Back Roads To Belonging By Kristen StrongSample

Kristen Strong: Back Roads to Belonging Devotional Day 7

“Keep Going”

Scripture reading: Luke 5:1-11

The familiar story in today’s Bible passage begins with Jesus’s disciple Peter and other fishermen cleaning their nets after an unsuccessful fishing trip on a lake. 

Jesus says to Peter, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” 

Peter answers, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets” (Luke 5:4–5, ESV). 

His reward for obeying Jesus is the catch of a lifetime. Peter immediately leaves everything behind and follows Jesus.

My pastor Bryan Counts said this about Peter’s encounter with Jesus: “He likely recognizes that casting his nets is crazy and not by the book, but he still did it. He followed Jesus anyway. When Jesus overflows the boat with fish, Peter sees himself more clearly and believes he’s not worthy. He left all the fish, and another sold it. Deciding to follow Jesus is a decision and a process.”

When we struggle to persevere on our own pathway, it’s easy to be discouraged. But following Jesus on his specific back road for us isn’t a one-time decision. It’s a process. Just as when we were young and our parents’ repeated guidance, discipline, and love helped bring us to adulthood, so the Lord’s repeated guidance, discipline, and love do the same. There’s no one-and-done in perseverance. Just a steady process, a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other choice after choice to stay on our individual back roads.

There’s no getting around how traveling the back-road way requires grit and perseverance. If we stop, we can start again. If we backtrack, we can come back. If we slow down, we can know slow movement is movement just the same. The resistance we feel is part of the journey. As we move forward, our spiritual formation is growing muscles. By the power of Jesus, God is making us more into who we are as he takes us to the people and places we belong. 

Have the patience and faith to go in the crazy, it-doesn’t-make-sense direction if God is the one calling you that way. Your place of belonging is coming. In the words of Oswald Chambers, “Every vision will be made real if we have patience.”

And perseverance.

Belong blessing: As you tire on your own back road, may you feel and know the Lord gives you just what you need, moment by moment.