safe. We don’t walk where we might fail, so our faith gets comfortable. We think of past victories while God gives daily victories. God in his infinite wisdom calls us even in the deep waters and tells us to walk to him; scary, stormy oceans in our work places, homes and (or) in our personal lives. Places we would flatly refuse to go to if we were consulted.
We might stumble like Peter did in Mathew 14; 22-33. Still he calls us in these deep waters so our faith may grow, so that we may know him in ways we didn’t before.
