The First Step

What is the saying..."every journey begins with the first step?"  Well, I guess that really does accurately pinpoint faith in God.

I was just considering how God brought His people to the Jordan river one time when it was at flood stage.  His people were to follow the Ark of the Covenant (a visual reminder of God's presence) wherever it went.  In fact, God even reminded them not to get ahead of Him because they had "not passed this way before."  (sometimes we've had this problem of getting ahead of God, & it never ends well!)

So He brought them right up to the raging Jordan River, & set their toes in the water.  As soon as the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant entered the water, the waters stopped & held for the whole nation to cross without getting wet.  As long as they waited on God, and followed His lead, they were safe.  Too soon & it would have been bad news.  Shuffle their feet in fear of God not being able to withstand the building force of the water He was holding, and they would have missed their opportunity to stay on their amazing journey with Him.  (Joshua 3)

That's faith.

Being patient to stay far enough behind God that we are able to clearly see Him and follow Him, and, yet, being prepared to go at anytime when He says it's time, and the whole time trusting that He is enough.

When God moved in our hearts to adopt the two girls, we were prepared to trust Him and go the distance.  Even when that meant finding out that they have a younger brother!  The funny things is that the whole thing seemed perfectly logical to us.  3 siblings need a family.  We have a family with enough love to go around.  We have a home with the space for 3 more.  We have a God who is enough.  Logic.

We still aren't sure what our lives will look like as a result of trusting Him in this, but what we do know is that He will be enough.

And He has been.  He was enough when the children began loosing hope that our family would come for them.  He was enough when we didn't have even close to enough finances to complete the adoption journey.  He was enough when the waiting seemed too long.  He was enough when the late nights of feverishly pulling together paperwork to meet deadlines was too much.  He was enough when criticisms came about "more" children.  He was enough.  He is enough.

Like the nation of Israel on the far side of the shore, we now look back with stories to tell and a God to celebrate!  Every journey begins with the first step or not at all.  We decided to take the first step, and trust God with every step after that whether in high water or dry ground, daytime or dark because we have learned that He is enough.  Always.