What Walking With Jesus Has Actually Taught Me
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” — Proverbs 3:5–6
I have been writing this newsletter for a while now. And every week I sit down and pour everything I have into these words because I genuinely believe that what I write matters that somewhere on the other side of these words is a real person who needs to hear something specific. But today I want to do something a little different.
Today I want to tell you what walking with Jesus has actually taught me. Not the version that sounds good but the real version. The things I learned not in a Bible class but in the specific, sometimes painful, always formative school of a life actually lived with God. Because I think you need to hear it and honestly I need to say it out loud.
Every article you read here takes real time, real prayer, and real heart to write. Please consider upgrading for $3 to support my work and get full access:
What I Used to Think
I used to think that faith was mostly about believing the right things. Get the theology right, know the verses, and understand the Bible. Have the right answer when someone asks the hard questions. I thought that faith was primarily intellectual that if I could build a solid enough case in my mind for the truth of what I believed, the rest would follow. I was wrong.
Not completely wrong. The theology matters. The verses matter. The doctrine matters. But I had massively underestimated something that you cannot learn from a book. Faith is not primarily something you know. It is something you do. Over and over. In the dark. When nothing is confirming it. When the circumstances are pushing against it and the feelings have gone quiet and the only thing you have to stand on is a decision you made in a better moment to trust a God you cannot currently feel.
That is what walking with Jesus has actually taught me. Faith is a practice. Not an achievement you arrive at. A daily practice of choosing in the specific, ordinary, sometimes grinding texture of real life to trust the One you cannot see over the circumstances you can.
The Sermon
Proverbs 3:5–6 is one of the most familiar passages in all of Scripture. Most of us have heard it so many times it slides past us. But I want to read it slowly this morning because every word is earning its place.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart.”
All your heart. Not most of it. Not the parts that are easy to surrender. All of it. The part that has been disappointed before and is protecting itself. The part that has a plan it prefers. The part that is afraid of what full trust might cost. All of it.
“And lean not on your own understanding.”
This is the one that gets me every time. Because I am someone who likes to understand things. I like to see how the pieces fit together. I like to know where the path is going before I put my foot on it. And God keeps saying in circumstance after circumstance, in season after season lean not on your own understanding. Your view of this situation is incomplete. Your understanding of what is happening and why and what it means for what comes next is partial at best. Trust Me with the parts you cannot see.
“In all your ways submit to him.”
All your ways. Not the spiritual ones. Not the Sunday ones. The Tuesday morning commute. The difficult conversation. The decision nobody else will ever know you made. The moment when it would be easier to take the shortcut and nobody would know. Submit in all of it. That is where the real faith is formed not in the big dramatic moments but in the ten thousand small ones.
“And he will make your paths straight.”
Not smooth. Straight. The path may still go through hard terrain. But the direction will be right. The destination will be where He promised. And looking back even from the hard stretches, even from the valleys and the wilderness you will be able to see that He was leading you the entire time.
What I Know Now
Here is what walking with Jesus has taught me that I did not know when I started.
God is more patient with me than I am with myself. I have failed Him in ways I am not proud of. I have made the same mistakes more times than I want to count. And every single time without exception I have found that His patience outlasted my failure. Not that He was indifferent to it. That He was more committed to my restoration than I was to my own condemnation.
The hard seasons were not detours. They were the road. Every season that felt like God was absent or had lost the plot every valley, every wilderness, every prolonged waiting room turned out to be the place where the most significant formation happened. I could not see it from inside. But I can see it looking back. And what I see is a God who was present and working in every single moment that felt like nothing was happening.
Showing up is enough. I spent years believing that my faith had to feel a certain way to count. That if I wasn’t moved during worship or if prayer felt flat or if the Bible wasn’t coming alive it didn’t count. I know now that is completely wrong. The act of showing up imperfectly, sometimes barely, without the feeling is itself faith. And God honors it. Every time.
He is more interested in my character than my comfort. This one took me the longest to accept. But it is the most liberating thing I have ever learned. God is not primarily trying to make my life comfortable. He is trying to make me into someone. The discomfort is often the classroom. And the classroom is where the most important things happen.
What I Want For You
I write this newsletter every week because I want you to have something real. Not a performance of faith. Not a cleaned up version of what following Jesus looks like. The real thing. The real thing is harder than the brochure suggests. It requires more of you than you thought you had. It will take you through places you did not sign up for. It will ask you to trust in the dark and hold on without visible reasons and keep showing up when showing up feels like nothing. And it is the most worth it thing I have ever done with my life. Every hard season. Every valley. Every moment of doubt and dryness and wondering if any of this was real. Worth it. All of it. Because the God on the other side of the practice is more real and more present and more faithful than anything I could have found by staying comfortable. Keep walking. He is worth every step.
Reflection Questions
What has your faith journey actually taught you not the Sunday school answer but the real thing that only came through living it?
Which of the four things I shared resonates most with where you are right now? Why?
What is one thing God has been trying to teach you in your current season that you have been resisting?
Today’s Prayer:Lord thank You for every season the good ones and the hard ones and the ones I didn’t understand while I was in them. Thank You for being patient with me when I wasn’t patient with myself. Thank You for making the hard seasons the road instead of detours. And thank You that showing up imperfectly, inconsistently, sometimes barely has always been enough for You. Teach me today what You’ve been trying to teach me. I am finally ready to receive it. Amen.
Comments