Stepping Out In Faith [3 Things God Wants You To Know]

It was a once in a lifetime chance. I knew I was stepping out in faith, and I knew that the risks were big. However, I knew my God was bigger.

I went to my boss, and I handed in my two-week notice.

I was leaving what I once thought was my forever-job to do what I had always wanted to do- be a full-time writer.

I felt God had been pushing me this way for a while. I would get some nudges to start a Christian blog and to do it full-time, but I had no idea how. Until a full-time writing job fell into my lap. It was an opportunity to be a ghostwriter: 40 hours a week with less pay than my job I was working at at the time.

See, my simple human head thought that that was the part of stepping out in faith- decreasing my pay. I had no idea what was about to be in store: more opportunities to step out in faith than I had ever known. I thought my moment of stepping out was done, yet it was only just beginning.

What Does It Mean To Step Out in Faith?

To step out in faith means to take a risk for God, knowing that He is going to catch you and be there with you if anything should happen.

It is going above and beyond to do God’s will, even if you don’t know what the steps in the process are yet, or what the end result is going to be yet.

For me, I agreed to stepping out in faith to get a job where I could work whenever I wanted whenever I wanted, so it would leave me time to write for my own Christian blog, and eventually do that full-time. 

I gave my two weeks notice for my desk job, and the moment (yes, the exact moment) I stepped out of that office for the last time, I got a text from the person I was supposed to work for. She could not give me the 40 hours like she promised, she could only give me 20. It would be three months of struggling, followed by that job ending abruptly and me be given what I had always wanted- working for myself full-time- but about a year earlier than planned.

3 ways to know if God is actually calling you into stepping out in faith

My biggest struggle before I made all those decisions though was, is this something that God actually wants me to do?

I kept getting the nudge. Every Bible verse seemed to lead me back to leaving my job for my barely-new Christian blog. But was that me creating all of that in my head so I could get what I wanted? Or was it God?

Through the grueling, almost two years now, process of stepping out in faith (and making plenty of mistakes), I am so blessed that I listened to God and stuck to His plan. (Well, mostly. I did make some errors on the way. More on that later).

From reading the Bible on people that followed God to a crazy amount of prayer, I found three things that seemed to always come up when God calls us to step out in faith:

1. You Don’t Know the Whole Plan

I knew God wanted me to work full-time writing a Christian blog. I knew that because I barely knew what a blog was, but the minute that I stumbled on one I couldn’t get that “nudge”. However, I knew nothing about the whole blogging world. I only knew that God wanted more Jesus on the Internet, and I was to be a small part in that huge role.

Maybe God is calling you to step out in faith in a specific way, but you have no idea how it could possibly work out. You may be saying no or Googling what “stepping out in faith” really means because you don’t feel like it can happen. 

The only response I can come up with is, How boring would the Bible be if everyone chose their own logic instead of God’s logic?

Stepping out in faith is frightening. It doesn’t make sense. But if God has a plan, and we are part of that plan, we need to shift our focus to being honored that God chose us instead of thinking that it’s our plan that we can do on our own.

2. It Doesn’t Make Sense to Man

Just like it doesn’t make sense to us, stepping out in faith will almost never make sense to others around you as well.

I barely told anyone that I was quitting my job to take a lesser-paying job when we were already tight. When we had a spreadsheet for our budget that always showed us in the negatives each and every week, why would we be crazy enough to take less pay?

Stepping out in faith almost always has resistance from  people that want what is best for you. I’m not saying ignore other people’s advice. God gave us relationships and fellowship for a reason. But at the end of the day, if you have truly prayed over this inside and out, and still feel like this is what God wants, it may simply not make sense to anyone else. Because it’s not supposed to make sense.

3. It Has an Opportunity to See God Perform the Impossible

The reason why stepping out in faith does not make sense to us or people is because if it all made sense, we would never get a chance to see God perform the impossible. 

