The Lifecycle of Faith

Okay, so when I was praying about what God wanted to speak at the conference, I felt like I read the entire bible and I wasn’t sure entirely what He wanted to say. Just being super honest. And then He started speaking to me and saying, why don’t you share from what you’ve learnt in this season? Sometimes we’re looking for something super profound out there, while He’s teaching us something very meaningful in here. And so, I wanted to speak on the life cycle of a faith journey. You know, we love the idea of faith and adventure. Like, the philosophy of it, the thought of it. It’s great. We have conversations in churches about, ‘oh, wouldn’t it be great? I’m so jealous of that person, they’re on such an incredible adventure with God right now.’ We read Old Testament particularly, and New Testament, passages with such rose-tinted glasses and we dream, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if I was Abraham?’ No, not if you were him, it wasn’t. the idea is always wonderful; the reality is usually terrifying. And so, I wanted to talk about the life cycle of a faith journey, not because I want to scare you all, although I think some of faith is really scary and I want to be honest about it, but because I believe God wants to infuse our hearts and minds with courage for the journey today. The problem, when we don’t speak truthfully, is that when people meet opposition, they assume they were wrong. We need to start speaking as the body— truthfully, honestly, vulnerably— about what faith looks like in the day-to-day moments. If not, we’ll give the Instagram-worthy highlight reel, and then when everybody else is living an ordinary life, wondering why it’s so uphill, their only assumption is that they misheard God, rather than recognising that the uphill journey is part of the life cycle of the faith journey. 

We’re going to look at the life of Jacob together today. I’m going to kind of speak through his life, so we’re not going to read all that many scriptures; I’m going to catch us up on the journey. So, Jacob’s journey starts in Genesis 25. Jacob is a twin; he had an older brother, Esau, and right from the beginning, you get a sense that their life is going to be interesting. Right from the beginning, even in the womb, there’s this jostling about between the two of them. Right from the beginning, God speaks to their mom and says, ‘There’s something that’s happening here, and the older will serve the younger.’ And as their story progresses and, you know, we see it kind of over the next 8 to 10 chapters in Genesis, there’s this constant jostling for position between them. Jacob understood how to hustle. Right at the beginning of this story, you get this glimpse of a guy who sees his older brother and wants his position, and figures out ways to manipulate and deceive, and to strive and to have his way, and have backroom conversations. Hustling, and hustling, and hustling away, until he can steal the birth-right, and until he can steal the blessing, both of which he does. At that point, there’s a problem, because Esau was the bigger brother and Esau isn’t happy that both his birth-right and his blessing have been taken from him. And so, we’re told there’s this moment where Esau is looking to kill Jacob.

Now, the problem of their story really starts, because we’re told in Genesis that Esau was Isaac’s favourite; Isaac was their dad. But Jacob was Rebecca’s favourite. And so, already, there’s this kind of favouritism bringing division in the household. Rebecca comes to Jacob and says, ‘Listen, your brother wants to kill you. Let’s hustle for a moment. Let’s figure out our own solutions for a moment. Let’s work hard and come up with a way to fix it on our own.’ And so, what she does is she suggests that Jacob goes away, so that he is spared, so that Esau won’t find him to kill him. And so, Jacob leaves his family, leaves his homeland, and journeys away to his uncle. The whole time, you never hear anyone asking God, ‘What should we do about this situation?’ The whole time, there’s this sense of, ‘How can we figure it out? How can we fix it? How can we come to a solution all by ourselves? The problem with a hustle is that it leaves tremendous mess wherever it goes. And so, Jacob goes to his uncle Laban and he starts working for him, and he sees this beautiful woman, Rachel, and he loves her, and he says that he wants to work for her and marry her. But what does the uncle do? Well, he doesn’t give Rachel, he gives Leah instead, who’s the older sister. And so, Jacob has to work harder so that he can marry Rachel. And so, what happens? Laban keeps changing the terms of agreement between them, and the work keeps changing, and the wages keep changing. Literally, what you read, if you read these chapters in Genesis, is years and years and years of hustle. 

You know, I’m getting a little bit nervous in Christian culture at the moment, because hustle is becoming something that we’re celebrating. Hustle becomes something that we use in our catchphrases. ‘Come on, I’m going to hustle this morning’, as if that’s the means to breakthrough. As if that’s the means to seeing the promises of God happen. And you see it; it’s on t-shirts, it’s on Christian motivational sentences up on Instagram, you’ll find it everywhere. You might have used it, I’ve used it, because it’s become part of our culture that we talk about getting up and hustling. The problem is, hustle isn’t really part of the biblical narrative when we’re talking about the kingdom, because unless your life is grace-empowered and spirit-filled, it’s not kingdom fruitfulness. Hustle isn’t how the kingdom operates. The people of God didn’t see themselves walking into the promises of God because they hustled. No! they saw themselves coming into the promises of God because the Spirit empowered them to do the impossible. You and I were not put on the planet so that we can show the world how to hustle. You and I were put on the planet so that we can show the world how to do the impossible by having God Himself, in the Spirit of God, living inside of us and empowering us to do what we could never do by any amount of hustling. That’s why you’re on the planet. 

And so, whilst I understand the motivation and the idea behind hustle, I have a problem with it, because it negates what God wants to do in the impossible in us, and acts like you and I can achieve what He’s called us to do by working harder. You will not achieve your destiny by working harder. You might as well give up now. You’re never going to be able to work hard enough for it, because you don’t carry the solutions for your destiny. You don’t carry the power, in and of yourself, for your destiny. If you can do it, it’s not God. That’s the point! And so, here we have Jacob: the ultimate picture of hustle. And you know, don’t we love mixing things together a little bit? Well, can’t we take a little bit of hustle? Can’t we take a little bit of religion? Mix it in there? Can’t we take a little bit of working just a little bit harder to earn something a little bit more? We love to mix it, but the problem is when we mix it, we dilute it and we come right against how God wants to work. And so, you find yourself at odds within yourself, because you keep wanting to do what God is wanting to do Himself. That’s Jacob’s starting point. That’s the human context. That’s the first part of the life cycle of faith. Putting our hands up and recognising there’s this inbuilt desire for me to be the solution, for me to have it in myself, for me to be able to fix it, for me to be able to hustle. That’s where Jacob finds himself. 

I love this verse in Galatians: “O foolish Galatians!” Paul is so lovely as he writes. “Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” We keep, in the Christian community, coming up with ways to graduate from our starting point, as if the starting point was only relevant for the start and isn’t relevant for the journey. The starting point isn’t only relevant at step 1; it’s relevant at step eternity. You who start in the Spirit, you who came alive by the Spirit’s work in you, you must continue in the Spirit, for your flesh has no power to carry the promise of God. Your flesh has no power to see the promises come to pass. You foolish Galatians! You’ve heard and seen so much; are you now, though you started in the Spirit, trying to continue in your flesh? Hustle, hustle, hustle. That’s the constant message that the world is trying to tell you and me, and it’s creeping into the church, and it needs to stop. Second part—oh, no, let’s just say one more thing, because I think this is fun. I was reading Mark 9 this week, and it’s the beautiful story of the transfiguration, where Jesus and a few of His disciples are on a mountaintop, and what’s in Jesus is portrayed in the incredible way as He is transfigured and He’s radiant. There’s this beautiful moment where Mark notes something seemingly random, and I just want to tell you a key to reading your bible: when something ‘seemingly random’ is noted, it’s not random, it’s intentional. That’s just a freebie for reading your bible. 

Mark says this: “He was transfigured, so He was so radiant and more white than as if you had used bleach.” It’s just such a random thing to say. But what’s he saying? What God can do, what the supernatural can do, so surpasses what you in your best efforts could do. You could apply as much bleach as you like to a person; they will never be able to achieve the radiance that God has intended, unless they come under the power of the Spirit. And so, God works supernaturally in them, to transform them into His likeness. I love that moment! It’s this moment of recognising hustle can never compare to the empowering presence of God on a person. You and I were made not to be an advert for bleach in the world, which I feel like we are sometimes, as Christians. Walking around telling people how white they can get by using bleach. No! that’s legalism! That’s saying that these are the things that you need to do to achieve the morality that you can see in my life, which is utter hypocrisy. No, you and I are not an advert for bleach. We’re an advert for the empowering presence of God, because what you can achieve by bleach is overshadowed by the empowering presence of God making you radiant in the world, so that everyone will see you and wonder who on earth you are. Hustle, hustle, hustle. Step 1 of the life cycle. Then you’ve got step 2: the invitation to more. 

