Faith Under Pressure

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. One of my daughters recently wrote a long FaceBook post making this point very clear. Here is what Alycia Neighbours posted (and I share with her permission):

So I’m going to preach y’all a sermon…

Faith Under Pressure
James 1:2-4 The Message (MSG) “Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.”

So today this verse came alive to me in a very real way.

For quite some time I have been constantly battling fear and anxiety. A byproduct of a life previously lived under domestic abuse. I do pretty good in just my day to day life, because I have created a life that is “low impact” Yet, the one place I have to face it the most is in the saddle. It is where I have to face my true nature.

I have been through a few horses trying to find the right fit and possibly one as “low impact” to my life as everything else I have created. My current horse, Hondo, is the opposite of that goal. He is highly reactive and anything but low impact. I am committed though and he is committed to making our partnership work.

I’ve been putting in the time on the ground and in the saddle to insure that we are both improving. To this date though, I haven’t really been challenged with him. It’s all been fairly uneventful and successful (in the sense that we were never really put to the test to see if our work was paying off)

Today changed everything. Today we were put to the test.

I went out on a solo ride. Just Hondo and I against a very warm and breezy day. About a half hour into the trip, he spooked big. It took me awhile to figure out what was scaring him, but after several jump and bolts, I found the evil black bag (think Dementor from Harry Potter) caught in a tree. He was snorting and highly upset, but I killed that Dementor and buried it, because that’s just what you do. I remounted and we took off again (both a little shaken if we are to be honest).

To avoid seeing that dreaded black bag burial ground, we diverted about 10 feet to the left of where we normally go. Down a tiny slope and all of a sudden Hondo sunk to his chest in mud and I rolled off. Thanks to watching lots of animal rescue videos, I was able to help him dislodge himself after 20 terrifying minutes and we shook all that off as well, except for the mud, in which we were both cake

Fortunately that got washed off when he slipped in a deep part of the creek and we both fell sideways for a nice cool swim. We made it back to the barn and rode another 30 minutes just getting our groove and our nerves back.

Then it hit me. Through this very testing ride, our progress was apparent. Sure, it would have been nice if every ride was lovely fields and butterflies swooping under rainbows, but that wouldn’t have ever shown me how far I have come. All the battling and all the pushing, paid off in a big way. We passed a large test.

So its like that with the scripture above. Faith that isn’t tested…is it truly faith?

Ok so I can’t say that I truly had joy as I was panicking that my horse was in quicksand, but it showed me how my work paid off. He didn’t panic, he listened and allowed me to help him out.

The joy comes when you realize that these tests and trials were never meant to break you. They are meant to prove His love for you, to honor your faith. So you can walk away from it like the child of a King that you are.

I consider it all joy that my history has a lot of trials, pain and fear. I push it aside every day and try harder to overcome. As I rode away from all those horrible moments, I laughed. Fear doesn’t have a hold on me any longer, because my faith is stronger.

Right after this experience, my daughter called and said, “I just had the most horrifying, scary experience, but one of the best experiences ever!” I couldn’t help but marvel at how God has grown her, shown up for her and shown off for her.  And how incredibly God is using her journey to touch the lives of so many others.

I can witness to the truths of this story, as my own tough times have always taken me deeper in Christ than I’d been before. They caused me to learn things I’d never known if I’d not been so desperate and chosen to trust God in the midst of them.

There’s not much I can add to this except these take aways:

1. God is in the business of making us more like Christ. That often means we must go through some tough situations…didn’t He?
2. God is still in control even when things feel out of control.
3. God has so much to teach us through our desperate experiences.
4. God is totally trustworthy with our life and our circumstances.
5. God will use out stories not only to take us deeper with Him, He will use them to bring hope and strength to others as well.

Whatever you are going through right now, it’s not by accident. He is shaping you into a beautiful story. He WILL CARRY you if you will trust Him. Then He WILL USE you as you trust Him with that story.

Banner Photo by Crystal Kwok on Unsplash

Potter’s Wheel Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash