Faith for the Journey: Daily Meditations on Courageous Trust in God

By Charles R. Swindoll

Life isn’t for cowards. If life can be compared to a journey, it’s certainly a bumpy one. Family medical emergencies can send us on emotional hairpin curves. Job losses can make you feel like you’re stalling on a busy eight-lane highway. In this 30-day devotional, popular Bible teacher Chuck Swindoll inspires us to develop courageous trust in the God who’s in charge of our journey. He uses the life of Abraham to illustrate what it means to dare to trust. Just like Abraham, we may not know where God is leading us or how God will fulfill his promises to us. But we’re called to trust—and that’s not easy when we have our own hopes and dreams for ourselves and our families. Let Chuck Swindoll be your daily companion, encouraging you put your life back into God’s capable hands. Discover today the freedom of courageous trust.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
• Release date: Sep 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496402752

Charles R. Swindoll

Charles R. Swindoll has devoted his life to the clear, practical teaching and application of God's Word. He currently pastors Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, Texas, and serves as the chancellor of Dallas Theological Seminary. His renowned Insight for Living radio program airs around the world. Chuck and Cynthia, his partner in life and ministry, have four grown children and ten grandchildren.

Book preview

TRUST

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.

CORRIE TEN BOOM

Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you.

GENESIS 12:1

G

OD’S CALL

of Abram began with an imperative—a clear command. God told him to leave his country for a land that He would show him . . . sometime later. To receive the promised blessings, Abram had to leave behind everything he relied on for safety and provision—homeland and relatives—and trust that God would honor His commitment. The call he received as a nomad for the Lord was a call to move, a call to go, a call to leave behind the comfortable and the familiar.

Put yourself in Abram’s place for a moment. You’re roughly seventy-five years old, with a wife in her mid-sixties. You’ve lived in one place your whole life. You have an established homestead in a familiar city with family and a community you’ve known since birth. Suddenly, the Lord appears to you in a manifestation you cannot deny as authentically supernatural, and He tells you to pack up and hit the road for an undisclosed destination.

Everything within us recoils from making big changes without thorough planning. Most of us need to see where we’re jumping before committing to a leap. But God called Abram to obey this call without complete information. Abram didn’t know where he was going, so he couldn’t trust in a well-thought-out, long-range plan. Nevertheless, the Lord gave Abram sufficient information to make a reasonable decision.

When Abram encountered the Lord, he knew that God was real. The undeniable echo of God’s voice left him no room for doubt. While his neighbors thought he had lost his mind, Abram had good reason to trust in God, even without knowing every detail of the plan.

REFLECT

Has the Lord ever called you to do something without giving you all the details up front? What helps you trust Him, even when you don’t have all the information?

I trust in God, so why should I be afraid?

PSALM 56:4

FULL OBEDIENCE

God is God. Because He is God, He is worthy of my trust and obedience. I will find rest nowhere but in His holy will, a will that is unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what He is up to.

ELISABETH ELLIOT

[Abram] took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all his wealth—his livestock and all the people he had taken into his household at Haran—and headed for the land of Canaan.

GENESIS 12:5

A

FTER SPENDING

much of his life—perhaps from birth—in Ur of the Chaldeans, Abram was instructed by God to go to a place to be disclosed later. Sadly, he didn’t respond with complete obedience; he obeyed only in part. When he left Ur, Abram brought along his father, Terah, and his nephew

Reviews for Faith for the Journey

[Sarah Bassett · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love it, lots and lots!!! The best!!! Oh yes!!!