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Trusting God Without a Map: Walking Faithfully Each Step

Trusting God Without a Map: Walking Faithfully Each Step

Last updated on: January 15, 2025 at 12:53 pm by Billy Kangas

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Trusting God Without a Map: Walking Faithfully Each Step 2025-01-15T12:53:34-04:00 Billy Kangas

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John Gould (British, 1804-1881). Corvus Corax – Raven. Lithograph on wove paper

Consider the Ravens

Some years ago, I got a tattoo of a raven on my chest. This was to remind me each day that I am not to worry, that God takes care of the ravens, that God takes care of the sparrows, He clothes the lilies, and cares so much, much more for me than these things. Yet in spite of the visible reminder each day, I find I am constantly struggling with worry about the future.

Sometimes in my life it can seem that what I really need is God’s roadmap for my life. I want to know every turn along the journey. I want to know the destination, and I want to know every road stop along the way. And this ultimately leads to a lot of focus on what I could be doing and not where I am.

Faithfulness is rooted in the gift of wisdom that helps us discern how to walk from the next step on the journey of faith. I’ve recently been thinking a lot about Psalm 119 verse 105, where the psalmist reminds us that God’s word is a lamp unto our feet. I love that idea that God gives us the light and the grace to take a step on the path. He gives us the turn-by-turn directions, but he doesn’t give us the whole map. He tells us how to be faithful now, and asks us to trust that he will be faithful in the future.

He calls us to be like little children, to entrust our lives into His plans.
This is the reason that passages like Jeremiah 29:11 have become so popular with so many people. We need that assurance that God knows the plans that He has for us:
– Plans for our welfare, not for evil.
– Plans that give us a hope and a future.

And yet it is so, so hard. And my mind is always racing towards what could be next, or what I want to be next. I need the grace to focus not so much on where I’m going, but how I’m walking. To remain faithful requires us, as Galatians 5:16 states, to walk in the Spirit, or as the author of Proverbs instructs, that we must trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not on our own understandings. It is in our acknowledgement of God that we find the pathway and direction of our own lives.

This truth has come home to me so many times lately, because I feel that as I’ve gotten older, the complexities of life have become so far beyond what I’m capable of holding in my own hands. God has used these moments of overwhelm and weakness to remind me that He is ultimately in control. I’m not the main character in this story, God is. And He is faithful and able to do much more than I could ever ask and imagine.

So I’m praying that God would help me to be comfortable walking on the journey of life without a map, but instead to trust in the guide who will lead me there. It’s a lesson that is so hard to learn.

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