What I have learned in preparing to leave…

Don’t let what you see ahead of you confuse you, remember what you know.

What you know is God will take care of you. You have read and heard all the Bible verses about it. But even more importantly you know it is true because of your past experiences.

Everything you see ahead of you is unclear. It is confusing and distracting. What you see ahead of you appears to be a mix of impossibilities. But it is like watching a magic act, what you see is not real. The only thing that is real is what you know.

When you see a magician make the statue of liberty disappear, what do you know? You know it is still there, you just can’t see it. Your mind is saying it is gone, you are looking at it one moment, the next it is gone. But what you know is that it is still there.

When I look at my future I see a lot of things that aren’t possible. I see the lack of options, I see no way for things to work out well. I see very little hope.

But when I turn from looking at my future, and only look at what I know then I see hope, I see success and I see fulfillment.  What I know is that God will take care of me.

Matthew 6:25  Therefore I say to you, Do not be anxious for your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink; nor for your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
6:26  Behold the birds of the air; for they sow not, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them; are you not much better than they are?
6:27  Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his stature?
6:28  And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They do not toil, nor do they spin,
6:29  but I say to you that even Solomon in his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
6:30  Therefore if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much rather clothe you, little-faiths?
6:31  Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, With what shall we be clothed?
6:32  For the nations seek after all these things. For your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things.
6:33  But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you.

2Peter 1:2  Grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, 1:3  according as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who has called us to glory and virtue,
1:4  through which He has given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, so that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

Don’t let what you see ahead of you confuse you, remember what you know.

Faith is choosing to believe.

Like a soldier that gets up in the morning and knows he is going to battle. He has to choose to believe he will live through that day. Why else go out to battle if you don’t believe you will live?

They say accepting Jesus into your life requires, what they call, a step of faith. That is, choosing to believe that Jesus died for our sins.  It is funny, but for me that is the easy part. The tough part is having the faith to believe that God will take care of me. That He will honor His promises.

But that is a lesson in faith. I know it is true, God will take care of me, but until I choose to believe it, I will be filled with anxiety, I will be nervous about my future, I will be like a scared little school girl.

We are all capable of choosing to believe something.  Gangsters choose to believe they are tougher than anyone else, so they act that way. Rich people believe money will make them happy so they work harder to make more money. I knew a guy whose wife was cheating on him with everybody and his brother, but he chose to believe she was being faithful.

We all have the ability to choose to believe strange things:  If you swallow chewing gum it will take 7 years to pass through your body, you have to wait an hour after eating before going swimming, sitting on cold things will make you sterile.

If we can believe things as strange as those, why can’t we believe the truth? We know the truth. Why can’t we believe it?

Hebrews  11:1  Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Mark 11:23  For truly I say to you that whoever shall say to this mountain, Be moved and be cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that what he said shall occur, he shall have whatever he said.

11:24  Therefore I say to you, All things, whatever you ask, praying, believe that you shall receive them, and it will be to you.

James 1:5  But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and with no reproach, and it shall be given to him.

James 1:6  But let him ask in faith, doubting nothing. For he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed.

Faith is choosing to believe.

All things work together for good for us.

Bad things will happen to us but God will use those things for good in our lives. We will look back on the bad things and be grateful they happened. God will use those same bad things to free us from things that have been holding us back.

I cannot understand all that God is doing in my life when something bad happens. God works on so many different things at once there is no way to follow all His plans. But I have been blessed that God has allowed me to see some of the benefits of all the bad things that have happened to me in the past.

But some benefits I can’t see.  One of my fears is that when I go back to the states I will not be able to serve the Lord full-time. And that is my heart’s desire. But looking at all the circumstances in the states now the chances of that happening are not good, without God making it happen.

So I was thinking, why would God take me out of full-time ministry? I want to serve; it is all I want to do. Is there a chance God would take me out of full-time ministry?

I have always been amazed at how long Moses had to be tending sheep before he got called by God to go to Egypt. 40 years is a long time. My theory is that Moses had some things he had to learn before God could use Moses to do all the things he would need to do to get the Jews from Egypt to Israel.

If that is true, then why did it take Moses 40 years to learn those things? Couldn’t Moses just have maybe tried a bit harder and learned all those things in 2 years?

As I was praying and thinking about this God showed me that Moses, like me, had to learn one lesson at a time. And those lessons build on each other. Moses, like me, could not even understand the second lesson, until he learned the first. The lessons are so far above what I could understand that I can’t even understand the question, until I learn the first lesson.

Therefore, it may have taken Moses 40 years to learn all God needed him to learn, because he had to learn each lesson in order. Kind of like Geometry class.  It may take me 40 years to learn what I need to learn to be useful to God in the way that He has planned.

Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Bad things are going to happen, but God will do such amazing things with each of those bad events, we will eventually be glad they happened.

So I am learning three things:
Don’t let what you see ahead of you confuse you, remember what you know.
Faith is choosing to believe.
All things work together for good for us.