A Heart of Faith

I am on the biggest faith journey of my life in this current season. The stakes are high because I believe that this season is God's merciful way of allowing me to re-take the faith test so that I can succeed. I believe God does this. I believe that when we don't handle situations or seasons, promises or processes very well, God never fails us. He simply recreates a new season to teach us the lesson we haven't yet grasped. I'm in a re-take season involving completely different circumstances than the test I was in before. This season is more in my face daily and I have far less people to depend on. It's between me & the Lord...no one else can strengthen me. No one else can intervene on my behalf. No one else can bring the right words of comfort. The Father alone is my source. So...how am I doing this time around with being a woman of faith???

In the middle of March of this year, I took in a 3 month old baby girl through our local foster care system. This is something I've felt for a while that God wanted me to do. Now, 4 months later, I am head over heels for this kid. She has stolen my heart, my home & my checkbook! :) I started this journey with the desire to adopt a child. As I sit today, I don't know how this process with McKaylee Joy is going to end. It is quite possible that she could still return home to her birth mom, or it is still possible she could be turned over to the state for adoption. I won't know for many more months what will happen. And so...here I sit each day falling more and more in love with this lil' dumpling. Each day fear wants to take over my imagination of what it would feel like to have to return her to a home that knows nothing of the Kingdom & love of God. Each day I have to make a choice of whether I will release myself and McKaylee to the Lord's goodness or whether I will sit in anxiety. As each new circumstance unfolds in this case I'm finding that more often than I care to admit my first response is anxiety rather than trust. However, I'm also finding that I leave that anxiety and come to the place of trust in this re-take season faster than I did before. This is encouraging to me because it's the fruit of God's hand on my heart. He's changing me and teaching me how to be steadfast, unmoved. He's teaching me how to sleep on a pillow in the middle of the greatest storm...just like He did. He's teaching me about His sovereignty and power...because I have none in this case.

I've been praying & asking God to change my heart to respond in trust, rather than anxiety as new things come about. In Psalm 31, David sings, "Blessed be the Lord, for He has wondrously shown His steadfast love to me when I was in a besieged city. I had said in my alarm, 'I am cut off from Your sight.' But You heard the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cried to You for help. The Lord preserves the faithful." David's first response when the enemy approached him was to cry out that God had left him. This is oddly hopeful to me because David is one of my favorite people in Scripture. He had a response system that would jump to fear rather than trust...AND God used him greatly. God's not finished with me yet. It's only His grace & mercy that I get to keep learning how to trust Him. He hasn't given up on me. I'm not a waste of His time. He looks at the faulty ways I've handled faith in past seasons and now sees them as opportunities to give me 100 2nd chances. The Lord preserves the faithful. It isn't about perfection. It's about the willingness to stay with Him even when you have no clue what will happen around the next corner. I love Him so much for this!

Comments

  1. Kellijean YoungloveJuly 10, 2012 at 12:13 AM

    Holly, first off: I love you so incredibly much!!! Reading this post, I feel many of the same emotions and struggles you're facing, but yet have so many differences. I'm always struggling with obstacles that on paper, seem like they should be so easy to complete, yet aren't in reality; obstacles such as putting 100% of our trust in God, being fearful of the unknown, not being able to have the power seems so scary and builds anxiety, and then sometimes we have all our answers from God and materials we need to overcome these obstacles but aren't willing to let go, and let God help us. You struggling through obstacles has really taught me what I need to do. I thank you for sharing with me, helping me, and showing me the proper way to overcome fears, and that is to turn to God and turn to scriptures.
    Love <3 Always,
    Kellijean :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJune 10, 2013 at 11:05 PM

    "God's not finished with me yet. It's only His grace & mercy that I get to keep learning how to trust Him. He hasn't given up on me. I'm not a waste of His time. He looks at the faulty ways I've handled faith in past seasons and now sees them as opportunities to give me 100 2nd chances."

    I came across your page tonight. and just started reading your blog. thank you for posting this. i needed it tonight.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pride in Identity

Image
It 's "pride" month.  So...I've been spending every day this month so far looking at what God's Word says about "pride," reminding myself of His truth. The Bible has much to say about pride. Not one of those things is positive. The Jesus-follower has no room for pride, should have no place in it, no connection at all. So to have an entire month out of our year devoted to "pride," setting aside what this month boasts of even, is mind boggling to see any Jesus believer supporting it. The basis of "Pride Month" is the celebration of self, celebration of the identity one embraces. Self is exalted above the good of any other person or being. Self is worshiped. This is the core of pride, all pride. Self worship over God worship.  I'm thinking much about our culture, as I'm sure most of you are, too. I'm thinking of it's direction. I'm thinking of how worldly and unwise it is in its pursuits and thinking. The surface self
Read more

Clear Glass, Stained Glass: Worship God vs Worshiping Worship

Image
  A few weeks ago, I was working on my Bible study and the lesson referenced a story from Numbers 21 that made me feel confused, honestly. It's a story about the Israelites who had yet again grown impatient with God and crabby about the food He was giving them and well, just plain mad about their deliverance wilderness experience! So, God, in response to their faithlessness in His promise to provide, protect and deliver, sent "fiery snakes (vs 6) among the camp and they bit the people, and many died. This caused a wave of repentance among the Israelites. They took responsibility and stopped the complaining. And so, God instructed Moses to make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole and anyone who looked at it would be healed and live.  This was confusing to me.  So, I dug in and began to look at what this snake on a pole was all about. The snake on a pole wasn't magical, so what was its significance? I found it mentioned again in the book of 2 Kings 18 where, many years late
Read more

What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do...

Image
"We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on You."  2 Chronicles 20:12, this verse that comes in the middle of the unknown, the fear, the grasping at straws for the next move. This verse that is uttered out of the mouth of King Jehoshaphat, who's country is on the brink of war, outnumbered by a pagan, demonized military advancement. The Moabites and Ammonites had encamped around Judah. They set up camp as a military strategy. As they camped, they slowly moved into Judah, with all of their pagan practices and worship of other guys. Their strategy was to cause the Israelites to slowly compromise their commitment to God, the one true God. As they moved in, Judah was pushed to shift and lower standards to accommodate pagan standards. They were pushed to comply with the world - it's points of view, it's way of living, it's way of worship, it's fearful/human response to life in general. To comply. To panic.  In the middle of this comes 2 Chronicles 20:12. &qu
Read more