I took a road trip up north last week which gave me about 8 total round-trip hours of windshield time. I usually listen to my local Christian radio station until it loses the competition to whatever station shares that same bandwidth.
Then I switched to CDs and chose one of my favorites by Jeremy Camp. On the trip home, as I was listening to it, I was particularly drawn to the chorus from his song, “Walk by Faith.”
“I will walk by faith, even when I cannot see.
Because this broken road, prepares your will for me.”
I love the simple message of that short chorus. It speaks to one of the pillars of my life during this season. The trials God allows into our lives, ultimately change us for his purposes.
That started an hour or so of random thoughts about this topic. Any of my male readers may not completely get this (although you’ve likely witnessed it…), but we women do not think in straight lines. I often describe our girlfriend conversations as spaghetti. And I think that carries over to our random thought processes as well.
As I chewed on this whole idea of walking by faith when we cannot see, I shortened it to the ever-popular “blind faith.” According to wordhippo.com, a simple definition of blind faith is:
“A willingness to believe in someone or something in the absence of reasonable proof.”
My next rabbit trail took me into a head-conversation about the times that I have moved forward into a season of life with little more than blind faith. Most notable of those occasions was stepping into life as a brand-new widow. Talk about a scary unknown!
A few years later, I found myself once again stepping into a scary unknown as God called me into this grief ministry.
In the first situation, I had no option other than to go forward blindly. In the second, I had a choice, of sorts. Obey God or stay with the comfortable and the “visible.” Both cases absolutely fit that blind faith definition.
Hold those thoughts for a moment.
What about you? I bet you’ve all got circumstances you can look back on when you took a step of faith, either willingly or forced upon you, when you had no idea what you’d find down that road. Or how you’d navigate. Or how you could get hurt. Or who might help guide you. Or if God was even in it with you.
It can be an extremely fearful place to be. Most of us strongly avoid situations where we are not in control. Who really likes living on the edge?
Back to my musings.
So much of my life over the past five years has been reluctantly taking those blind-faith steps. But what I’ve learned in that process is so powerful. It’s a perspective that I want to pass along to you, my readers, because you may have experienced this and don’t even know it!
What I realized is that for nearly every “blind” step I took, I could eventually see God’s hand on that journey. And the more consistently I asked God to tamp down my fear, and help me make those scary steps, the more I began to expect God’s guidance.
Oh sure, it was a process over time. And it didn’t always result in what I was hoping for. Sometimes I truly didn’t see what God was up to.
But more and more, as these blind steps became my pattern, and seeing God working in surprising ways became my reward, my faith didn’t feel so “blind.”
The fear was replaced with divine expectations. And my blind eyes were replaced with expectant eyes, knowing that, ultimately, God would never let me down.
The “absence of reasonable proof” portion of that earlier definition was replaced with the dictionary.com definition of “trust.”
“Confident expectation of something; hope.”
I think the image on this post speaks volumes about the transformation out of fear and into trusting God’s will in all circumstances. Sure, we’re still essentially blind folded since we don’t know what’s ahead. But we can take that step of faith with a hopeful smile on our face, looking heavenward, holding those beautiful flowers, and standing near the Living Waters.
And those who know your name put their trust in you,
for you, O LORD, have not forsaken those who seek you.
Psalm 9:10
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