Imagine that following Jesus is like running a race on a track but, when you look ahead you see a hurdle that you didn’t expect. As you get closer you realize that there is no possible way that you can clear the hurdle and at that point your brain tells you something like, “The hurdle is impossible. Just stop here.” Or, it may say, “The hurdle is impossible, so cross the line and just go around it.” But, if you stop, you can’t even finish the race and, if you go around the hurdle, you will be disqualified.

The first time this happened to me, decades ago, I didn’t know what to do but I knew that I had to follow Jesus and that meant that I had to jump. I mostly expected, and we are still in an analogy here, that my leg would go through the middle of the hurdle, I would fall over, and my leg would break. But, I figured, even with a broken leg, I would have been faithful to what God told me to do.

It’s like the analogy that never ends.

When the hurdle came, I jumped as best as I could. At that moment of faith, it is just as if God’s hands went under me and lifted me two feet higher. My body cleared the hurdle with a feeling of exhilaration that the God that holds all of the universe together had focused on little me. With his help, I did something that I could not do.

As I cleared the hurdle, and everything was okay, even better than okay because of the joy in my heart, I thought, “I will never be afraid of hurdles, again.” That thought hasn’t been completely true, because I did experience some degree of fear over future hurdles, but, since that day, I have had so much more confidence that He is real and has got my back whenever I am working for him.

  • Main point: Obedience does come from faith, but greater faith comes from obedience.
  • So what:  Is your faith currently strong enough so that you can use it to obey God, even when He asks you to do scary stuff?