When You Fall Off A Cliff….

In my inaugural post, I posed the idea that as followers of Jesus, we could view our lives as an adventure.  If you accept this theory, my question to you is how much adventure can you tolerate?  Contrary to what a lot of people believe, walking with Christ is not boring. Not by a long shot!

Most of us associate adventure with fun and excitement, but sometimes, it’s just plain scary!  There are times in our spiritual walk when God seems strangely distant and silent.  We know, of course, from scriptures such as Matthew 28:20 that Jesus says He is with us always.  What do you do when “always” doesn’t really feel like always?  His word says He’s there and we know His word is truth, but yet, you feel alone and abandoned.  You read your bible, you pray, but you feel flat – uninspired – out there on your own.  This is what I call “falling off a cliff”.  You don’t know how it happened exactly.  You thought you were right behind Him on the path, but suddenly you missed a turn or lost sight of Him for a moment and now here you stand wondering where He went.  You call out, Lord where are you?  No answer.  You start to panic so you stop and pray, recite every scripture you can think of, and yet you still feel abandoned.

What’s the purpose in times likes these?  Is He testing us for some reason?  Did we errantly sin and not realize it?  Both of these scenarios could be true, but whatever the reason for His sudden distance, it feels like punishment and we begin to wonder what we can do to atone for our mistake.  This is where the adventure starts to come back in…where the only thing we can do to restore those feelings of peace and security is to pull our faith back out of our bag and trust with all our heart that His word is really true and can be relied on.  He really is with us all the time, whether we feel His presence or not.

Matthew 17:20 says “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, move from here to there and it will move.  Nothing will be impossible for you .”  I saw a picture of a mustard seed on Facebook the other day. It’s tiny!  The picture just brought home the realization of how little faith it actually takes to please God.  The main problem is, we don’t believe it.  Just imagine how different our spiritual walk would be and how much more adventurous and exciting it would be if we used every ounce of our faith to actually see some “mountains” start to move!  The mountains in your life could be anything – financial, health problems, loss of a job, loss of a relationship, etc.

My quest these days is to learn how to live in more victory!  I don’t believe for a moment God designed us to go through life barely making it.  That’s certainly not to say He’s going to deliver us from all our problems and trials in life.  Hard times can go with the territory as a follower of Jesus.  In fact, sharing in His suffering is part of our inheritance as a Christian. You will learn, grow and stretch the most during challenging times, but there’s also a reward for your obedience — your faith increases every time you’re willing to act on it and put your trust in Jesus.

In May of 2012 I suffered a mild heart attack.  It was one of the most frightening experiences I’ve ever had, but He brought me through it.  In July of 2014, I was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer.  Once again, I put what faith I could muster on the line and prayed He would heal me.  He did!  I’m cancer free, thank God!  I know a lot of you might say I’m just in remission.  Well, I choose to keep standing on my faith day by day, believing I am healed.  Joel Osteen’s mother had cancer and she’s still cancer free thirty years later.  His Word says “He’s no respecter of persons.”  In other words, if He did it for her, He can do it for me.  I just have to put my faith to work believing every single day He will keep me healthy until my days on earth are done.

My whole theme for this blog is to try to envision and live my life with Christ as an adventure.  Won’t you join me?

Thanks for stopping by.  Leave a comment if you’d like, I’d love to hear from you.

See you next time…..

Cathy