I am sitting down at my computer after a long day of work. Three years ago, my husband and I planted a church. A year ago, our church bought a 100 year old bar and tomorrow we get ready to open a family style restaurant in the front part of our building. I’m a bit overwhelmed at the moment to say the least.
One of my favorite authors, Graham Cooke, says that “God is consistent and unpredictable.” There is this great paradox that comes in God’s nature. The Bible tells us that He is the same yesterday, today and forever (Heb. 13:9). That means He is always the same. We can count on Him. There is stability in who God is.
But on the flip side of that, God does some crazy stuff. All you have to do is look through the Bible. There is story after story of things that God says and does that frankly don’t make any sense at all. Like “Hey Joshua, I want you to take over Jericho, and this is how you’re gonna do it. Just march around the walls for seven days, everything will be fine.”
Or “Hey Gideon, you’re going after a huge army, but the truth is, your army is too big. Three hundred men, that’s more like it.”
There is another part of God’s nature that we need to understand in all of this too. Everything He does is on purpose. He is so very intentional in the way He chooses to do things and in the people He chooses to use along the way. It is very common to see God’s hand in a place where the odds are stacked against His people, because it is in those places that His glory can so greatly be seen. There is no doubt that the people involved could never pull off those victories in their own strength. His power and glory are the only conclusion. Those moments force people to make a decision about who God is.
About four years ago, I began a personal journey of faith when the Lord asked us to step out in faith and plant a church in a small town in Montana. It was one of the scariest things I have ever done, but one of the best. The scariest because there is so much unknown, the best because His glory, power and provision have been revealed in ways I could never have imagined. And at that time four years ago, I asked God to keep me in that place of faith – stepping out in risk and watching Him do the miraculous. And let me tell you, He has proved to do just that.
I don’t know that this place of faith has gotten any more comfortable for me over the last four years, but I am learning not to find my security in what God is doing. What He does is often changing and sometimes doesn’t make sense. I am learning to rest, rather, in who God is. My faith is in knowing that the God who has come through since the beginning of time, will continue to do so on my behalf as I follow Him in obedience to the advancement of His Kingdom. I rest in His love for me that will never change and never fail. It’s a beautiful feeling, to be in over my head.
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. –Eph. 3:20-21
Jessica Nelsen
This is a wonderful article. I so identify with you and you are going through. Twelve years ago in August we started our journey to Alaska. We resigned the church in Ainsworth Nebraska and sold almost everything we owned and headed to Alaska, not sure exactly where God was going to plant us. We have served in three churches since moving here and God has shown His great love and provision in wonderful, scary and even sad ways. But in all of them I continued to believe and trust in my God
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