“If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow me.” Luke 9:23 NLT
“Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put in the breast plate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.” Ephesians 6;:3-15 ESV
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah 1:5 ESV
I am currently sitting in an airport at gate C4. My flight left at 6:05pm and it is now 6:44pm…which is why I am at gate C4 and not in the air right now. I had an entire post planned out for today that I couldn’t wait to share, but then today happened, and God said “My plan, not yours.”
I left home at 3:30pm because my friend was driving me and, being the smarter of the two of us, he said earlier was better. We drive, we chat, we pass some baseball stadium where it occurs to me that New York has two baseball teams, which to me is cheating, but more about this never.
And I get to JFK in plenty of time for my flight…at LaGuardia.
So at this point my friend is no longer a friend but a hero, because he drove me to the airport I swore was correct only to stick around to drive me to the right airport. F is for friends who help you make your flights.
Short story, I missed my 6:00pm flight an am now waiting for my 9:05 flight in C4. And now that I am sitting here, stuck with my own thoughts, I am realizing that not once did I get angry or upset about this situation. Anxious, yes, at the thought that I may actually make my original flight. But once that opportunity flew away on the only American Airline flight to ever leave on time, I simply asked to switch and am only set back a few hours. Why am I not angry? Because I have been through enough of these situations to know that God is never thrown off by my mistakes. He knew I would miss this flight and He knows the next time I am going to do something stupid, which will probably be in 10 seconds when I throw my water bottle at this lady singing Aladdin’s A Whole New World.
This is one of those times when I realize the blessings of maintaining a continuous conversational relationship with God. Even in seasons where things were going great, I had made an intentional effort to keep thanking God, praising God and speaking to God. And am now reaping the harvest of this relationship. If we only reach out to God when we are struggling, we may find it harder to feel the comfort of His presence and the reassurance of His perfect plan. But when we continually feed our souls with Gods word and tune our ears to His voice, no matter the season, the joy in all circumstances becomes a lot easier to find, because we’ve been looking at it long before the storm arrives.
Think of our faith like this:
If you hold a piece of paper in calm weather, no problem, but if a storm hits, the paper will shake in your hand. It may be challenging to hold onto the paper, but you are confident that you have it because you’ve been holding onto it since before the storm. What would be difficult is going outside without the paper in your hand and trying to catch it once the storm hit.
Because I had been holding onto my faith since before this storm, I was able to hold onto it more easily during the storm. I was confident in God’s plan because I had been following it long before 6:05pm today.
Hopefully my admission of not being able to read a plane ticket and my lack of sports knowledge will assure you this is not a faith bragging post but a confessional of my faith in hopes of others learning from my mistakes.
You will mess up. You will go through storms. But if you nurture your relationship with God now, His comfort and the joy found in our faith will be a lot easier to find once the storm hits.
Don’t chase faith in a storm. Walk leisurely with faith in the sun.