Fear. Worry. Anxiety. Whichever one you want to call it.
Life isn’t looking the way you thought it would. You had this picture in your head about how your life would be and you’ve been following that picture for so long, making decisions that would line up to get you there.
We tend to look at our life and when we picture our future, we picture a specific time, rather than all the years ahead. So for me, I always pictured my thirties. Married and a few children, absolute bliss. And for some reason that was always my destination mark. I rarely pictured anything farther than that very often. It was my main goal.
I’m sure growing up you pictured your main goal as well. Maybe it was accomplishing a highlight in your dream job, getting married, having kids, or checking off your bucket list of vacations. Whatever it is, we seem to stop there.
But what happens when we get there and it’s not how you always pictured it?
That’s when fear comes in and wants to set up camp, making you feel like life is not going to be okay if you’re not where you’re supposed to be. Fear comes in many forms.
Maybe it’s fear that people will judge you for being where you are or not having your life “together” just yet. (Side note: What does that even mean? Having our life together? Society has boxed us into specific criteria and if we don’t check off the boxes in that criteria by a certain time then we must not have our life together. Every life is not supposed to look the same, yet we get so much pressure from the world to have them all look the same. It’s like the secret code to happiness. Except it’s actually not. And making that the expectation for everyone is actually creating bigger problems and making people unhappy.) Whew. Okay, that was my soapbox moment for the day. I didn’t even realize how passionately I felt about that until that all spilled out.
Maybe fear has come in to make you feel like your future is hopeless. I understand this fear all too well. I can get so discouraged in the lack of hope I see in my future. I don’t know what is planned for me and the Enemy likes to make me fear that my future will be very lonely with no husband and only one child who will forget me once he’s eighteen.
I think what keeps a lot of us going is hope for something better in our future.
But what if you’re looking into the future and can’t figure out a way to be hopeful about it? When the pain is so hard that it feels like you’ll never overcome it. How do you keep going?
At this point you have to decide what you would rather have control your life. Faith or Fear? These two can’t coexists together. If you are fearful, then you don’t have faith. If your faith is strong, then you won’t be fearful.
I knew I wanted to choose faith. So I searched for a way to live in faith rather than fear and I learned that I just need to trust that God has a good plan for me, even if I can’t see it.
I’ve had to place all my faith in God and the hope that He’ll restore me in His way because I can’t see hope in what my future life will bring me. I just have to trust that He’ll restore me in His way and that I’ll be satisfied with His restoration plan. It might not be the plan I would choose, but I trust that He will ease my pain in time and each day I’ll be able to find more and more joy in my life again.
I need to have faith in the hope of a restorative future, even though there’s no evidence that I can see for a good future. I used to look at faith like, “I trust God and I know He’ll lead me.” Now I see it as, “Lord, I see no good in this situation. There is no evidence that things will work out or be better. But I know You are a good God and You want good for me. I trust that even when things look hopeless, You will still find a way to bring healing and light into the darkness.”
I’m now not just trusting God to get me through a tough situation, but now trusting that He’ll also make a hopeless situation good.
Faith isn’t just about trusting God with your life, but trusting God when there’s no proof that things will be okay. Faith when all hope feels lost is so much more powerful than faith that accompanies hope because your faith in God creates a new hope that is based on God and His abilities alone. Faith is having hope in something you can’t understand and trusting God through our lack of knowledge.
I can look at the material things of this world that I desire and be hopeful that God will allow me to have them or will provide them for me. But true faith is having an empty cup but still believing that God will fill it each day. Having all the desires of your life stripped away, looking into the future to find nothing to dream about, but still believing that God will bring good into your future. He will bring forth new desires and restoration.
Look at these incredible examples to follow of people boldly stepping into unknowns because of their faith in God.
By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise. And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore. All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
Hebrews 11:8-16 NIV
This is the journey. It doesn’t have to look exactly how we always pictured it. We can have comfort in knowing that God always knew this was how it was going to look. He wasn’t surprised. He’s not thrown off guard like we might be. But just because it’s not how we pictured it, doesn’t mean it’s not how it was always supposed to be.
I know that’s hard because it probably isn’t what you want it to look like. But God is working. He’s not in a panic trying to figure out how to get you back on track because He already had these pieces woven together in some way. We just can’t see it yet.
Live by faith. Not by fear.
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
James 1:2-4 NIV
Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.
James 1:12 NIV
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Galatians 6:9 NIV
“God knows our situation; He will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome. What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them.”
– C. S. Lewis
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
Hebrews 11:1 NIV
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1 KJV
