Waiting and Walking With Jesus

Why can’t I just know already? That’s the question I’ve been asking God to tell me and begging the Holy Spirit to show me for the duration of my life. Some of us are good at patiently waiting for something and others of us are not, but when it comes to long periods of time with no answers, explanations or reasoning, we can get frustrated very easily. As human beings, we thrive on certainty. It is in our core to be known, understood, accepted and seen, all aspects of being certain about our evolving self-identity and self-worth. I often forget the fact that my true identity is in Christ, that I am part of a “chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” that is “God’s special possession” (1 Peter 2:9). Yet, even when I seem to remember it, it’s almost as if I forget it quickly, reverting back to my old ways of waiting for an answer, pretending as if I walk with Jesus, acting the part but not truly and fully believing. You see it’s easy to come up with a fancy catchphrase that sounds biblical or scholarly on the outside, phrases that preachers can shout during sermons with energized people in the congregation shouting “Yes!” or “Amen!” but not really knowing if it’s human given or God driven. I know this because I tend to do it a lot. A friend will ask me for advice on a particular issue, I will give an answer that has a lot of fluff, talks the talk and walks the walk, but never makes me feel authentic when I give it. This is partially because when I give advice I take pride in having words sound nice, but not in living out those words. It’s almost as if I expect that encouraging others to be certain about where they stand with Jesus will somehow please Him and cause him to then reward me by letting me be certain about where I stand in my calling. I know that’s not really how God works, but I still do it anyway, trying to defy odds on my own, rather than let a loving God who encourages me to walk humbly and pursue justice, lead me on my journey. I’ve raised a question that touches me personally: Is waiting on God for an answer and walking with Jesus mutually exclusive or can someone do both? I lean towards the second option, but I doubt sometimes if I ever fully believe it, since I seem to forget to adhere to it in my walk with Christ. Uncertainty, in its totality, is a very hard concept for me. Being diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, an anxiety disorder that feeds off of uncertainty, has been very challenging to deal with in my life. I discovered this early on in college and I had to learn to manage and cope with excessive amounts of worry and what-ifs in my life. This happened on top of my father’s battle with cancer, which was extremely difficult. This made my faith journey even harder because I then began to falter into asking God why this would happen and where he stood in all of this. I saw though, that Jesus led me in the right direction where I learned to gain a new perspective on challenges and to see the beauty out of things that I hadn’t noticed before. I began to reshape the way I thought about the world, seeing things from a different perspective and a new lens. I had to accept life for what it was, dealing with uncertainty about many things while being certain about only a few. I also learned a lot from my father who is still such an incredible figure in my life that displays resilience, perseverance and strength that I hope one day I can remotely come close to resembling. His love for his family is contagious and I realized that my walk with Jesus was very similar, in that I had to deal with uncertainty but needed to embrace a mindset of resilience, strength and love.

For many of us who try to figure what our calling is and how we can live out the Gospel, this is a difficult and painful process. Questions go unanswered, experiences happen, and pain is felt as from the inside looking outward, it seems as if everybody else has everything all figured out. Comparisons happen, robbing us of our very joy, while we turn a blind eye to the truth that not everyone else has it completely figured out either. We desire to be understood, known, seen and loved and to have a pretty strong idea about the vocation that allows us to love. But it almost seems as if we are confusing occupation and vocation while placing too much of an emphasis on defining our identity rather than letting Jesus explain to us what our identity is. To me, the solution to this is waiting for Jesus to reveal truth while walking with Him to share love to each and every single person you meet, everybody always (Thanks Bob Goff). When I talk about waiting on Him, I don’t mean passively hoping for a breakthrough while going through the daily motions of life. What I mean is being proactive in our faith, embracing a new mindset, being present with others, loving them with no agenda, showing yourself an immense amount of compassion, and accepting whatever thoughts and feelings come your way without addressing them as need-to-know things. I say this as if it is easy to do, but I promise you it is not. The pain of the cross wasn’t easy to understand and neither was the resurrection. Every day I forget the importance sometimes of God’s love for me. I try to change the way I feel about things, forgetting that God’s love provides clarity and not confusion. When we allow ourselves to be present, without addressing every issue as something that needs to be immediately resolved, we become mindful of our current state which lets us appreciate our friends, family, and most importantly the greatness of Abbah, our Father. When I apply this approach to when concerns about my calling in life arise, I begin to feel more focused on the here and now rather on the future and unknown. My agenda should only consist of loving those around me and walking with Jesus, while I wait on convictions from the Holy Spirit to reveal answers when the time is ready. As I understand that completing any task in life is a work in progress, I also should continue to remind myself that God’s creation for us is a work in the making, with nothing but overflowing love, radical grace, and the pure desire for Him to meet us where we are, remind us that we don’t need all the answers, and his whisper to us that “You and I are meant to do this together”.