STEPPING OUT!
Do you ever get those times when you feel like you’re stuck?
Do you have times when it feels like there are doors open everywhere but you don’t know which one is the right one to go through… or no doors open anywhere and you’re wondering if you should try putting the weight of your shoulders against one that just slammed in your face?
Do you know the feeling of not knowing what you’re feeling or what you should do with what you’re feeling? And you don’t know if what you’re feeling is right?
Maybe there’s a door open in front of you but it’s such a HUGE door that it feels like your scrawny little frame is dwarfed by the size of the arena you’re being invited to enter? Now you understand how it feels to be a grasshopper!
We all get times when we feel paralysed by our future… whether we can see it or not. Sometimes it’s the open doors that root us to the spot, and sometimes the fact that no doors are open leave us feeling like we’re wandering aimlessly. So we stand, wondering and in turmoil… we just don’t know what to do next.
Or at least… that’s how I feel at times.
It’s so easy to stay in that place. It may not be anywhere in particular, but at least it’s somewhere… and somewhere’s better than nowhere… isn’t it?
Well, no… it isn’t. Limbo is a great dance but a terrible place to live.
Psalm 119:105 YOUR WORD IS A LAMP TO MY FEET AND A LIGHT TO MY PATH –
When you’re out in the night without street lighting or any other natural light, most people use a torch or a lamp to light their way. The interesting thing about a lamp is that it only shows the next step or two. You may lift the torch to glance ahead at the terrain, but it doesn’t really show much… the purpose of a lamp is to show your steps, not your destination.
Lamplight only shows the next step, and the one after that. It’s tough to walk according to the light of a lamp, but when you’re in the dark, that’s your only option.
Here’s where the temptation to passivity is strongest. It’s here that people often make the choice to do nothing, rather than take the chance to do something that will change their lives forever. This is the place that determines whether we really meant what we said when we prayed to God that He would use us.
In many ways, they’re such little choices, but they dictate our destiny. You can control your choices, but you can’t control the consequences of your choices.
Martin Luther said: huge doors swing on little hinges. The hinges are our choices and the doors are the direction our lives take when making those choices.
Whether God opens a huge door in front of you, or whether He challenges you to kick the door open yourself.. it’s still God.
When you go ahead and do what He’s asking you, you’re operating in the obedience of the lamp… it’s just one step, and then the next; you can’t see far ahead… but it’s enough to take you through a new door into a new season.
Don’t be afraid of the next step.
Don’t be afraid of what He’s calling you to do… He’s not telling you to be at the destination… He’s just calling you to the next step… and the next one after that. He’s in control of your destination… all you have to do is be obedient to the NEXT STEP… whatever that is.
This is where it gets difficult, and the next step is often the hardest we’ve done so far. Something in us understands that the next step will take us suddenly out of our depth, like when you’re walking in shallows at the beach and then suddenly the sand drops away because you stepped over an underwater ledge and you have to swim or you’ll sink.
Trust Him with your next step… He trusts you with it.
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