Obedience is Trust in Action
Sometimes moving forward in obedience means taking one small step. What does it look like to trust God in the little steps when he doesn't yet show you the big picture?
Hey friends!
I’m in the middle of my last week in LA before heading to my parents’ place in the Outer Banks to wait out the rest of my visa process. Although the sun is shining today, this past weekend we had London weather here in Southern California — sideways rain, wind, grey clouds, and cooler temperatures.
But, something I’ve learned from living in London is that the rain can’t stop you from continuing on with your plans because if it does, you’ll never do anything at all. I carried that truth with me this weekend as we trudged through the mud and rain with umbrellas in hand, determined to still go wine tasting in Santa Barbara as planned. And, I’m grateful we did. It was an amazing weekend, even in the midst of the torrential weather.
Sometimes we have to learn to persevere when things don’t look exactly how we thought they would. Obedience is the most important action on the journey to calling. Walking out this type of obedience requires deep levels of trust — trust in God with all the small steps before we see the big picture.
This week I want to talk about the importance of obedience in the small steps. So, let’s dive in together…
Obedience is trust in action, but sometimes God only gives us the tiniest breadcrumbs to follow.
Mother Teresa once said, "I've never had clarity. I've only ever had trust.” Right now, I relate to this sentence more than I ever thought I would.
I want to say it’s easy to trust God. I want to tell you that I don’t deeply long for clarity in almost every waking moment. But, the reality is, being obedient to move forward in the small steps and trusting God that he will give me the big picture when it’s time, has been a hard lesson.
Yet, my reality is this — I don’t have clarity. I only have trust.
The more I continue on this journey toward calling, the more I find that the journey is actually an invitation to a deep level of trust — a trust that is not based on my immediate circumstances or external realities. A real and hard, exhausting and liberating, deeply rooted kind of trust. A trust that listens for God’s voice in the whispers of waiting. A trust that relies on the truth that God will never let me miss his plans.
When we began our move to London in April 2023, I thought it was all finally falling into place. After three years of prayer and intercession, London finally seemed in our reach and we timed it perfectly.
We arrived in London just in time for the summer. If you’ve never experienced a London summer, you are seriously missing out. It still rains way more than it should, but you also get these perfect summer days. You see, when the sun shines for any extended period of time in the UK, no one takes it for granted. BBQs are frequent, parks are full of people sunbathing, flowers are bursting to life, and the air is buzzing with all the anticipation of holidays away and summer fun. It’s electric.
As I walked the streets, I not only felt the excitement of summer but I felt the humming of home beneath my feet — I was so sure things would perfectly fall into place in the timing I envisioned. I was certain that as I approached my sabbatical, God would outline the change in career I was seeking and provide clear direction. I envisioned the perfect London apartment to live out my sabbatical in and the expedited process for my visa. I had it all mapped out.
But, within the first months of arriving to London, my plans didn’t go exactly as I expected. We couldn’t secure the long term rental I imagined for us without my visa, so we had to find a temporary sublet instead. And, although we had major financial provision from the Lord to sustain us, Dan’s job didn’t provide the income we thought it would and when the summer came to a close, he hadn’t earned enough to sponsor me. With everything hanging in the balance, I had spent the summer shuffling back and forth between the US and the UK with no clear understanding of when I would even be able to apply for my visa.
And to top it all off, my sabbatical seeemed to be a bit more wilderness-y than I had envisioned. My writing was flowing, but in the process, God began to dig up some unexpected roots. In the solitude and silence, I began to experience deep levels of healing as God addressed old wounds, uprooted past pain, and excavated things I had buried for decades.
As I continued to write my memoir, he continued to peel back layers and layers of false identity. I was grateful to be moving toward wholeness in such a profound way, but it was also raw and painful. And all this was happening while living half my life in London and half scattered in the U.S. between the homes of family members and friends who sheltered me in the in between.
This was not the season I had planned for. Internally, I felt confident and sure that London was our future and God had good plans for us there. Yet, externally my reality looked like delay after delay after delay.
I was also spending an enormous amount of time in solitude. Dan was working long hours, I was traversing a split life stretched between two continents, and I had no home base to call my own. I found myself physically alone more than I had been my entire life. There were times the loneliness felt overwhelming, and then there were these magical moments where I felt God’s invitation to go deeper into the silence.