Here we are. Jacob, years and years and years of struggling and striving and working and finding solutions, which actually cause more problems. Here he is, in the mix of the hustle, and God breaks in a seemingly random word and says, ‘Go back to your homeland, I will be with you.’ Now, there’s lots of good reasons to think that’s not God speaking. There’s really good reasons. One: there’s a really big brother who’s in his homeland, who doesn’t like him very much. He’s got lots and lots of provision in the land that he is in now. All his family come from here now; his wives are part of that family. And so, there’s lots of good reasons for Jacob to weigh the word using plausibility as his lens rather than what sounds like kingdom. You know, 1 Corinthians 14 tells us, as the community of God, to weigh the prophetic. But the longer I am in Christian circles, the more aware I am that often, what we do when we weigh words, is look at how likely they sound, and decide if it was God based on their plausibility. So, we look at the word and we say, ‘Ah, okay. Well, that just doesn’t sound like me. No, I’m doing the maths here; I definitely can’t do that.’ God’s called you to be a preacher to the nation— ‘I don’t really like standing up in front of people, so I’m pretty sure the prophet was wrong.’ That’s not how you weigh a word, okay? Weighing a word 101, right here. We’re going to get super practical. 

Does it sound impossible? Does it sound like it will change the nations? Probably God, then. That’s how you weigh a word. You don’t say, ‘Does it sound like me? Does it sound like, plausibly, something that I could do today?’ If it sounds like something that you could do today, it’s not a prophecy! The prophetic operates in the realm of the impossible. The prophetic takes you beyond what you can do in comfort. If it sounds like it might shake up your comfortable world, it might well be God. But we don’t like weighing that way. We dismiss prophetic words so often because our lens is ‘Does it sound like something I think I would like?’ Super honest, right? And we’re wondering why we’re never seeing God do anything, and He’s like, ‘I told you 25 different words, and you haven’t done any of them!’ And you’re still moaning in the corner, because X, Y, and Z are living the adventure and I’ve been left behind, and He’s saying, ‘No-one is left behind, it’s just some of us who are weighing prophetic words incorrectly.’ There’s every reason in this moment for Jacob to say, ‘That can’t be God. It’s likely to send me to my death: doesn’t sound like that’s God.’ But amazingly, and to his credit, Jacob says, ‘Okay. Here, we’re going to do it. We’re going to up and leave. Everybody.’ He hears the invitation for more, and he’s drawn to it in that moment. 

This is the second part of the life cycle, where God will interrupt your busy hustle over here and over there, and He’ll throw in something that is random and often left field, something that doesn’t appear, funnily enough, in your 5-year plan. He’s going to come in with His interruption, because He is inconvenient that way. And I’m being entirely honest with you: it is inconvenient! That’s not just a funny word; when you’re living it out, and He interrupts and messes up your plan with His inconvenient word, it feels inconvenient! ‘But God, I planned all these things for this side, and now You’re telling me all of that is…? Well… I’m a planner! But a spent my money planning over here. I don’t get it; you don’t mind that my money is being wasted?’ I’m just speaking out of my own journey here. This is very, very… This is like group therapy. I want to be honest with you, because this is how it happens. People are waiting for a faith that has a sheen on it, as if it won’t cost you anything; as if it won’t require courage or risk. That’s not faith. The faith journey is surrounded by terrifying risk. That’s what it feels like. Are you really scared? Then you’re probably in your faith journey! Because that’s what it feels like. Sometimes people say to Julian and me— I mean, we’re in the middle of a crazy faith journey, and I know many, many, many of you are, so this isn’t about how awesome we are, because we really aren’t. if you saw us on a plane journey just a few days ago, you would know that there’s no ministers’ sheen on how we live, okay? So, let’s just break apart any of those misconceptions. But we’re on a faith journey. 

Sometimes people look at me as if we don’t feel what every normal person feels. ‘Oh, you’re moving your children across the nations; do you have a home yet?’ No. ‘Do you know how you’re going to fund yourselves?’ No. ‘Do you know exactly what you’re going to do?’ No. ‘Why is it that you’re going, again?’ Oh, God said. ‘Oh, that must make it so easy.’ Not really! Can I be honest? Not really! If you’re waiting for your faith journey to feel easy, you don’t understand the nature of faith. There’s nothing easy about the faith journey. There’s nothing like, ‘Oh, this is really my sweet spot.’ It won’t be! Some of you have been holding off on the faith journey because you thought easiness would be a mark that it was God. I want to suggest to you that you’re looking for the wrong markers. And so, he hears God, and it makes no sense. It’s inconvenient, it’s an interruption into the plan. It’s moving away from the direction that he thought he was going in. it’s all of those things and, of course, that’s what makes it God. Let’s not sanitise the stories we tell each other. Right? Let’s not just give people the end results because we love looking like we were floating on a cloud the whole time. Because it gives us a sense of identity. A slight sense of superiority, if we’re honest, to just give people the times where the breakthrough happened in the way that we predicted, because I’m so prophetic, don’t you know? No, we’ve got to be a community who are real with one another, who are vulnerable with the moments where it goes horribly wrong. Where we say, ‘Do you know what? My kids are going crazy and I don’t know what to do. Because here we are, trying to follow the call of God, and I’ve got a 2 year old and a 3 year old, right before I’m about to preach, pulling at my dress, so I’m thinking the buttons might rip off and I don’t know what to do.’ 

Some of you pretend that all you’ve done is soaked and fasted for 5 hours and, really, all that’s happened is you’ve been shouting at your spouse because you’re frustrated. I’m not saying we have to say to everybody everything that’s going on, because there’s boundaries and there’s trust earned. What I’m saying is, let’s not pretend so that we prove ourselves to be somehow hyper-spiritual. So, God finds him in a human context, and then there’s the invitation for more. And then the third part of the cycle. Now, you’re going to love this one. This is where it gets really fun. You thought it was scary before; this is where it goes south a little bit. This is the ‘go big or go home’ moment. Every single faith journey that you walk in will have this moment, I promise you that. I’ve walked enough faith journeys and I’ve read enough about them to know that every single faith journey has this in common: the ‘go big or go home’ moment. The moment where you’re so far out on the limb of the tree that if it cracks, you’re flat on your bottom. There’s no clinging to the trunk. It’s the moment where you’ve got to decide, do I let go and keep going? That’s the ‘go big or go home’ moment. Every faith journey will have it, and I want to tell you, it is the most frightening thing you will ever do. You will not be feeling all warm and gooey inside in that moment. You won’t be hearing the angels singing hallelujah in that moment. You will not hear the booming voice of God in that moment. All you will be feeling in that moment is your heart, thudding so hard inside of your chest that you think it might escape. That’s the ‘go big or go home’ moment, and everyone faces it. 

It’s the moment for Moses, in Exodus 5, where finally he’s decided to believe God, even though it doesn’t suit his comfort, and it doesn’t suit his personality type. Should we go there? Yes, quickly, let’s go there. Personality typing. Someone’s going to have to remind me where I was, because I’m about to go completely left here, for a second. Let’s just do this. I love personality tests, okay? I do them lots, I learn lots about them, but your personality test does not define the promises of God over your life. It doesn’t determine your calling. It doesn’t tell you what He’s intended for you to do. It is something, a tool, for you to steward, but it is not an excuse for you to use not to do the things you don’t want to do, and it certainly is not the proof for what God made you for. There are lots of examples where God used people, in their weakness, to do the miraculous. It sounds biblical, doesn’t it? Because weakness is a platform for His power, not your strength, interestingly. So, when we use our top strengths as proof of what He’s called us to, we completely misunderstand where God says it is your weakness that will attract my power, not your strength. Some of us are wondering why we’re not seeing the miraculous input of God, and it’s because we’re consistently playing in the places of our strengths rather than asking Him what He made us for. I heard Chris Mallett point this out this year, and it was so powerful for me, because it illustrates this so beautifully: Isn’t it interesting that God calls Paul, an expert in Jewish law, to minister to the gentiles— who he was not an expert in, and He calls Peter, who was a drop-out in Jewish law not to minister to the gentiles, which would’ve been his area of strength— because he didn’t know the law—but to minister to the Jews. Their strengths, their personality profiles, were not proof of what they were made for, and neither is it the case with you. You were made for so much more than what your personality profile says. 

