Sunflower Faith

“Isaiah 55:8. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ says the Lord.”.

I want to but I can’t.

I want to but what will people think.

I want to but I don’t want to lose my friends.

I want to…..

I want to….

I want to….

How often do you feel this way about your faith and just even sharing your faith with others?

How often do you find yourself either second guessing yourself or censoring yourself because you are more afraid of what people will think if you talk about your faith then you are afraid of what our Heavenly Father would think.

Being a Christian in modern times, is a challenge because we find ourselves under pressure to conform to the world and what the world wants and a struggle with living for and with and by what our Heavenly Father wants which unfortunately in many times, translates to unpopular opinion.

I chuckled as I read this passage from a devotional,

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As Christians, we also wish to discover God’s will for our lives. Surely He is already laying the groundwork for our lofty aspirations in life. Then, when things don’t quite meet our expectations, we are perturbed. And if they take a dire turn into disaster, we are perplexed. What went wrong? We missed the point.

The thing is, God’s will is just that – God’s will. He tends to do thing His way, in His time, according to His own plan, and with His own purposes in mind. God often ignores our agenda! Over and over the Scriptures bring up an important theme: “My ways are not like your ways!” Sometimes we need a gentle reminder that He’s not like us”

Trouble is that many times, we try to box God in a way that makes us comfortable or feel in control, instead of just GIVING Him that control that is His not ours and having faith that no matter what, all things work out to His glory and is to be for His glory,not ours.

The thing is that we have to learn to step down and remember that even if we are at work, we don’t go into the bosses’ office and run things, we let our boss do his job and the same with our Heavenly Father.

He knows our hearts better than we know our hearts, but when we find ourselves willfully hiding His work or our walk from Him, is that not a display a lack of faith in well…Him and if we go..okay,”I’m going to pray to You, but I’m going to be in control”, isn’t that kinda trying to tell Him what to do.

Human nature is that inevitable we try to take care of ourselve, but we have to remember that once we accept God’s grace, it’s ALL Him and not just part of the time or on Sunday, but ALL of the time and a lot of time, it’s not going to be a comfy feeling.

It’s going to be a ride on a roller coaster but we can’t forget that He has HIS hands on the control and HE is not going to let go.

Just because sometimes things don’t work out the way, WE want it to, doesn’t mean God has failed us or hasn’t heard us…We have to remember that He has already seen the end of the line before we do and HE does know what is better for us.

Like children, it’s easy to want to pout and throw a tantrum and rebel, but that’s how we got here in the first place and if we are going to say, “God,I’m going to let You do what YOU need to do,”  we have to hold our end of the bargain,take a deep breath, grab His hand and just trust Him.

Heavenly Father, I ask that you give us more strength and discernment to trust You and Your word and instead of trying to compromise Your word to fit our lives that we compromise our lives to fit YOUR word.

Lord, give us maturity and strength that if we are going to walk the walk, that we are going to do more than just talk the walk, but show it in our lives and in our trust in You.

Gentle Friend, if you are finding yourself on the balance beam, ask yourself, what are ways you can live a life that reflects God more and less about making compromises just because you want to keep friends, live in the world or to be in control.

God doesn’t want you to be a hermit, but He also doesn’t want you to feel like you are falling either.

What are ways you can share on how to strive to grow and mature as a Christian?