Monday Meditations #3 – Moving Forward

(c) Branden Harvey

[Guest Post by Tyler Braun ] – Before I ever had a GPS navigational unit in my car or on my phone, I made sure to carefully plot out driving directions before moving forward.

You remember the drill right?

Pull out a map and a piece of paper. Look up the shortest right and then begin jotting down all the different turns.

Some people love the adventure of trying to find a specific location without directions, but I’m not one of them.

I’m the same way when it comes to camping.

Why do we take our comfortable lives and transplant them into a forest? It’s inevitable something will go wrong and then the supposedly fun trip just becomes a lot of work.

The extended forecast is hot and dry but it ends up raining an entire night and you end up sleeping in a wet sleeping bag.

What fun is that?

I prefer to stay at home where I know I’ll be able to relax.

And I’m the same way in my interactions and relationship with God.

I make small, calculated decisions based on where I sense Him leading, but I never head out on an adventure in faith, hoping He will provide.

I have a hard time moving forward in my life without a full sense of where God is leading.

It’s not that He isn’t speaking or moving within my life, it’s just that I have a hard time listening and discerning well.

We’re often taught to wait on the Lord’s guidance when making decisions, but what about the times when we’re not sure what His guidance is? What then?

God often calls us to move without direction.

It’s the kind of stepping out in faith that few of us choose to do, yet God is constantly surrounding us, guiding us, even when we don’t sense His leading.

What does this look like? Let’s get more specific.

Faith is the assurance of things unseen. It’s the confidence that God will provide as He said He will.

So much of life is operating in the unknown and trusting in something beyond ourselves.

Even people who don’t believe in Jesus put their trust in something beyond themselves. We turn a lot of different ways to find the assurance needed to move forward in life, but how often are we trusting in the promises of God?

This doesn’t mean making irrational decisions or testing the waters of life just to see what will happen is wise. It does mean sensing where God is leading, and then stepping beyond our comfort zone with faith that He is with us.

Direction Comes in the Moving.

I said earlier we must learn how to move without direction. I’ve found that God provides clarity after we’ve started the process of moving.

God often waits for us to step out in faith—to begin moving without a specific direction—before He provides the destination.

Rather than waiting for the stars to align, why not move where you sense God is leading, knowing more clarity will be provided along the way?

In Genesis 37, Joseph provides us an example of moving without direction. He gets a picture from God in a dream, of what his life will look like well into the future. But shortly after this dream everything in his life crumbles around him.

Yet Joseph doesn’t waver on believing what he senses God will provide for him. He doesn’t know the end destination. He doesn’t receive specific instructions. But he does stay focused on honoring God with his life.

In the end God honored Joseph, not through perfect circumstances, but through Joseph’s willingness to stay faithful to moving forward in life without a specific sense of direction (read the whole story, Genesis 37-50).

May we do the same.

Tyler Braun is a writer and pastor from Oregon, whose first book, Why Holiness Matters, just released. You can find Tyler on Twitter or his blog, manofdepravity.com.