When things aren’t going so well in life – it’s one thing to believe that God has a good plan for us.  But it’s entirely another to step out and live life as though we believe that.  So what do we do when we’re afraid to trust?

When our lives are under siege one of the hardest things to do is to decide that life just isn’t meant to be like this and to step out and to trust God. A siege is when a city is surrounded by an army and they just wait until the people in the fortified city die of starvation. When our lives are under siege well, that’s a desperate time, we loose hope we blame everyone else, we just want to sit there and give up. But life isn’t meant to be like that and no matter who we are and how desperate our situation God is in that place with us and he has a future for us.

Sadly I have watched people; even people who profess to believe in Jesus Christ live their whole lives without ever taking that step of faith. Why? Because stepping out in faith, believing in God for an end to the siege is a scary thing to do. So people just sit there, what an incredible waste.

This week on 'A Different Perspective' we’ve been looking at what happens when our lives are under siege and in particular we’ve been looking at it through the story in the Old Testament in 2 Kings, the book called 2 Kings, Chapter 6 and 7, which is a story of how Samaria, a city just north of Jerusalem was laid to siege by the Aramite army and they were there so long that the people inside began to starve, it became so bad that the women cannibalised their children.

And the King completely lost the plot and instead of leading his people went to God’s prophet Elisha and blamed God, and the prophet said, "well you know something, here’s what's going to happen, here’s what God is going to do. Just within twenty four hours there’ll be so much food you won’t believe how much food there’ll be."

Now that must have been such an outrageous impossible claim that the prophet Elisha was making to the King, because I mean people were dying, people were starving, the problem was so big the Aramite army was so real. And at times like that we lose perspective, the problem looks much, much, much bigger than God, God looks quite small when we have a big problem. But God’s promise came through the prophet.

God’s promise was to do something, but you know when God does some miracles in our lives He always, always wants it to be a partnership. It’s kind of like when someone comes to us on our birthday and says I’ve got a present for you, they can hand the present to us but we have to take the present from them too, it’s a two sided transaction, and it’s the same with God doing amazing things in our lives, reaching out into our lives to solve our sieges, and fix our problems.

Sitting there grumbling ain’t going to do it, cannibalising our kids, ain’t going to do it, blaming God ain’t going to do it. God wants us to step out in faith and that’s a risky thing to do when we feel like we’re under siege as it was for Samaria who were surrounded by the Aramite army. The Samarian King was running around in ever decreasing circles but there were some lepers, some outcasts just outside the gate and I’m just going to read a small part of the story from chapter 7 beginning at verse 3 of 2 Kings. This is what is says:

There were four lepers outside the city gate who said to one another, ‘why are we going to sit here till we die, if we say we’ll go into the city there’s a famine in the city and we’ll die there, if we sit here we’ll die, so why don’t we desert to the Aramean camp, I mean if they spare our lives we’ll live and if they kill us well we’ll die maybe just a day or two earlier.’

So they got up at twilight and they walked out to the Aramean’s camp, but when they came to the edge of that camp there was no one there because God had caused the Aramean army to hear sounds of chariots and of horses, the sound of a great army so they said to one another the King of Israel has hired the King of the Hittites and the Kings of Egypt to fight against us so they fled away in the twilight and abandoned their tents, their horses, their donkeys, leaving the camp just as it was and fled for their lives. When these leprous men had come to the camp they went in to a tent and ate and drank and carried off silver and gold and clothing and went and hid them. They came back in another tent and carried out things more and they just plundered the camp.

This is a wonderful story because God had already gone ahead of them with a miracle. This was pragmatic desperation, this was, if we stay here we die, if we go into the city we die, if we walk out to the Aramites we’ve got a slim chance let’s do that. Imagine that walk, crunch, crunch, crunch, twilight, the fear, they had really a rotten choice but just sitting there was not going to do it for them. Here’s the 'but', God had already gone ahead of them with a miracle, God’s ready to do a miracle and half the time God’s already done a miracle but we have to walk into it. Sitting in the siege complaining and blaming God and blaming everyone else is not walking into a miracle.

I remember when I was training to be an officer in the Australian Army, we had an obstacle course that we used to do quite often and part of the obstacle course was a really narrow plank that we had to run up and then run along. And then there was a gap in the plank which was just wide enough that you couldn’t step over if, probably two or three inches too wide, the gap, so you had to actually jump, it was very much a leap of faith. Now it wasn’t very far down to the ground but I don’t like heights and so I never, never will forget the gap in the plank and the leap of faith every time I had to run over those planks.

Many a time I baulked at this stupid little gap, it’s what we do, we don’t want to take the step of faith, it’s hard, it’s scary. But God wants us to do exactly that because God has gone before us we’re His creation, we’re His workmanship and God has created us to walk into the things that He has already prepared for us beforehand to do. God goes ahead of us, God goes into the Aramean camp, God goes into the thing that is holding our lives to siege and does miracles.

Well how about it, what’s holding your life to siege? What’s robbing you of life, draining you of life, starving you of life? Are you just going to sit there? Are you just going to die? “But Berni I feel like …” Like what, a leper? Well Gods grace and God’s miracle is for lepers too. In fact God’s grace and God’s miracles are for lepers especially, ordinary people, ordinary men and women like you and me. “I feel, I feel, I feel, nothing ...”

When we’re in a siege we have a choice, it’s a very stark choice, we can stay there, we can blame the rest of the world, we can starve and we can waste our lives or we can listen to God’s word and God has a good plan for your life, just like God has a good plan for my life even when sometimes my life is under siege. And impossible as it may seem, when God calls us to step out of that siege, as he may well be with you right now.

Maybe you’re in a difficult marriage, please don’t get me wrong I’m not saying walk away from the marriage by no means, but maybe you’re in a difficult marriage and God is calling you just to bless your marriage partner, to stop grumbling, stop complaining, stop arguing and just to bless them. Well you’ve a choice, you can keep blaming them or you can follow God’s leading and leave the rest to God.

As we step out, step by step by step all of a sudden we walk into what God is already doing, what God has already prepared for us, and we can walk into those miracles no matter how impossible they may seem. If it was easy faith wouldn’t be faith, but when we step out like those lepers what have we got to lose to walk into God’s miracles in our life?