‘What step of faith is Jesus asking me to take this week? More like what in my life doesn’t feel like a step of faith right now?’
That was my initial reaction at the end of Pastor Jack’s sermon on Sunday morning.
According to his sovereignty and in his good timing, God is calling my family to move to Hillsboro where we will join the family at Grace Community Fellowship and I will serve as associate pastor.
New church family, new community, new job, new home… that’s a lot of steps of faith for someone who really doesn’t deal with change all that well!
And yet, through the whole process that led up to making the decision to follow this call, Addie and I were met with a surprising amount of confidence and peace.
When, in Luke 5:4, Jesus told Peter to “put out into the deep and let down the nets for a catch,” I can’t imagine his initial feeling was one of confidence and peace. And yet, once Peter and the others saw the impossible catch Jesus provided, “they left everything and followed him,” (v 11).
What moved Peter from confusion—”Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!”—to action—”But at your word I will let down the nets”—to giving it all for him?
It was trust in Jesus—the one they had just seen provide in amazing ways.
It was the same thing that gave my Addie and me confidence to take this step of faith: we have already seen God provide in amazing ways.
In fact, we were in a similar situation not that long ago: taking a new job and moving to a new home in a new community and joining a new church family. And now, less than six years later, everything that was once new and scary is what we love and makes leaving so difficult.
God has proven himself faithful time and time again, and that gives us confident hope that he will provide again and again in the future. We don’t have all the answers and we know it won’t be easy, but knowing we are seeking to walk in obedience gives us the hope to take this next step of faith.
So now, I want to join Pastor Jack in asking you: what step of faith is Jesus asking you to take this week?
Once you have identified an action step and you are inevitably stopped in your tracks by fear and doubt, think back on how you have seen God move in your life. What impossible catch have you witnessed? How did he provide unexpectedly for an incredible need? How did he call you out of darkness and into his marvelous light?
Let those truths fill you with trust in our God whose steadfast love endures forever, and let that trust move you to action.
You are the church. Now go be the church.
I love you, Grace!
Nathan Ehresman