It is easy to look at a life that way and decide you are not ready to speak for God—too inexperienced, too uncertain, too likely to say it wrong. Jeremiah 1 opens with a prophet making exactly that case — and God’s answer to him.
Before a new phone reaches stores, case makers stake a year’s work on a mold they cannot verify, hoping every opening lands in the right place. Genesis 15 places Abraham in a sharper uncertainty: God has promised descendants and worldwide blessing, but no son has appeared. What does faithful action look like when the promise is clear and its fulfillment remains invisible?
Could you have heaven with no sickness, every friend you ever loved, every pleasure you ever tasted—and still be satisfied if God were not there? At Sinai in Exodus 19, Israel, just out of slavery, receives the law and a portable tent meant to keep God at the center of camp. The question that will follow them through the wilderness is the one that follows everyone: the garden, or its God?
What happens when following God leads straight into a desert? In Genesis 12 and 15, Abraham reaches the promised land only to face famine, barrenness, and the apparent impossibility of becoming a great nation. Then God takes him beneath the night sky, where countless stars frame the tension between present circumstances and a promise that seems beyond reach.
We’ve all felt the pull to add one more pious act—fast a little longer, pray a little harder—convinced the right combination will finally make us right before God. In Matthew 9, John’s disciples bring that same assumption directly to Jesus, and his answer reframes not just the practice of fasting but the question of what season we’re actually living in.
Solomon, Rehoboam, and Jeroboam all treated God’s promises like something they could improve on or control on their own terms only to encounter the pavement courtesy of the black ice of sin. Our efforts end like that, but God’s faithfulness outlasts our failures.
A folding map only works if you already know where you are. Enough wrong turns, and you’re stuck staring at it with no idea how to find yourself—let alone get back on course. Psalm 89 asks what God’s promises do for those of us who aren’t the Hannahs and Davids, who look at the map and go the wrong way.
We can miss the more urgent thing because we get distracted by the immediate. As we begin exploring John 5, Jesus encourages us not to miss what’s truly important.
What does the righteousness God wants in us really look like?
Wisdom isn’t something meant to get on and off of. So do we want on?