Keep Walking

I have a wonderful friend who I meet every week to talk together, encourage each other, and challenge each other.  We usually try to add a little structure to our weekly meetings by reading through a book together.  We've gone through all kinds of reads together, and right now we're tackling Believing God by Beth Moore.  One of the chapters I read for our meeting today really resonated with me, so I thought I'd share a little about it here.  Maybe it will have an impact on you, too.

The chapter is called "Believing God When Routine Follows Revelation."  Sometimes we have big moments with God.  But usually we don't.  Most of our lives are made up with the "normal" times in between the A HA! moments.  Most of the time we just have to keep going with what we know we should do without any major indicators we're on the right track, just trusting that we are being faithful and that it will ultimately be rewarded.  While talking about Joshua leading God's people in their fight against Jericho by walking (seemingly for no reason) over and over around the city walls, Beth says:

Sometimes God requires us to follow a fair amount of repetition for a considerable amount of time until He deems a season complete.  Then all of the sudden He seems to do something profound or miraculous, and we can't figure out what changed.

We may not see any value in the repetitive walking around the wall, but there is value in it because God told them to do it.  The great thing about this specific example from Joshua is that God told the Israelites the outcome.  He gave them a seven-day plan to follow with the guarantee that if they followed the plan, they would win the battle and overtake the city.  Unfortunately, however, we don't usually get such a prescriptive outline from the Lord about the battles we face.  We don't get the timeline for when we'll have this need met or that longing fulfilled.  We just have to trust that we need to do what the Lord has called us to do right here, right now, and he will take care of knocking down the wall that is in the way.  To this Beth says:

God often directs us to keep walking around that Jericho day after day, repeating the same fundamental steps while nothing seems to happen.  Oh, it will.  We must never stop believing it will.  But in the meantime, we've got to keep walking and keep circling no matter how many times we've done it before and no matter how many times we're yet to do it.

She goes on to discuss that regularity and repetition are not bad things but are important fundamentals of our faith.  Nor do they require that creativity and passion are set aside.  She explains:

God likes order.  He likes repetition.  A God of fundamentals, He brings up the sun every morning and the moon every evening, but His creativity within that order is gorgeously displayed in the changing sunsets and sunrises surrounding them.  The same is true for us.  Faithfulness in our Christian walk requires order, some black-and-white fundamentals, but within that order is glorious room for color and creativity.

Being faithful can seem mundane or tiresome at times, but it is always worth it.  The reward may be just around the next corner or may not be revealed on this side of eternity, but it will be rewarded.  Remember these words from Galatians 6:9 (ESV)

Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

I needed this truth today.