Anyway, let’s go back. Moses, Exodus 5. So, he’s finally said, okay God, okay. I mean, after all, there is a burning bush that isn’t burning up; it seems to be pretty unusual, let’s just go with this. And God takes him back to Egypt, which is terrifying, and he meets with Pharaoh, which is terrifying. But here he is, on his life cycle of faith, thinking, ‘This is the moment of breakthrough, people!’ We’ve done the hard work, he thinks… Bless him. The ‘go big or go home’ moment is Pharaoh says, ‘It’s really nice, all you said. It’s nice that you’ve done a few party tricks; my guys can also do those things by my gods.’ Do you know how I’m going to respond? Tell those precious people that they can make bricks without straw. Bam! Straight into the ‘go big or go home’ moment. Moses goes back and now he’s thinking, ‘This conversation did not go the way I thought it was going to go. I listened to You, for goodness’ sake. I stepped out in faith’— as if that’s the conclusion of the faith journey. And God’s like, ‘Oh, sweetheart, this is just the beginning.’ This is the ‘go big or go home’ moment, where he speaks to the Israelites and they’re like, ‘We hate you.’ None of those slaves were like, ‘Oh, we’re so glad you’re here.’ All these people like, ‘Oh, yay, you’re here to free us. Well, clearly not, because you’ve just made our lives a hundred times more miserable than before.’

That’s the crux moment. What do you do in that moment? That’s the moment, the part 3, of the life cycle of a faith journey. Where you’ve hit the wall and you’re thinking, ‘I have a choice to make.’ It’s the ‘Lord, won’t you tell her to come and help me?’ moment. Where Martha goes to Jesus, where Mary has walked in faith for a moment and she’s broken into the male-only section of the party and she’s sitting at Jesus’s feet, which means she’s volunteered herself as a disciple. She has broken every tradition, and her heart is pounding, but there was faith in that; it was the beginning of the faith journey. And then her own sister, no less, stands there and humiliates her publicly and says, ‘Jesus, call her out. She is so out of line.’ It’s the ‘go big or go home’ moment. What do you do in that moment? Do you stand up quickly and go, ‘I’m so sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking. Sorry, Martha, I’m coming back with you right now.’ No. What do you do in that moment? It’s the ‘Jesus, Son of God! Have mercy on me!’ moment. Where the blind men have shouted, and they’re told, ‘Be quiet!’ and Jesus is walking on. It’s the moment to think, ‘Well, he didn’t stop? I’ve already shouted once. I’ve already been told off once. What do I do? He didn’t turn around; they’re telling me He’s still walking.’ It’s the ‘go big or go home’ moment. What do you do in the ‘go big or go home’ moment? 

Julian and I laugh so often, we’re like, ‘We’re so far out on this branch.’ It’s like I can’t even see the tree trunk anymore. Wait, was there a tree trunk at one point? I don’t even know. And some of you are walking in faith journeys, holding on to that tree trunk for dear life, thinking you can take it with you on the adventure; you can’t. you have a choice to make in the faith journey. Listen: God loves you all the same. He loves you the same if you’re going to stay in the hustle for the rest of your life. But there’s purpose in a faith journey, and we’re going to get to that in a second. You know, for Jacob, the ‘go big or go home’ moment for him is when he’s told, as he’s journeying towards his homeland, ‘Your brother, Esau, is coming to meet you with 400 men.’ Okay… Time to turn around? Time to change the plan? Quickly let’s run? Hide? It’s a desert, there’s not much hiding to do, but he’s got to make a decision. It’s the ‘go big or go home’ moment. And, you know, Jacob, I love it— and some of you would have heard me preach on this before; it’s one of my favourite Old Testament passages— where Jacob prays, and he says, ‘I’m terrified. I’m told Esau is coming to meet me, and I fear him, but you said I will do You good.’ And he stands his ground. And, you know, in the ‘go big or go home’ moment, this is how we stand in that moment; we say, ‘But You said.’ God is calling His body to be a ‘but You said’ people. Where we hear the news, where we hear the context, where we hear the circumstance, where we hear the opposition. Where’s we’re honest before God and say, ‘I’m terrified!’ because every single one of us will be; that’s the nature of the life cycle of faith, but then we stand on what He’s said, which means you better remember what He said. And you better have declared it several times so that you know it well, so that in the moment, you can stand on that word and say, ‘I’m not moving an inch; You said You will do me good. Everything in this circumstance is telling me that this is going to go horribly wrong—but You said You would do me good.’

A while ago I was complaining at God, as I do once in a while. He’s okay with it; He understands me. And I kept saying, ‘This is the promise, but this is my problem!’ I kept saying it over and over again, ‘You told us this, but look at this situation. You promised me this’— as if He’s forgetful— ‘Look at this context. I want to remind You, God. You said this, and this, and this, and now I’m just angry.’ And He said to me, ‘You know, the problem with you, Katia, is that your sentence is the wrong way around. You keep saying ‘promise, but problem’, and I’m telling you to say ‘problem, but promise’.’ I want to encourage each of you, in the life cycle of faith, you will hit this moment of ‘go big or go home’, where everything in you is saying to you to start thinking ‘promise, but problem’. The devil will be saying to you, ‘Do you know how big the problem has just got? Do you know how impossible the situation is? Do you know how likely it is that you misheard God?’ Do you know how many times a day I think that? Lots, because that’s what faith journeys look like. Where it’s so crazy that you start thinking, ‘Gosh, this really had better be really God; if not, this is a really big mess.’ Being honest. 

