I would bet with great certainty you underestimate the faithfulness of God. You likely project your human abilities and inabilities onto him. This is going to cause great problems if you profess to believe in an all-powerful God who is outside of time and space. See you are confined to time and space. A clock quite literally runs your life. And if you are like me and try to be healthy and create sleep hygiene routines, it really runs your life! See if you are projecting your abilities onto him, you’ll know it. You’ll be exposed through your anxiety, lack of trust, lack of belief, and a poverty mentality can begin to creep in.
Abilities:
What you are skilled at
Your natural talents
Your political beliefs
Your view of family
Your good views of ‘self’
How you want to be loved
How you love others
What angers or frustrates you
Your strengths
Inabilities:
Fears
Natural weaknesses
Areas that need training/cultivating
Your view of family dysfunction
Now, here is what complicates this, even more, this is in the ‘best case scenario’. The above happens without even taking into consideration trauma, abuse, violation, war, famine, divorce, illness, death. All those things that take our natural vulnerabilities and tenderness’ and wreak havoc on our ability to cope with them. It is already hard to be vulnerable and weak. But once that weakness or vulnerability has been exploited, it becomes an even larger chasm to cross into healthy faith views of who God is.
So, what’s the lesson here? You can’t trust yourself to ‘lean on safely’. Isaiah tells us that His ways are not our ways (Isaiah 40:8). Proverbs tells us to “lean not on our own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5-8). So, if you are projecting your ways onto God, you will be disappointed and will struggle greatly to cultivate the faith needed to sustain the storms of your life. Because they are coming. In his promises, he tells us he’ll sustain. Jesus is very open about telling us “in this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33).
Faith requires two things, in particular, two things that if you focus on these character attributes you’ll grow your faith exponentially: courage and trust. Courage to step out of discomfort and fear. To stop, and get off the roller coaster. Next, trust. Therefore studying the attributes of God are so crucial. That is what you are learning to trust. Not the things you project on him. You are learning to trust and be courageous enough to step toward those promises focusing on what you cannot see. That my friend is faith. And the God you serve is faithful and trustworthy enough for you to take those few steps (only one at a time are needed).
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