The more I embraced the solitude and silence, the more I discovered of God’s goodness, and the deeper my trust in him grew.
I needed to embrace the season I was in. I had to believe that God was doing a deep work within me and when I really thought about it, there was no where in the world I would rather be than in his will for my life.
In an effort to understand what I was experiencing, I began working my way through Ruth Haley Barton’s Invitation to Silence and Solitude. I was becoming more curious about the desert seasons we endure. How can we be obedient to our season and sustain faith through the uncertainty? How can we find well springs to keep going in the desert? If I’m honest, I wasn’t sure I would actually find any semblance of an answer, but I was willing to try.
While reading Barton’s text, I was also making my way through the solitude practice through Practicing the Way.1 As I listened to one of the podcast episode interviewing Emily Freeman, I was captivated by her discussion on doing the next right thing — even if it is only a small step. Emily shared a bit about her own journey of discernment and her ministry on soul minimalism. She spoke on our human desire to plan ahead and our Christian longing to be sure that we were following God’s plan.
Emily gave examples of all the ways God directed her when she felt like she had no direction. I felt myself deeply resonated with what she shared. Every part of me wanted God to reveal his big plan for my life and I wanted desperately to get it right; I didn’t want to miss anything. Yet, I was in a season where it seemed I only got enough instruction for one day.
As I sat in prayer that day, soaking in God’s presence, I began to realize that I had been working so tirelessly in my prayer time to set up a five year plan or know the next ten steps, and discern all the big decisions, that I hadn’t really been listening to God at all. How could I be obedient if I was only focused on my desires?
I remembered Emily sharing in the podcast that sometimes we have to look back in order to go forward, so I turned to my journals. I read over my prayers and scribbles, reflecting on what God had been saying to me throughout my sabbatical.
Suddenly, it all became so crystal clear — for my entire sabbatical, God was requesting me to slow down and rest, to let go of the reins a bit and stop trying to plan every waking moment. And here I was doing the very thing he was asking me to let go of. God was trying to teach me to be obedient in the small steps — to trust him without seeing the big picture.
I realized that although my heart was in the right place — I wanted to do God’s will, I wanted to get it right, and I didn’t want to misread his plan for my life — my heart posture was all wrong.
I wasn’t really trusting God to keep me on track.
I didn’t really have faith that he would lead me one small step at a time.
Part of me still wanted control.
What did it look like to just take the next right small step of obedience — trusting that God was in the little decisions — and have faith that he would let me know if I went off track? As I continued to press into this in my prayer time, it became so clear that it is in the solitutde and silence where our hearts can access the Father’s heart. It’s in the solitude and silence with him where we learn the prayer postures to walk out a life of trust and faith in his plans and purposes for our lives.
Ruth Haley Barton writes that in times of solitude, “we let the mind settle into the heart, the very center of our being where God dwells in us as redeemed people,” because it is the heart that is “the very essence of who we are…it is the very spring of our life”2.
Solitude with the Father is the way we can move from the chaos of the present into the very heart of God through our own heart. Suddenly our mind that was once racing moves into the stillness of the Father’s heart within us. In this train of thought, the desert is not the enemy but the tree of life bringing us closer to the Father than we’ve ever been before.
It seemed that maybe my heart could carry the trust and faith I needed to take the next step of obedience—however small it would be. The more I sat with this reality, the more I realized that this was actually a tool I was gathering in the wilderness. Surely I would need to trust God and have faith like this in other aspects of my life in the future, and along the way, I began to see a trickle of water in the desert season that would lead me to a spring of life.
Cultivating rhythms of prayer strengthened my obedience and trust in God’s guidance for my life in the uncertainty.
One of the best practices for helping the truth of God’s character soak into your own heart and mind is through a repetitive prayer exercise. This practice was most commonly used by the Desert Fathers and Mothers and still today is one of the most effective ways to rewire your brain against lies and align it with truth.
What was the truth I needed to believe that I was struggling with? My problem was that I didn’t believe God would provide a way without my endlessly detailed planning. I needed to learn to trust God that he wouldn’t let me go astray — that he would care for me and keep an eye on me. I needed to be able to move in small steps and trust that he would let me know when it was time to move.
I looked to the Bible in search of Scripture to relate to this truth and there was no better example than Psalm 23. Psalm 23 is probably one of the most popular scriptures in the Bible, and for good reason as it’s chock full of reminders concerning God’s great care and love for us. As I read through the Psalm, I selected two lines which stood out the most for me in the moment — “The Lord is my shepherd…He leads me along the right paths.”
I found a place of silence and sat for twenty minutes simply repeating these two lines, over and over again. I focused my heart on the truth in the words. The more I repeated the phrase, the more it sunk deep into my heart in ways that were grounding and restoring.
I let myself linger on specific words when I felt God’s presence hover over them… “my shepherd…” and “He leads me…” became central. I found myself resting in those words, sinking deep in their truth. I did this exercise every day for several weeks. Whenever I could find a pocket of time, whether it was five minutes or thirty, I repeated the two lines over and over, letting the truth soak through me.
Within a few days of this exercise, I began to remember all the ways God had shepherded me in the past, all the times I got off track and he brought me back, and all the times he made a way when it seemed there was no way. As I repeated that scripture and it became my meditation for weeks, God’s truth began to slowly move from my mind into my heart — into the heart of the Father. His truth began to slowly replace the lies. My heart was entering into God’s heart and I began to remember just how trustworthy He is.
My season didn’t change, and I had no idea when it would. In fact, my circumstances remained the same for longer than I would have liked. But my heart was changing and inside of me grew an openness to the reality that God was in my circumstances with me and I could trust him.
My obedience to the season was to trust him. As my heart grew so did my capacity to sit with the uncertainty ahead and a level of trust in Jesus as my guide developed that was not something I could have mustered up in my own strength. This was the power of God living in me.
Are there any truths that you are struggling to believe about God in your season? If so, I encourage you to turn to Scripture. Find a verse that speaks of God’s character and practice this prayer exercise on your own. I promise, he will meet you in the solitude and silence.
The Poetry Nook
I wrote this poem in the middle of a deep wilderness season. I couldn’t quite piece together what I was meant to be doing and I often felt lost, yet I was constantly drawn into the forest. There was something about the trees and the simple sound of leaves shifting in the wind which comforted me. I still find comfort in the forest.
Solitude
The shadow of the tree conceals her; She steps in.
Swirling wind picks up strands of her hair and for a moment she twirls, as bits of light break through the spaces in the trees, each shape changing as the wind shifts and sweeps through.
She is safe in the shadow of the tree. In the stillness and the solitude, she rests.
In the silence, she listens.
There’s a Book on That
Ruth Haley Barton’s Invitation to Silence and Solitude is an excellent resource on God’s transformative presence in solitude. This book traces the journey into silence and solitude beautifully and invites readers into the deep levels of trust which can born out of intimacy with God.
In this text, Ruth Haley Barton writes, “Silence helps up drop beneath the superficiality of our mental constructs to that place of the heart that is deeper in its reality than anything the mind can capture or express in words.” Ruth is an amazing writer and teacher, and this book is equal parts beautiful and practical.
Just in case you missed these recent posts:
Learning to Live with Mystery: Unanswered prayer, big leaps of faith, liminal seasons... what do these have in common? Mystery. How can we learn to lean in when we can't see the full picture?
Learning to Slow Down and Wait Well Requires Faith and Surrender: We so often live life full speed ahead, but God is not in a hurry. What would it look like to slow down the pace? How can slowing down help us wait well?
Identity: Excavating Lies to Make Space for the Truth: Are there any lies that you've believed about yourself that don't align with what God says about you? What can we do with pain from the past?
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Thanks again for reading this week’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!
With love,
Jamie
Practicing the Way is an organization founded by John Mark Comer which is committed to helping communities integrate the practices and rhythms of Jesus into their faith journey. If you’ve not explored their website, listened to the podcast, or engaged with any of their resources, check them out! I promise their resources will change your walk with Jesus.
Barton, Ruth Haley. Invitation to Silence and Solitude. InterVarsity Press, 2010.