A few days ago, I was reflecting on the period of my life beginning when I knew I needed to step out in faith and resign at my former church and ending at the point where we moved to Colorado. And a thought came to me. Surprise, surprise…

I felt like that was a very difficult, yet exciting period of my life. Yet, when I look at the circumstances, they weren’t really mind-blowingly difficult compared to what people face all the time in their lives. It was actually pretty mild, if you look at it objectively (although that’s hard for me to do, since I was the one who experienced it). That made me feel kind of bad. How would I have handled a much greater crisis? Something that could be genuinely labeled a crisis? But then I continued thinking about it. You know, it was like I had a taste of having to trust God during a relatively minor unsettling time. It was just a taste. Kinda like a vaccine.

You know what I’m talking about. When they give you a vaccine, they give you a taste of the virus or whatever in order to trigger antibodies to build up in your body so that the full-blown virus won’t be able to overcome you if you come into contact with it later in life. And then it dawned on me…faith is the antibody. For some odd reason, my faith in God has intensified greatly over the past period of my life–disproportionately, I would add, to the circumstances. It’s like a little hardship came my way–and I reached down deep, and found God, and a whole bunch of faith was released.

And so now I feel I have all these antibodies in my system disproportionate to the injection of the vaccine’s virus. That leads me to believe that there’s very good reason for all these antibodies. I’m going to need every single one of them. God knew that, and gave me a vaccine so that I would be prepared for what lies ahead.

The task set before me right now–without the type of faith I have in God right now, I’d be turning to this or that to grow the church or try to become successful. But with all these antibodies of faith floating around, I just can’t bring myself to do that. There’s only one way to stand strong in the Lord, and that is by putting one’s faith squarely in Him. That’s what I learned during this past period of my life, and I fully intend to put that into practice during this next chapter.

And if I say that I feel like I have a lot of faith in God, it’s not coming from arrogance, or as if I regard myself higher than I ought. I know full well where this faith came from, and it didn’t come from me. It is God’s working in my life, and I’m not ashamed to say it. He has indeed done something in my life, and it’s not arrogant to say that either. Rather, it’s praise to God, because He will receive much glory from what He has done, is doing, and will do in my life. If there’s any faith here, it’s all from Him alone and for His purposes alone.

I’m not claiming perfection or anything near it. I’m simply saying: God gave me a vaccine, and it worked.