Every day, about 4:10 PM, I see a Southwest Airlines jet flying over my house, if I am outside at the time, and if the wind is blowing from the south. I did some research and found the plane starts in Dallas, TX. as flight #21, flies to Houston, TX. and changes its flight number to #449. It’s known as a “scheduled” flight.
Schedules are nice. You can count on them, but life doesn’t follow a schedule.
There can be things you are standing at the gate waiting to arrive and they don’t arrive. A contract, a bonus check, a meeting with someone you are hoping will lead to new ventures. Disappointment, discouragement, and disconnection can set in. “Now what?” you might be asking yourself, or “What am I going to do?”
Even when you are a believer in God, and you have heard all the sermons, and have seen all the Facebook post that tell you, “God’s got this”, or “All things work together for the good of those who love God”, in that moment, it doesn’t feel like it.
Faith in God is hard. We are such tangible creatures. We want to see, we want to hear, and we want to touch. Doing so seems so comforting. We even have phrases like, “I wouldn’t have believed it, if I hadn’t of seen it with my own eyes.” It is so easy for us to have doubt, about our lives, our choices, decisions and yes, even about God.
Why is doubt easier to have than faith?
What doubt really does is rob you! It steals from you joy. The real issue though, is It diminishes the size of the miracle when God works it all out in your life in a way that is best for you. Can’t you hear Thomas, the disciple, after reaching his hand inside the opening where the Roman soldier pierced Jesus on the cross, saying, “I knew it was him. Yep, I believed Jesus when he told us he would rise again after being dead for three days.” I don’t mean any disrespect to Thomas, but I picture him as Deputy Barney Fife from “The Andy Griffith Show”. 
You see the truth is this; faith grows, becomes more real, when you have no idea how it’s going to work out, or even when, but you trust God anyway. You place it in his hands and then force yourself not to take it back a few days later.
Just because at 4:10 PM, if I am outside and looking up, I don’t see flight 449 making its final decent into Tulsa International Airport, doesn’t mean it wasn’t scheduled to fly that day. It simply means, the wind was blowing out of the north.
Perhaps in your life, the Spirit of God is blowing in a direction you are not aware of. Trust anyway, because the love of God is always on schedule.
Copyright © 2020 Mark Brady. All rights reserved.
I was facing several issues the other day. To be honest, they overwhelmed me. I cried out to God to ask why was this happening, and how am I going to pay for it all? (My first ungodly belief (UGB) was thinking that I was going to pay for it all. Everything my wife and I have comes from God, He pays for it all.) I spoke to a couple of others about it, and they were encouraging, but it still consumed my thoughts. I got mad, complained, and cried, to no avail, because I felt the same after each one of my flesh’s outburst.
One of the hardest things about being a child of God, is not knowing.
Most toddlers don’t play “hide and seek” very well. The toddler can’t wait to be found and will often come out from where they are hiding, so you can find them, and when you see each other’s face, oh the joy, the smiles, and the laughter. It’s a great feeling.
Doctor: “Sit up straight and breathe normal.” The doctor moved his stethoscope across my chest, and then around my back. “Deep breaths.” He listened. For what? Did he hear anything out of the ordinary? Perhaps a murmur? Was there reason for concern?
I would go visit them, and before I knew it, they would be giving me a guided tour of their latest acquisitions. Antiques, what nots, weird things, but things that appealed to them. I would hear the story of where they found it, and why they liked it. The one fact that never went unnoticed was how excited they were over their latest find, and the one thing that always struck me funny was when they would ask, “You want to know how much I paid?”
Confession: I have never been inside a confessional booth. I grew up in a church where doing so was not part of our spiritual practice. I am at a temple where there is one. I am writing this blog post while sitting inside it. Not intended, but in order to see I brought a small, but bright LED light. It is casting such a white glow I think it scared a couple checking out the temple.
I was sitting in a church admiring the grandeur, the architecture. Then, I opened my Bible to a random spot.
they worship me from their soft, warm, living hearts. They feel their good deeds achieve tally marks on a chalk board by my chair. I would rather the receivers of those deeds feel me. They step into a dark, small closet to confess their sins. I say confess them loudly from your roof tops, so you are less likely to repeat them.
HER CHAIR: “Hi. How are you?” I stood, holding open the door to the bank.
A somber event took place in front of me. The reality is this; for a man, using his own reasoning, which is limited, nothing could satisfy him. No proof would be enough. Everything God might do, or has done, to prove his own existence, some men would reason it away, and have. It’s as if they try to make God conform to their rules of existence, and that’s just not going to happen.
brady, mark a. 