Have you ever felt stuck in life?

You’re discontent with where you are at, you know that there’s no way to go backwards in life, and yet you’re unsure of where to go from here.  Uncertain about your future, you’re very hesitant to take the next step.  However, you’re certain that you can’t stay where you are for much longer. 

Why not move forward and take the next step?  Usually, it’s because we’re afraid.

Maybe afraid that you might fail.

Maybe afraid that you might choose the wrong path.

Maybe afraid to get hurt again.

Maybe afraid to venture into new and unfamiliar things.

Maybe afraid that you might end up walking that path alone.

These are natural and ordinary responses.  However, we are more than just natural and ordinary people!  Followers of Christ are supernatural and extraordinary people!  Yes, we still live in this flesh and still have those same thoughts and feelings, but we are new creations who walk by faith and not by sight!

We may feel afraid, but we know that:

2 Timothy 1:7 (NLT)

…God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.

We may feel afraid, but fear no longer has control of our lives!  Fear has lost its grip!  We have the Spirit of the Living God within us that enables us to overcome all fear and timidity.  We have the raw power of God within us so that nothing can stand against us.  We have within us a perfect love that drives out all fear.  We have been fully equipped to discipline ourselves to no longer bow down to the lies that our fears are shouting at us!

We don’t have to walk in uncertainty, either.  The same Spirit that baptized Jesus and empowered Him to do all of the miraculous works that He did, that same Spirit that rose Jesus from the grave lives in us!  Listen to just some of what Isaiah prophesied that the Spirit of God within us is like:

Isaiah 11:2-3 (NLT)

2 …the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,

the Spirit of counsel and might,

    the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

Isaiah continued prophesying about Jesus and what the Spirit of God would enable Him, and now us, to do:

3 He will delight in obeying the Lord.

    He will not judge by appearance

    nor make a decision based on hearsay.

We no longer make decisions or judgments based on what looks like the right thing to do or on hearsay of what people say is the right thing for us to do.  We are empowered and emboldened to do what the Lord calls us to do; whether it makes sense or looks right or not by human standards.

When we feel stuck in life, we’re usually not in a good place.  However, that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t have a purpose for it and that doesn’t mean that God is finished with us and that doesn’t mean that He isn’t going to do something good through it!  Listen to what the word of the Lord declares about you in that place:

Isaiah 30:20-21

20 Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. 21 Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”

What confidence we have when we walk by faith in hearing the Holy Spirit!  He will clearly guide us down the path of the Lord.  Even if we start to stray to the right or to the left, He will redirect us saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”

Here is the key.  Here is the hard part.  Here is where we miss it.  Here is where we get stuck.

We have to take the next step.  We have to move forward.  We have to start walking.

There are way, way, way too many examples of this in the scriptures.  So many times, God’s people just literally needed to take the next step forward in faith to where God met them and did the miraculous to lead them into the fulfillment of His promises to them.

This morning, we’re going to look one to give us the boldness and the courage and