One of the major themes of my limited posts on Facebook over the last 2 years has been protesting the impact of the pandemic on my professional life. And that impact has been fairly severe, as it has for many others. Some of that impact has just been hard.

Some of the impact, however, has been very positive. As a result of the time online, I have incorporated techniques into my teaching that I had never considered. Those techniques are continuing to have positive impacts on my students today.

Obviously, the pandemic was an arduous thing, but some of what it brought into my life was not inherently bad; it was just different. New. We humans don’t always welcome the new. We often like the familiar, the known, the trustworthy. The new can be exciting, but we’re often reluctant to leave the comfortable and familiar to explore. When we do go out to explore, we often want to know everything about what is involved in whatever we’re doing. When planning a trip we want to know: “Where are we going? What’s it going to cost? How long are we going to be there? Who else will be there?”

God doesn’t work that way, however. He doesn’t give his followers roadmaps; he encourages them to step out in faith. In Abraham’s story, we see, “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you’” Genesis 12:1 (ESV). 

Abraham is credited with great faith because he didn’t know the end of the story. He didn’t know where God was taking him. He didn’t know what God was going to do about Isaac, either leading up to his birth or at the time of the sacrifice. He only knew that God had called him to follow him and promised to make him a father of nations, blessing the world through him. He trusted that God would somehow work it all out.

For Joseph to fulfill his role, he had to be sold into slavery in a foreign land. Jesus called his disciples away from family and their livelihoods, promising nothing more than an opportunity to live with and learn from him. The fishermen in the group certainly didn’t understand what it meant to become “fishers of men” when they walked away from their nets.

If we truly want to follow God, we have to be prepared to accept the new, and, even more, to welcome and embrace what God brings into our lives. 

Jonah didn’t willingly go where God sent him, and it didn’t turn out well for him. Even after he acquiesced and carried out his mission, his refusal to embrace it, to align his heart with God’s intent, led to continued misery for Jonah, though the Ninevites benefited from his preaching.

What does this mean for us today as Christ-followers? Most importantly, it means that we should be ready, willing, and even excited to walk with God no matter where he’s calling us. I recently came across a great quote about what it means to actually put faith in God:

Faith isn’t about having everything figured out ahead of time, faith is about following the quiet voice of God without having everything figured out ahead of time.

Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood

When God calls us to something new, he doesn’t tell us everything. He simply asks us to follow his direction and trust that he has a plan and is in control. 

For we walk by faith, not by sight.

2 Corinthians 5:7 (ESV)

This is hard. We like control; we like to know where we’re going. But there is good news: When we are willing to step out in faith, he will be there. When God led the people of Israel into the promised land, they had to step into the rushing Jordan river before the water stopped flowing, but they walked across on dry land. 

Paul had to walk through many challenging things. At one point he lays out many of those experiences:

Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.

2 Corinthians 11:24-27 (ESV)

Through all of this, Paul experienced God’s presence, allowing him to be content in all circumstances. After going on to talk also about revelations he has received and his “thorn in the flesh,” Paul concludes, “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong,” 2 Corinthians: 12:10 (ESV).

When God calls us to go with him, he will be there. That was his promise to Abraham and Paul, and that is his promise to us today. We need to take the simple and difficult step of trusting him and embracing the “new” he is calling us to walk in.

Photo by Grant Ritchie on Unsplash