Growing in Faith

Courtney Kacer

Now Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

Hebrews 11:1

Faith can sometimes be a challenging thing to hold onto depending on the different seasons of life you find yourself in. It’s easy to praise God when you are in a season of triumph or blessings, but what happens when you go through a season of trials? Are you someone who leans into God and having faith that God will fulfill his promises and provide for you? Or are you someone who steps away from God and tries to fix things on your own?

I have created a faith bucket of sorts in my life, where I go to my faith bucket and look at all the things God has blessed me with over the years. It helps when I am going through a season of uncertainty, to remember that God is always with me through the good and the bad and that I need to praise and thank him ALL the time and not just some of the time.

I had a time in my life where I was in a season of waiting. A long season of waiting. I always wanted to find my husband and have a family, but as the years kept passing me by, I was starting to question what God really had in store for me. Maybe I wasn’t meant to have the family that my heart longed for, and it broke my heart repeatedly, until one weekend I finally came to realize that God wanted me to follow Him no matter what He called me to do and if it wasn’t meant for me, then God would change my hearts desires to align with His calling for me.

I remember the weekend I came to realize this. I grieved and cried my eyes out. I ate chocolate and watched romantic movies all weekend, and at the end of the weekend I dried my eyes with probably the one thousandth tissue and told God that if it wasn’t in my cards to have a family then I would be okay with it, because in the end I wanted to be obedient to what God wanted for me.

Two years later, God brought my husband into my life and now we have two beautiful children. God gave me my hearts desires, because I had the faith that He would when I fully sought and surrendered to Him.

You see sometimes God waits to bless us until we truly surrender our wants, needs, and prayers to Him. He wants our faith to continue to grow as we build character through these seasons of waiting, hurt, and/or pain. He wants us to have faith that no matter what happens, God is our Lord and Savior and He will fulfill His promises. Always. And God’s timing is always perfect.

I pray to God continuously for patience for His timing in all things, and I pray He gives me patience as I take too long to remember He has His plan, and it is always better than my own. I just imagine Him hitting His forehead with the palm of His hand when my faith sometimes dims. But as I stay in the word of God and learn more about God’s faithfulness and His promises, it solidifies my faith and strengthens the foundation for me to live a life with a bright burning faith that doesn’t necessarily falter when going through different seasons in my life.

C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, despite your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes.”