In repentance and rest you will be saved,
In quietness and trust is your strength.
But you were not willing,
And you said, “No, for we will flee on horses!”
Therefore you shall flee!

Isaiah 30:15-16 (NASB)

Speaking of death being the path to greatness, God will often lead us into situations where the only fruitful way forward is to die to our familiar ways of keeping ourselves safe and to trust in him instead. God will do this on purpose. One day, we will be happily following God’s leading; the next, we fill find ourselves in the midst of danger and difficulty, wondering whether we have really heard God. But (if the Bible is our guide) the presence of danger and difficulty in our lives is not an indication we are not in God’s perfect will (especially if we have “obeyed” our way into it). It is often an indication God is setting us up for the thing he likes to do most: delivering us from our troubles.

No doubt, such a place is a bit uncomfortable. The apostle Paul recounts on one ministry trip being “burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life.” But he explains God ordained this so that “we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead,” and declares God is “he on whom we have set our hope.¹ This is really the heart of the Christian life: the process of us learning to no longer trust in ourselves but setting our hope entirely on God instead.

This is where the Christian life demands courage. Speaking from personal experience, it is much easier for us to flee from uncomfortable circumstances and trust in our own “horses,” just as the children of Israel did. Horses represent our own strength. The interesting thing is that the children of Israel were fleeing on their horses, not entering into battle with them. This is such a good picture of our human condition: as we trust in our own strength, we often find ourselves fleeing from life, not engaging with it. We find ourselves creating systems of survival around our fears or pain instead of facing these things head on that we may live a full life. This is because we were not created to live life on our own. We were created to live life in partnership with Him.

For this reason, it is so important to have a big opinion about God. Believing God is a God who desires to heal and deliver and extravagantly bless you has little to do with being selfish. It has everything to do with the confidence to remain in a place of rest in the middle of danger and difficulty so that you do not take matters into your own hands, giving God the opportunity to do his best work.

---

Photo by Viktor Talashuk on Unsplash

1. 2 Corinthians 1:8-10 ↩︎