It’s hard looking ahead when we what feel is uncertainty.  We want to believe in the better days to come.  We want to be optimistic, entrusting our core beliefs to help us envision outcomes that correspond with our faith.  We want to stop looking in the rearview mirror and anticipate a new, brighter tomorrow.

Ah, if only we could download an app for that. 

I am the first one to tell someone what I honestly believe and sense for them.  I feel that God has given me a perspective that enables me to perceive a knowing that He is working things out, that He is weaving an outcome in another’s situation that is always for their good.   This is not hard given what we know He promises us all.  Whether its a healing, a new job, a simple resolution to a complex problem, the testimonies are endless.

So why is it sometimes difficult to see in my own life situations?

I think we all can walk by faith, but our sight at times becomes circumspect.  We buffer our expectations because we don’t want to be disappointed.  We want to hope for the best, but we are girded by our experiences.  We are tempered by hurt and by others who have let us down.  In short, we are conditioned to believe that things work out for others, just not us.

I’m sure that I am not the only one who has felt at times that life has been more like a Whack a Mole experience rather than a day at the beach.  

I try hard to catch myself, to replace feelings of doubt and lowered expectations with what I know God wants for me.  Sometimes, I can intercept the spiral, and replace the slide into the abyss with a quick reminder that God is not man, He is God.  He will not leave me nor forsake me.  He’s got my back.

The truth is, we all drag around a gunnysack of reasons why things may not be optimal in our lives.  This can be heavy, burdensome.  They can skew our perception of what is ahead because we want to account for a margin of error just so we won’t get our hopes up too much.   What if God is too busy to get all the details of our situation worked out?  What if He is able to deliver us part of the way, and expects us to figure the rest out as we go?

That’s not how God works.

James 1:6 says, “But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed like the wind.  That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.” 

I believe that God wants us always to be rooted deeply in a vision that He has the best for us.  He doesn’t want us to discount our expectations of how He is going to work out situations, provide for us in the face of difficulty, mend us in all our broken places.  

Doubt, resignation, and melancholy are seeds planted by the enemy.  These are weeds in the garden of our faith sown through our hurts and disappointments.   None of these are of God.

We must constantly be sensitive to the ploy of thinking anything other than God’s best for us.  It doesn’t matter what our situations look like, He has a plan.  It doesn’t matter how desperate what we are going through feels.  He’s surrounding us, holding us up, defending us.

We need to replace our meager expectations with knowing God is almighty and able to do exceedingly and abundantly more than we can hope for or imagine.

That is the truth.

Be no longer bound by a spirit that would have you think God would offer you less than His very best. 

The next time doubt creeps into the vision you have for your tomorrow, raise your sights and believe what is coming is better than good.

Can you see it now?