Trust and Faith

Well today I decided I would start a blog. I don't know if anyone will ever read it, but here goes nothing. I'm calling this blog "step by step" because from now on that's how I'm choosing to live my life. I want to live in each moment and in each moment I want to glorify Christ, trust Him, serve Him...and then take another step closer to Him. I have a big problem with anxiety sometimes...well a lot of the time to be honest. The past month God has really been teaching me a lot and one of the things He's been teaching me is to take life one step at a time. We're not supposed to worry about next month, next week, tomorrow, or even an hour from now. Yes, we need to use our brains and make plans and goals in life, but if our plans fall through we shouldn't get discouraged. God knows what's best for us and although we need to use our brains in this crazy thing called life, God is in complete control. I now know from experience that God can take the world we know and shatter it into a million pieces. I've heard a million times how everything that happens is "what God knows is best." I always thought I believed that until I really came to the end of myself and was forced to really think about it. Proverbs 20:24 says, "A man's steps are from the Lord; how then can man understand his way?" God doesn't allow or want for us to understand WHY everything happens. That is where he wants us to learn faith. Faith and trust is something I've been gaining more of lately and I praise God for that. A few months ago I was in a spot where I sincerely knew that God was in control and He knew what was best, but as much as I reminded myself not to worry because God was in control, I would still end up in tears within minutes.I was so unhappy and I couldn't figure out why...after all, I knew God has my life in His hands, right? Well finally a week or two ago it started to hit me. What I was lacking was true faith and trust in God in my circumstances. As much I have known that God is in control and has a reason for everything that happens, I was trying so hard to understand and wrap my head around what He was doing and I just couldn't. It was beyond frustrating and just brought me more and more pain. I would have days of being on a "spiritual high" and the next day I would get so down to the point where all I would want to do is sleep and cry. So...as I said, this is where I started to really seek God for answers to find out what was going on. He showed me through the encouragement of friends, family, and His word little by little that I needed to show a little more trust and faith in Him. It's easy to say, "oh God is in control I don't have to worry!" But guess what? Just because you say it and know it doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot! I realized that when I want to break down and cry, or get bitter and angry, or I start questioning God that I need to REFOCUS and tell myself God knows what He's doing...but now I don't only tell myself those words. I stop and think about how true it really is and what it really means. I've been going through the book Breaking Free by Beth Moore and I read something the other day that really got me thinking. "Christ never allows the hearts of His own to be shattered without excellent reasons and eternal purposes. We may never see the reasons, but we can walk by faith and believe the best of Christ." The first part of that kind of gave me an answer to my biggest question lately...how in the world does God think that shattering our hearts is best?! But through this chapter in my life I have already started to see God working in my heart and I know that he would never cause me to hurt this much unless it is in preparation for something amazing He's going to do in the future. The second part of this is something that contributed to opening my eyes to my lack of trust. Even though we might feel scared that God is leading us on an unknown road, we need to walk down that road with our heads held high and follow God with confidence. Because think about it, would God really lead us on a road to destruction? No way! The road he's leading me on right now is really scary. I have NO idea what my future holds but I'm learning that when my mind starts to wander I need to cling to Christ and trust Him even when I don't necessarily want to. It seems so much easier sometimes to just do what we want. Sometimes it feels safer when we are in control because we know where we're heading. But in reality, It's safer to follow God down an unknown, maybe even scary road then it is to go down our own "safe" road. Because we're human. We mess up. We fall. If we choose to trust God and go down His road and hold His hand along the way, He will never let us fall as long as we take it step by step and never lose sight of Him. And if we do happen to fall along the way, we can have faith that He will pick us right back up as long as we stay on His path! God doesn't promise that following Him will be easy by any means, but it IS the best way to go. Just keep trusting and pushing forward!

I know my thoughts in this post have been somewhat scattered, but God has been teaching me so much about faith and trust that it's really hard to put it into words! Bear with me...my thoughts are always a little...well, all over the place....but everything I just wrote is from my heart and what God has been teaching me. I could write for hours and hours about this...but I will save some thoughts for another day. God bless. =)