Faith To Let God Lead
Joy Revie
Ian and I have recently completed walking The Ridgeway. It's one of the oldest trackways in Britain and has been used since prehistoric times.
It's 87 miles over an ever changing landscape - from imposing 5000 year-old standing stones at Avebury, Iron Age hill forts and remains of Neolithic burial mounds, to ancient white horse images dug out and painted on rolling hillsides.
But as my eyes soaked up the beauty, it was the silence and stillness that struck me, as we were walking on paths that were inaccessible by cars. Paths that only walkers on this trail could experience. There was no noise of traffic or phones. I could feel worries and anxieties slipping away as the words in Psalm 46 came to mind:
Be still and know that I am God.
(Psalm 46:10)
I was overwhelmed at times with a sense of walking through history. How many footprints have walked this path through the generations and the lives they have lived.
I wondered what they would have thought of the modern technologies that we use in our daily living, of how we can communicate with each other from one side of the world to the other at the press of a button. Or even in the galaxies!
The words of King Solomon came to mind:
Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. All things are wearisome, more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear of hearing.
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; There is nothing new under the sun.
(Ecclesiasties 1: 4-5 & 8-9)
I thought of God's faithfulness to those past generations, just as he is faithful to us today. Human nature hasn’t changed over millennia. We all still need to love and feel loved, have community, are afraid at times and need reassuring.
Regardless of where we are in our walk with Him, He is always faithful to us. He waits patiently for us to reach out to Him and to trust He will provide what we need. Perhaps the challenge for us is having the faith to let God lead.
I was challenged recently with a daily devotion:
Lion Bites 15/7/26
My child, I am stretching you. I am about to ask you to step into the more of me that you do not know. Will you trust me yet again, as I strip away what you do not need anymore and take you deeper, even to where you have not been before?.
What if the Lord took you into the blue depths of the ocean, where you lost all sense of orientation? Would you still trust His presence to be there to guide you through? Even when you do not see the clear path forward, will you have the confident faith in Jesus to lead you through?
...And He says to His sons and daughters;
“My child, my invitation remains; will you trust Me with your life?”
So may I encourage you, with me, to reach out for all God has in store for us, reassured that he is faithful and won't let us down.
It may not be in our timescale, but He will not disappoint!
Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God's voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; He’s the one who will keep you on track.
(Proverbs 3:5-6, MSG)
