The Next Indicated Thing

Why trusting God for one thing can mean trusting God for everything, and a bit about a spaceship.

When I was maybe 30 days sober, I came home from treatment to a life I did not recognize.

God was sovereign.

I understood surrender to be winning rather than losing, and I was desperate to use what gifts I had to discern God’s intention rather than my own.

I had no idea how to do that.

Everything was upside down.

I had been given a gift, the gift of recognizing my insufficiency… which I intended to never lose…. but didn’t know how to do that either.

And I wanted to DO things.

Badly.

The world was broken. My world. And I had broken it. I wanted a plan.

I chafed in the new skin and eyes of my new life.

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It was in this space, walking around in the shell of my previous life, that I met my lifelong friend, Michal Steyn.

Michal is lovely, brave, and follows his convictions, and may we all be so blessed as to have a friend like him.

I said my thing about wanting a plan, and I will never forget his response. How he knew what I wanted I will never know.

He must have known I was a level 19 nerd.

Or maybe we both are.

“What if God set out all the tool, parts, and material you would need to build a spaceship?

Imagine…. all the equipment in one pile, all the pieces in another… absolutely everything you would need, and every ability to use it… but no plan to be seen.

Just silence.

And then, imagine, in the silence, God told you the next step. Just one thing to do. One little thing that you could do.

And what if then you did it, and after, He told you the next.

And then the next.

If He kept doing it, could you build the spaceship?

What else would you need?”

-Michal Steyn

And he just looked at me, big smile on his face.

Pretty sure I smiled too.

LFG

My brain… unlocked.

I had a plan.

I realized… if I trust God to tell me the next thing, I don’t need a larger plan. I need faith. Faith is the plan.

And if I don’t trust God to tell me the next thing… what exactly do I have anyways?

Not a space ship.

That’s for sure.

Everything clicked into place.

My life changed, again.

LFG.

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We are not to test God.

It should never be our motive, to bring Him down to our level and hold Him accountable to our standards and way of looking at things.

But you know what? We don’t need to.

All we have to do is act in faith. Because every act of faith is a test of God’s sovereignty and integrity as we make choices in a space we are not sure of… and God shows up real, again and again.

We can trust Him.

And when we trust Him, He will demonstrate Himself in what He does or does not do.

There is no way around it.

If we have the courage to act in that space, to take a first step of faith, a knowing of God is unavoidable.

We will learn something.

This is the rubric and science of faith.

Action motivated by faith in God creates a unavoidable awareness of God’s response.

Try it.

I dare you.

…and if you know how to trust Him without revealing Him, you are a wizard and I would like you to tell me how, because it sounds way easier than this scary thing I am always trying to do.

But I don’t think you can.

Because faith only exists in unproven spaces.

Faith only exists where it needs to.

Certainty is like some graveyard of faithful things that lacked the courage of their convictions.

Faith is found in risk.

“The opposite of Faith isn’t doubt, it’s certainty.”

-Anne Lamott

She’s right.

Faith is a bridge between you and God, not a pragmatic ‘knowing truth.’

Faith is a verb.

Faith is walking on water.

Then Peter called to him, “Lord, if it’s really you, tell me to come to you, walking on the water.”

“Yes, come,” Jesus said.

So Peter went over the side of the boat and walked on the water toward Jesus.

Matthew 14:28-29

…and if you read that, and you want to tell that story different… like maybe that’s supposed to be the story of Peter falling in the water?

Maybe that’s the problem.

🤷‍♂️

As for me, I’m building a spaceship.

Isn’t it rad?

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All scripture referenced is NLT unless otherwise noted. I prefer NLT for postural discussion as it is both reasonably rigorous while retaining a conversational tone.

For study I strongly encourage the use of original language tools, multiple translations, and rigorous critical thought.

Please remember that when you read the Bible in English you are always reading someone else’s theological interpretation of the text.

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