The Obstacle of Faith…

Trust is tough.

I sometimes go back and forth between trusting God blindly, knowing he has my best interests in mind, and then saying I trust him, but deep down I want Him to show me a sign that he’ll come through for me…to basically prove it.

Unfortunately, I think this is one of the biggest obstacles of faith. This idea of believing without seeing. The idea of trusting without knowing for sure. The idea of wholeheartedly trusting God that He knows best for us and has our best interests in mind.

There are areas in my life right now where I would love to see a sign, where I would love for God to prove to me that He is God. But truthfully, he shouldn’t have too. He is God. And even if He technically never did another thing “for” me, He is no less loving and He is no less God. Shouldn’t that be enough? Shouldn’t we be able to love and worship God solely for who He is and not how it personally affects us?

Let me expand on that. When Jesus went into the desert for 40 days, he was tempted 3 times by Satan. I believe Satan’s second test on Jesus will help illustrate my point. Let’s pick the story up in Matthew 4, verse 5…

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
“‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”

You may be wondering how this plays into our biggest obstacle of faith. Satan, you see, wasn’t just testing Jesus to show how much power he had, he was asking Jesus to jump to prove that God would save him…that God did indeed loved Him. Satan tempted Jesus right where we all have this innate, fundamental human longing… the need to be loved. The desire to be cared for. But Jesus knew better and so can we. Jesus knew that God loved him and so there was no need for proof…He knew. Scripture confirmed what Jesus believed deep down. Without a shadow of a doubt Jesus fully, wholeheartedly just knew.

That’s why in our own lives, our faith in God shouldn’t be just about the signs that we see. I mean, if we are worshipping God just to see what we can get out of it, how genuine is that worship? We should have faith in Christ because he is worthy of it…He is worthy of our trust, our desires and our hearts. And there are a lot of reasons why we don’t see the “signs” when we want too.

For starters, our timing simply isn’t Gods timing…this is a tough one to grow comfortable with, but He will come through for us when the time is right. Also, sometimes we need to reach a place of absolute surrender…a place where we know that there is no other way out of a situation but through Gods movement. This is the hardest place to be but this is where growth happens…this is where trust grows. This is how our faith gets bigger.

And I think a funny thing happens when we reach a place of genuine trust and faith in God. When we reach that place that our worship and our desire to be with God is based purely on the fact that He alone is worthy and deserving of our devotion. And when we reach that place where we don’t need proof because we just know…

We’ll get our sign.

“A miracle will always happen on the other side of obedience.” ~Pete Wilson