For tonight's blog, I am sharing one of my past articles that several people have mentioned enjoying. A Life Walked Out, Step by Step Picture Remember being a kid and reaching up with arms out stretched in that universal signal children give of "Pick me up"? You, the kid, were so tired of using your own will to walk around, and instead you wanted someone else to do it for you. Laziness, not really, just a realization that someone else was there that could, in fact, make life easier. When you become a follower of Jesus, you feel the same sort of "relief" is being offered to you again in your life. Yet, we don't always get carried everywhere, do we? What do I mean? Think over the past four years of your life. Make a mental note of the events that have taken place in those years. You might have just listed some very powerful miraculous events, but more than likely, you also listed several moments that didn't feel so miracle filled. Let's leave that mental list on hold for a minute. Instead, follow me in a thought... In life, an incorrect perspective can form. This incorrect perspective can cause a follower of Jesus to feel that Christ is not rendering help unless He is carrying you out of a situation. Remember above I asked you to make a mental note of the events that have taken place in the last four years? Many of those events that you noted weren't situations where you were carried out of the trouble, were they? This didn't mean that Jesus wasn't there for you. Those times you weren't carried were actually times where a deepening of your trust was forming in your relationship with Jesus. The Bible teaches us that we can only please Jesus through faith. Faith is a very difficult idea to maintain in life, isn't it? We fade in and out of this idea many times over the course of our walk with Jesus, but there has to become an underlying base of faith. A foundation that starts to form. The foundation becomes a faith not based on whether Jesus is there for you in a miraculous manner, but rather a firm understanding that Jesus is there for you all the time, no matter what the natural looks like. This faith forms when we start exercising out trust towards Jesus. Times in life when we are not being carried out of a situation serve to further a more personal relationship with Jesus. Remember those times when you were young, when you did ask to be picked up by a parent, and they told you instead that you were going to have to walk. At first, you didn't take it so well. You might have even thrown a bit of a fit at the idea, but as fatigued and frustrated as you were, you still made it. Don't we feel a bit the same way when we realize that the trial we are facing is not going to be one that Jesus will be carrying us out of? What one of us wants to hear that we are going to have to walk out a difficult situation step by step? Yet, if we yield our spirit to humbly learn from Jesus moment by moment, we will find that an inner strength is birthed. This strength is fortified by the relationship that you and Jesus are building as you together walk out, step by step, of the trial you are facing. A new relationship between you and Jesus is taking new form. In place of wavered faith, a new foundation is forming where a vital trust for Jesus is coming to the forefront of your life. This strengthening helps us to understand the very personal relationship Jesus wants from us. Which one of us really wants a God that only shows up for the miracles, and then walks away? I know I don't. I love miracles, but I will not allow life's precious moments of tender help from Jesus pass me by. Pastor Daniella