Have you ever questioned your faith? You’re a Christian, but your life doesn’t look like it? I think it’s safe to say that we all experience that at some point in our walk – maybe even multiple times. But how do we move past it?
Lacy Abercrombie talks about this season of her life in her White Chair Film. Lacy achieved viral social media fame as a Christian content creator, but when the camera wasn’t rolling, her life looked totally different.
One failure caused her to stop believing that God had a good plan for her. She listened to the lie that God wouldn’t be able to use her anymore, so what was the point in trying? She ran to distractions to escape her pain and it worked...for a little while.
This is so relatable. So many of us want to talk about how we’ve changed since we started walking with Jesus — telling everyone we know. We have big hopes and dreams of how God is going to use us. We get out there and share our faith; everything is great, and we’ve got exciting plans. And then one of those plans or some area of our life falls apart. Sometimes it even blows up in our face and we’re left looking around thinking, “How did I not see this coming? God, where were you?”
The enemy comes in and whispers things like, “You’re not very good at this. It would be easier to go back to your old life. You messed up, God isn’t going to want to use you.”
We begin to doubt ourselves, God and our future. Insecurity and fear begin to drive us instead of faith, and it’s easier to fill our schedules and live our lives on our terms than wrestle with what happened.
This is where community steps in. This is where discipleship takes over. When we’re able to be mentored by other believers further along in their faith, we have someone praying over us, someone that can speak truth against the lies of the enemy and someone to help us figure a way forward. They aren’t perfect and they may not be able to fix anything, but they can help us distinguish between lies and God’s truth. They remind us of God’s promises and help us recognize untruths that we often wrestle with when things go south.
For me, this person is my mom. She and I have always been close, but we’ve grown especially close as adults. She has been an open book with me about what she’s walked through and how she’s grown in different seasons, and she’s created a safe space for me to be able to come to her with anything.
She’s the first one I go to about anything and everything, and after God, she’s the first opinion I want when I’m making a decision. I know that she will be honest with me – good, bad or ugly. She will tell me when I’m not seeing things clearly and help me recognize when I’m believing lies about myself or my situation and point me back to the truth of Jesus.
You don’t have to be discipled by someone in your family. In fact, it’s probably better to have someone not related to you speaking into your life. The important thing is that it’s someone you trust, and someone that has a solid, steady walk of their own.
The Christian life was never meant to be lived alone. Acts 2:46 tells us how members of the early Church lived life together. John 10:10 and I Peter 5:8 tell us that the enemy is constantly on the lookout for ways to bring us down, to destroy us. Because the more Christians he can take out of the game, the less people will be in Heaven.
Friend, I’ve been there. The enemy has tried to take me out so many times. Rejection. Failure. Unfair situations. If you’re familiar with my story, you know that my family and I have lived in physical isolation for years due to my sister’s cancer journey. I never thought about being anywhere else during that time, but now it can quickly become overwhelming when I stop and think about all of the life I’ve missed out on over the past six years. Weddings, friends’ babies, funerals and just time that I had other plans for. And trust me, there are days when the enemy knows exactly what to whisper in my ear and make me feel like I should just give up. And there are days where I’ve come really close.
But at some point, I reach out. In my case, it’s to my mom. She speaks life over me and reminds me of what Scripture says. She helps me have perspective and remember that God is in control, not the enemy. For each of my fears, she has verses like Psalm 71:20, Joel 2:25 and Jeremiah 29:11 to remind me of truth.
Life is hard, and we can fall into the trap of making it harder by isolating and hiding our pain and secrets. But if we take a page from Lacy’s book and step into the light – sharing our hurts and hangups and going to someone for discipleship – we'll find freedom and help to make it through life’s toughest storms.