But then you remind yourself of what He said, and you check your sentence and make sure it’s the right way around, and you start saying, ‘Okay, alright. Problem, but promise. Problem, but promise.’ You do it within your conversation with your family, you say to your friends, ‘Please remind me, every time I’m talking about this situation’— not that we super spiritualise it, not that we ignore the pain. None of that. Not that we deny what’s going on, but we keep declaring the truth, because we want to stand on that word, and we want to keep saying, ‘But You said.’ My finances are going south, but You said You would bless me. Everything that I thought would happen by this point hasn’t happened, but You said. My visa still hasn’t come through, but You said. Right? It’s the practical stuff. I don’t have a home to live in yet, but You said. Actually, this is a good moment; some of you need to stand up right now and you’ve got ‘but You said’ moments that you need to start declaring. You’ve got things that God has spoken over you, and you know it right now! You can start to say, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to make ends meet, but You said!’ And start doing it for your situation, because I don’t know what you’re facing, but we’re going to do ministry in the middle of the talk. But You said. 

This is a moment for you to remind yourself of the promises of God; I can’t do it for you. My ‘but You said’ is different to your ‘but You said’. But in this moment, I want you to remember what God has spoken over you, and you start declaring to your circumstances. They better watch out, because there is a God who is a promise-keeper. We sing that in the song, but it’s true; it’s not just a sweet catchphrase. He is a promise-keeper. And so, in this moment, some of you, those of you who need this, start speaking ‘but You said’; I can’t do it for you. But You said. But You said. You told me to go on this faith adventure; it’s going horribly wrong, so far, but You said. I’m still sick in my body, but You said You are my healer. I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, but You said You would make me whole. But You said. But You said. Father, even in this moment, Holy Spirit, I ask that You would breathe life on the promises of God spoken over each and every one of us. That courage would rise up in men and women of God to stand their ground. Stand your ground. Don’t move a muscle from the word that He’s spoken over you, because He who has promised is faithful. He will not change His mind. He is not a liar, but He is a promise-keeper. 

Okay, go ahead and take your seats. It’s the ‘go big or go home moment’, the ‘but You said’, and it will be the most terrifying part of your faith journey. And then we come to step 4 of the life cycle, and we’re coming into land with this. This is the revealing, the wrestling, and the resolving section of the life cycle. You know, it’s funny, Jacob has this great moment with God, a faith moment with God, and then he goes straight back to what he knows: the hustle. He starts sending gifts. He’s had this moment with God. It still hasn’t occurred to him to ask God, ‘Okay, what’s the strategy? You said this, so what’s the strategy?’ No, no, he’s had his moment, it’s a lovely moment of encounter, and then he goes straight back to the hustle. ‘Right, let’s send lots and lots of gifts because maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to appease Esau.’ And his heart starts coming out, his orphan-heartedness starts coming out. We start seeing the purpose for the faith journey being exposed. Do you know, in every faith journey that you are in, there is a purpose, and it’s not your helpfulness to God? A surprise to some of you. You know, God does not invite you into faith adventures because He needs our help, because He so enjoys our long-winded processing. You’re about as much help to God in your faith journey as my children are to me when they ‘help me’ unload the dishwasher. True story. It would be much quicker, much more efficient, and much easier— God knows this— to totally take us out of the equation, and for Him to do what He’s doing. 

So, let me just say this to you: it’s very sweet because, sometimes, we think of ourselves more than we should, but God has not invited you into the faith journey because He really, really needed your help. It doesn’t help Him. It causes many, many more problems. When my children are giving me the cutlery and their dirty fingerprints are all over it, and they’re dropping it now, and then they’re smearing their breakfast all over the clean plates, and ‘Mummy, I’m helping you’, and I’m just waiting for one of them to drop and break. And everything inside of me is like, ‘Please just go away so I can do this task quickly.’ None of it is helpful, but it’s teaching them. Your faith journey has got nothing to do with your helpfulness, and everything to do with what He’s trying to teach you. You have an option to go for the faith journey; it will be terrifying. If you do it, you will walk into a wrestling and a resolving of some of your orphan-heartedness, or you can keep going as you are in safety. He will love you just the same, but it will not give you the opportunity to renew your mind in the way that He intends the faith journey to do. Because, you know, Jacob, as he starts speaking in this last section of the faith journey, you see the orphan-heartedness coming through. You see the ‘Let me please appease him; maybe, just maybe, I can earn his favour.’ You see the father wound coming out, knowing that he was not the favourite. Later on, when he talks about Esau, he says to Esau, ‘Your face is like the face of God’, and we see it as he wrestles God, that everything in his relationship with God is mirrored in his relationship with man, where all he’s trying to do is earn the favour and appease him; maybe, just maybe, God will accept him. 

And the whole faith journey has been a set up to expose that orphan-heartedness, so that it can come to healing, restoration, and resolution. Your faith journey is not about the help that you can do for God. Your faith journey is about Him setting you up to unearth some belief systems and some patterns of thinking that are alien to the kindness in His heart, so that He can heal them and bring them to resolution. The final completion of the faith journey isn’t so much the success of the moment— although, it is a success, in this story— Jacob is reunited with Esau, and you know what Esau says to him? ‘What were all these gifts about?’ Because Esau has been coming to meet him with acceptance all along. See, our belief systems will tell us something about the nature of God, but they’re lying to us. They’ll tell us that we need to gain approval, where God has already risen to His feet to show you love, and acceptance, and favour. And so, the faith journey comes to this beautiful moment where Jacob meets Esau, and Esau speaks to him and shows him that murder was the furthest thing from his heart. He was coming to meet him with acceptance and a homecoming, and Jacob understands that he is accepted.  Won’t you stand to your feet? I don’t know where you are in your life cycle of faith. Some of you have got so used to the hustle that you’ve forgotten there’s any other way to live. And in this moment, God is wanting to remind you of the invitations for more that He has been speaking into you, and you kept batting away as unlikely or inconvenient, or ‘that’s just a noise from out there, somewhere; I need to keep going.’ And God is desperately trying to get your attention for you to stop and listen, because hustle isn’t what you were made for. Bleaching isn’t what you were made for. The transfiguration is what you were made for. There’s the radiance of God coming upon you. 

And so, in this moment, some of you just need to say, ‘I’m done with the hustle, God. I’m done. I’m done figuring it out. I’m done being my own solution. I’m done mixing a little bit of religion, and a little bit of legalism, and a little bit of law to help me feel like I’m doing enough to earn something. And some of you are there, and that’s your response today. Some of you are weighing a word, and you keep going around and around in circles because you’re not quite sure whether it’s God. Does it sound impossible? Does it sound like Jesus? Will it change the world? It probably is Him. And some of you are standing right in the middle of a battleground, with giants facing you down. I want to encourage you, today: stand your ground. Do not budge. Keep declaring the promise to your situation. And some of you are wondering what on earth this has been about. It’s not your helpfulness, and it’s not what you have to offer Him. The whole thing has been a set up. Why do you think God is taking Julian and I and our family on this very long-winded, very random way to the States, where there’s lots of Christians already in the States? It’s because He’s using the journey to unearth belief systems and patterns in our hearts that we’d never discover, that would never come into healing, unless we entered into a faith journey with Him. I have no misconceptions about this. He’s not calling me to America because I’m going to be really helpful to Him there, that He can’t find helpfulness anywhere else. No! He’s calling us on this faith journey because, primarily, He is after our hearts, to bring healing, wholeness, and restoration, and faith journeys is how He does it. And some of you have been asking this question: What on earth have we been doing? I feel like I’ve been walking in circles for a very long time; I’m following a promise and I don’t understand it. Let Him bring to the surface the little beliefs of orphan-heartedness. The things in you that say maybe He’s not so kind, and maybe He’s not so loving, and maybe He doesn’t really want to meet with me in kindness— because I want to tell you, the Father is kinder than you can ever, ever dare to imagine, and He will be kind to you. And so, Father, as we close this session, we just ask Your Holy Spirit to come meet with us in the terrifying, sometimes confusing, life cycle of faith journeys. And to breathe courage into us, and to speak purpose to us, and to bring us into wholeness. To bring our hearts into a place where the radiant kindness of God is washing all over us again. That the nations would hear, and the world would be changed. In Jesus’ name, amen.