A better country

These past couple of days I have found myself struggling in a deep place.
God has been teaching me how to let go, trying to get me to a place of complete surrender.
But I still find myself on the fence.

I was reading the bible yesterday in search of answers and I came across Hebrews chapter eleven where the writer is talking about faith and begins to list a number of people in history past that had complete faith in God even though they didn't know where it would take them.
The only thing that they knew was that God had given them a treasure called a promise. All they had to do was have faith and keep moving forward.

13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

Even though our forefathers of the faith could not see the promise being fulfilled, they continued to press on, they embraced the unknown.
That is what I feel like I am needing to do right now.
Have faith in the promises He has given to me and move on to that country, even without knowing the final destination.
Yet fear holds me back.
I can control what I know, and I know what I can control.
I am at the place where I can survive, but God is calling me to thrive, not to stand still... but to keep moving forward.

Reading on in Hebrews, we see that these people that lived in faith, chose to be obedient, left their comfort zones, journeyed to a place unknown, and didn't look back...

14 For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.

15 And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned.

16 But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.

These people all had to forget the country that they came from in order to seek the country that was better, even though they could not see, they did not have visibility of the promise ahead of them.
That is terrifying for me!
It is hard to give up, to forget even, the comfy couches that I have become accustomed to resting in now.
But He is calling.

25 Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;

It is easy to get up off of my chair right now and say the words "yes".
But the truth is, I don't know what the day will bring, if my actions will follow my desire.
And I don't know yet if I have enough faith to let go.
But somehow this feels like the first step, admitting that I am weak, that I can't, and I'm not perfect.
Yet also admitting that I am strong, I can and Christ is perfection in me.

39 And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise:

40 God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.

12 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,

2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.