Crisis of Belief
In Experiencing God, author Henry Blackaby refers to this moment as a “crisis of belief.” For Blackaby, a faith “crisis” is not necessarily a traumatic event or a life/death emergency but is rather part of the ongoing process of us continually giving ourselves over to God’s plan for our lives by trusting Him for not only the proper provisions for doing His will but also believing that He can and will do through us what seems, at first glance, humanly impossible.
When God speaks, we will face a crisis of belief. Do we trust God enough to follow Him to where he’s leading us when we have an uphill climb? This could happen every time we hear God speak. No matter if you are taking your first steps or you’re taken thousands of steps, every step of faith still is going to take faith. It’s still going to have a little bit of a risk factor involved in it that we are going to wrestle with and ultimately make a decision. The decision is am I willing to let it go in order to take hold of this next thing that I believe you’re leading me to? I’m going to have to decide what I believe about God.
The life of Gideon illustrates what we are talking about. Gideon was a frail, weak, and relatively unimpressive person in the book of Judges whom God would use to deliver the entire nation out of the oppression of the Midianites. What is encouraging about Gideon’s story is the way in which God continuously accommodated Himself to Gideon’s fears and insecurities by patiently and graciously stretching Gideon’s faltering faith. By the end of the story, Gideon goes from being a self-conscious and unassertive individual to the head of Israel’s army. There are some rich lessons we can learn from Gideon when we face a crisis of belief.
There will be proverbial forks along the road of life, forks that continuously challenge and encourage us to trust in God and not ourselves. We can’t limit ourselves to only attempting things that can be accomplished by relying on our own ingenuity and resources because we have a crisis of belief. The people around us may be impressed but will take little interest. But they will take notice when we live lives that can only be explained by the fact that God is who He says He is.
For King Jesus
Robbie
