The Way Forward

I have a clay lamp that is 2,000 years old. It fits into the palm of my hand. It was given to me years ago as a gift along with a certificate of authentication from Israel. There are still burn marks on the opening where the wick once burned. This is a small household lamp someone would use in the middle of the night to find the way forward in the darkness. It would have put off the equivalent of one candle worth of illumination.

People want to know the future. They want their pathway fully illuminated from the present all the way into the distant future so they can know exactly where they are going. While that may sound appealing, it actually is contrary to a life of faith. A lot of your future is hidden from you for a number of reasons. The life of faith requires that you trust God to reveal each step and how to handle the things you will encounter that are still outside the sphere of your current illumination.

We have been promised a form of revelation, similar to the small clay lamp I have. That lamp only illuminated the next step of the person who held it. The Scripture says,  “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” (Psalm 119:105)  We want a floodlight to illuminate 10 miles into our future when we have been promised, by design, only a lamp for our feet.

The gift of prophecy will occasionally reach into the future and reveal something that is not yet illuminated in the present. We hold onto to those words of promise because they give us confidence in the journey when we hear fearful sounds outside the perimeter of our illumination that want to scare us into a standstill. 

As a follower of Jesus Christ you will never step into darkness. He is always illuminating your path – one step at a time. You will never see the whole journey. This is where your trust becomes a powerful weapon against those things that lurk in the dark. Your way forward is your next step. Walk in it and watch the hand of God move in powerful ways.