 I want to share something with you today that I think is going to be helpful for you navigating your own questions, doubts and struggles around your own faith. I think too often we get in this place of wanting to put a nice neat bow on our Christian faith and not get into the nitty gritty of what it actually looks like to follow Jesus. So I want to let you in on my inner world and some of my struggles with my own faith and hopes that it will help you in your faith. This was my problem with God. For a long time I struggled with two things. The first thing was that I didn't experience God the way that I thought I was supposed to be experiencing Him or the way that I wanted to experience Him. I knew so many people around me that would talk about their unique encounters with God, a word that they heard from God or something that he was prompting them towards. They seemed to have this kind of close intimate relationship with Christ that I didn't feel like I had. When they would speak of Him, they'd speak of Him like an old friend that they had tea with the other day or in their prayer life would feel so tangible where for me it felt stale and cold and dry and lifeless. They would talk about reading the Bible and having things jump off the page at them that would kind of open their eyes to something that they were experiencing in their own life. But when I looked at the Bible a lot of the time just felt like a lot of words. Like sure I got a lot of information about God but yet there was that disconnect in actually experiencing Him or feeling Him, experiencing His love, feeling His love. I didn't have that. And so the other piece was, I'm going to leave that for a second, but the other piece was I didn't feel like God was delivering on what He owed me. And now that's a big accusation but let me explain. For so many of us, myself included, we operate on the assumption that when we conduct ourselves in a way that we think is right and that is good and that's responsible as Christians, that God in turn is supposed to provide us with the life that we want. I mean the logic kind of makes sense. I do my part God and you do your part in delivering me the life that I want. And this is often how we interact with other people in our relationships, right? If I do something nice for you, then I expect in turn that you'll do something nice for me. So what happens when we live our lives as Christians, doing, trying to do everything right, having the expectation that, okay, as long as I do my part, God will fulfill His part and deliver me the dreams that I have. What happens when those dreams shatter? Well our relationship with God is then destroyed because it was all based on this expectation that God was going to give me what I wanted. Now the idea that God owed me a good life or owed me my dreams being fulfilled really comes out of a works righteousness perspective on our faith. This idea that when I do all that I can to earn God's favor that God will give me what I need, whether that be eternal life, whether that be, you know, a successful family or marriage or relationship or career that God is obligated to give me that stuff. There have been a couple key times in my life where I felt like God gave me the short end of the stick where he didn't give me what I felt like he owed me. And I think about from the time I was a young kid, my main value and priority was doing everything right. That was my highest value was at least on the outside, doing the right thing, saying the right thing, being the most responsible. And so at the age of 19, when I heard that my mom was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer, that shattered my world, my perspective of my relationship with God was distorted. It was crushed in a way because I had this expectation that, okay, God, I've been doing things right my whole life in a sense, which was, you know, when we look at the ins and outs of my life and I've been open about this, in a lot of ways, my inner world was just very sinful. And so on the outside, I portrayed as a really good person and responsible person, but inside not so much. But even still, I had this expect expectation that, God, I did all this stuff for you. Why can't you do this one thing for me? Right? We began to bargain with God. We say, God, I've done so much for you. I've been, I've shared the gospel with so many people. I've loved people that I would never have loved before. You know, but I did it for you, God. And yet you can't give me this one thing. And yet you're doing this to me, God. And we began to get accusatory with God because we have this expectation that God is obligated to deliver us what we want. But the tough journey that I had to go on and that I'm still going on to this day when I encounter a dream that has been shattered or my expectations haven't been fulfilled in terms of what I wanted my life to look like, I'm forced to say, God is trying to move me towards something that isn't what I want to move towards necessarily. So in those moments, I want to move towards my dream being fulfilled or my expectations being fulfilled, my life going the way that I want them want them to go, want it to go. But God is trying to move me to this place where I am in full submission and faith towards him in relationship with him. That's his destination that he wants to bring me toward. That's why all these different ups and downs, these challenges, these broken dreams, these missed expectations, these are all trying to move me towards God. Now to go back to my other struggle with God, this idea that God wasn't showing up in the way that I wanted him to, he wasn't making himself evident in my life in terms of experientially, in terms of me feeling his love or his presence when I wanted to. I think about the Apostle Thomas in John 20 and I just want to read this for you and it'll connect directly with this. If you've experienced something similar to me. Now Thomas one of the twelve called the twin was not with him when Jesus came so the disciples told him we have seen the Lord but he said to them unless I see in his hands the marks of nails and place my fingers into the mark of the nails and place my hand into his side I will never believe. Eight days later his disciples were inside again and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked Jesus came and stood among them saying peace be with you. He said to Thomas put your finger here and see my hands and put your hand and place it in my side do not disbelieve but believe. Thomas answered him my Lord and my God Jesus said to him have you believed because you have seen me blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed when I read this recently it struck home for me because I feel a connection with Thomas. It's not that I need to necessarily see Jesus face to face like that's what I'm asking for but seeing so many Christians around me talking about the experiences that they have or this deep sense of love that they experience on a daily basis or this presence that they feel of God's presence and for me not experiencing that I think about two things. I think about the fact that God has provided us with his revelation and his words so that when we we can hear from him on a daily basis that we don't need an audible voice and we also don't need a feeling in order to touch base with what God has for us each and every day but also I have saw us in the fact that Jesus said blessed are those who have not seen and yet have still believed and I think that applies here blessed are those who have not felt it or don't experience it on a daily basis but still believe maybe you don't experience God's presence or you don't experience God's love all the time or like who does right who does and who experiences these feelings all the time feelings are fickle things friends yes God can work through them but their fickle things blessed are those who don't feel it and yet still believe and so realizing that our faith is not grounded in these experiential moments or these feelings that we might have about whether God is here whether he's not no my faith is based on his promises the fact that he said his love for me as his child is unconditional that he'll never leave me nor forsake me that he's present with me that his power and presence is within me like these are promises that I can hold on to even when I don't feel it I think what I'm called to do in this moment is to lay down my expectations of God that that are built on my own desires as opposed to God's ways and his plan like I want God to do all this stuff I want God to do things in this way because I want control because I don't trust him because I want things in my hand because I trust me and I want it to go my way he's calling to me to humility he's calling us to humility to lay that down and say God okay you're gonna show up in the way that you want to show up you're gonna do the things that you want to do and I trust you I trust you and that's what the Christian faith is that's what growing in maturity and sanctification is it's not that this you know moment you're like you have full faith and you're all in and that's it forever it's like no I'm gonna grow progressively in my faith just like I would with an old friend as you get to know them more and more you can lay down that much more of that skepticism and unbelief and trust them more and more and for us as Christians with the relationship with God we can be pleading you got every single day to say God help me lay down my cynicism my skepticism my my own pride my own need for control and let me just lay that at your feet so I can just enjoy the rest that you're inviting me into that I can fully submit and trust you in everything if you relate to any of this I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments down below I just want to thank everyone that subscribes at this channel if you are not subscribed already I'd encourage you to do it because I've put out videos like this every single week a huge shout out to everyone on patreon thank you guys so much for supporting what I'm doing and equipping people to follow Jesus daily if you're not on patreon and you'd like to support my mission click the link in my description join and there's all sorts of exclusive perks and things that you get with the joining and ultimately just be a huge blessing to what I'm doing so thank you so much guys and I will see you next time God bless