Is Your Faith On The Right Track

Thanks to a Christmas present, my husband and boys are taking a trip this weekend. That was all well and good until the forecast began calling for measurable snow both at home and their destination of Cleveland.

They weighed their options. The event, which they were super excited about, was going on as scheduled. They decided to leave earlier than planned and take it nice and slow for what is usually about a four-and-half-hour drive. They bundled up, packed extra things as a safety precaution and took off leaving me shaking my head and praying as I watched them pull away.

They usually take a small guys trip or two without me each year. Normally, I do just fine and don’t worry much about them. But with mounting snow throughout their journey, I felt less than great despite my prayers. I told them I would follow their journey on Life 360. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s an app that lets you group your family members and track their locations by the GPS on their phones.

Naturally, my kids called me things like “creeper” and “stalker.” I prefer the terms “wife” and “mother.” I’m allowed to want to know where they are and if they’re safely progressing as planned. Right? It doesn’t seem farfetched to want to keep tabs on the location of my family members while they’re traveling in a snowstorm.

They had been gone a couple of hours when one of my precious boys texted me a screen shot of him checking on my location with the question, “what do you think you’re doing?” I responded with, “walking to the coffee pot.”

It tickled me thinking about how he doesn’t want to know the minutia of where I am and what I’m doing most of the time. When I also told him that I had been running the vacuum, he told me I was boring. He doesn’t know what a gift it is to have a “boring” mom, but that’s another story and not what I sat down to write.

As I went around and around with the tracking, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was as concerned about where my people are spiritual as I am with their physical location. I was thinking that I prayed for them, I even asked friends to pray for them, but I don’t know if I reminded them to pray. I certainly didn’t stop them before they left so we could all pray together. That’s what I should have done. They were hustling to get going so they could do all their traveling during the day, and the kids were so excited to get going they didn’t even pause at the door.

As I was mentally kicking myself for not forcing them to stop and pray, I began to wonder how many other teaching opportunities I’ve let slip away. I will check on their physical location every few minutes, but when is the last time I’ve checked on them spiritually. Do I pray with them enough? Do I encourage them to read their Bibles enough? Do I ask enough poignant questions to make them think and try to understand what they’ve read or what they heard at church? Am I helping them build their faith?

My youngest was waiting with me in the living room for a minute while they were going in and out loading up their stuff. He pointed to a mustard seed that I keep in a tiny vile on a shelf and said, “what is it with the mustard seed again?”

I said there’s a Bible verse (Matthew 17:20-21) where Jesus says that we need to have faith the size of a mustard seed, and I keep that there to remind me that as long as I have Jesus and a little bit of faith, I have enough.

That scripture follows Jesus healing a boy of demon possession and telling his disciples that they had too little faith when they asked why they weren’t able to heal the child. “He said to them, ‘Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”

Do I have that kind of faith? Am I showing that to my family and others in my sphere? While they are away on their weekend adventure (they did arrive safely), I guess it’s a good time for me to do some soul searching. How’s my faith? How’s my witness? Am I focused on the right things or am I just stalking?

It sure is easy to get sidetracked and off course ever so slightly. If we don’t course correct quickly, we’ll wind up some place we don’t want to be wondering how we got there. Can I encourage you to join me today? Let’s check our internal GPS and make sure we are where we intend to be, that we’re headed in the direction that we want to go.

If you find that you’ve veered off course or that you’re just doubting the direction that the Lord has you going, I pray that you would seek Him and find your faith. If we truly have faith in Him, even a little is enough.