Yesterday, I completed a prayer challenge. I accepted the invitation to pray with someone I met in a virtual course I’m taking (shout out The Prayer Academy). Our assignment was to pray daily for the entire month of February. We decided upon a mutual agreed time, and prayed with each other every single day. Often we brought issues and/or concerns that we petitioned God for, other times, we prayed more vaguely for our country, our leadership, the pandemic, etc. We got to know each other intimately. Again, we’ve never met in person, we didn’t even elect to pray via zoom or Facetime; just the simplicity of the phone. It has been the most rewarding experience I could have ever imagined and yet on our official last day, we both agreed that had we known this assignment at the onset, we may have decided to “pass” until a later time. But gratefully, later was now, and we synchronically laughed at the notion that God blinded the facts of the experience so that we would experience the greater. I wonder how often God operates in this manner.

If we understood the full complexity and the forthcoming consequences of this thing called faith, truth be told, many of us would opt out. However, because we are His beloved, we are only granted bite sized nuggets of the larger process toward our healing, our deliverance, our betterment, because if God were fully transparent, we would remain in our child like stature in our faith walk. Registering for the prayer academy would seemingly be enough, but praying aloud with a stranger daily, well now, that is for folx who are more seasoned than myself – or so the enemy would have me to believe. It is often necessary for God to blind us from the facts so that we will trust Him more than ourselves. He created us. He predestined us and further, He knows the places where we will choose not to dare and unbeknownst to us, miss our blessing, miss our building, miss our becoming. I would suggest that it is we ourselves who without the Holy Spirit lack the confidence to step out on faith and attempt something we have little experience or exposure to – but it is easier to blame God with, “He knows my heart,” or “That’s not of God,” when truthfully, if we are being honest, we have failed to seek God in the decision or election process.

If God shared, “You will be blessed beyond measure, but you must pray with a stranger for 28 days daily,” I might have leaned it, because of the carrot at the beginning of the declaration; however, in the God that we must trust, He provides the instruction before the blessing. We are reminded in Proverbs 3:5, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding,” for a reason – essentially for our good. Our understanding is nothing minus trusting in the Lord with every fiber of our being. Let us not be discouraged when we don’t have all the facts – for in due season as in Ecclesiastes 12:13, “When all has been heard, the end of the matter is: fear God [worship Him with awe-filled reverence, knowing that He is almighty God] and keep His commandments, for this applies to every person.” This is the fact that will sustain us in times of sight and in times of utter darkness. Trust the process, but more importantly, trust God.