Later we will look over parts in the Bible where people stepped out in faith when it didn’t see possible. But we would never have stories to tell if everything went according to our plan. However, when we have stories that seem too crazy to be true, it’s a potential testimony that could possibly lead someone else to Christ.

Can You Have Faith and Fear At the Same Time?

Someone told me once that fear was not Biblical.  Of course it’s not Biblical- it’s human. And God created us as humans. 

God never wanted us to have fear in our lives. Fear came into the world first as shame, when Adam and Eve tried to hide themselves when they first noticed they were naked. 

And that is exactly what fear does- it exposes us. It exposes us by showing where our weakest points in fear is. It doesn’t mean that we need to have shame in fear though!

I’ve heard plenty of times from multiple pastors that the opposite of fear isn’t courage, it’s faith. Does that mean though that you can have faith and fear at the same time?

Fear is Okay- As Long As It Is Overcome By Faith

My poor son is afraid of most things, just like I was when I was five-years-old. I was a very anxious kid. I was afraid of sickness and people getting hurt (which only got worse a year later when my brother was diagnosed with cancer and confirmed everything my little head used to fear about). My son is the same way. He is often scared to try anything new.

“But I’m scared!” is his reply to anything when we go to try anything outside of his norm.

I reply with the same few sentences I always reply with:

The definition of being brave isn’t not being afraid. The definition of being brave is doing something even though you’re scared.

And then I hold his hand, and we slowly get through the next fear he has up his sleeve. No matter how irrational it may be to me, it’s real to him.

Your fears may be valid. Or they may be completely irrational. But if you are experiencing them, they are real to you.

However, we serve a God that is much bigger than any fear we could have. And yet, He doesn’t judge us for being afraid, even if it does show our weakest points in faith. He holds us and guides us and encourages us in stepping out in faith even if we have fear in the process. And we’re human, so it’s okay.

What Does the Bible Say About Stepping Out in Faith? Stepping Out in Faith Stories

Joshua and the Battle of Jericho

When we first think about stepping out in faith, we may come to the book of Joshua. In the book of Joshua, the first battle fought by the Israelites to try to get to Canaan was the Battle of Jericho.

During the battle, Joshua was told by God to march around the walls of Jericho every day, and on the seventh day to blow their horns and then the walls would fall down and the Israelites would win. 

You may have heard this story many times, but can we stop for a second and just imagine being in the place of one of the people that hadn’t heard from God? You’ve been following this Joshua guy for a bit now, trying to get to the Promised Land, and the battle comes up. And this is the battle plan- to march around some walls and blow some horns?! I cannot fathom being put in that position. 

What must these people have felt on the third day, in the middle of all of it? They did it for two days, nothing happened, and they were expected to just keep going. 

The way the Israelites kept going not knowing if the plan straight from God was going to work? That is stepping out in faith.

Joshua and the Sun Standing Still

Good ol’ Joshua is actually an amazing example of constantly standing out in faith. 

When I was debating whether or not to make the step, the pastor at the old church I went to did a sermon on Joshua and the sun stand still prayer. It was actually the first time I had heard it.

When Joshua is going to battle, yet again, God tells Him not to be afraid because He will protect him. He is asking Joshua to stand out on faith, but is not explaining how. Yet, God shows up in a miraculous way- he literally extends the day so Joshua can go into battle.

“On the day the Lord gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the Lord in the presence of Israel:

“Sun, stand still over Gibeon,
and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.”
So the sun stood still,
and the moon stopped,
till the nation avenged itself on^[b] its enemies,

as it is written in the Book of Jashar.

The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a human being. Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel!” (Joshua 10:12-14)

After hearing this verse, whenever I have a big, bold request for God, I call it my “sun-stand-still prayer”. They are not the type of prayers I have all the time, but the prayers I save for when I am going to be stepping out in faith and I need Him to show up in miraculous ways that only God could stand out in.

David and Goliath

David and Goliath was my favorite Bible story as a kid, but it is an amazing story about stepping out in faith. This is a great story to re-read when you feel like you need to step out in faith but others question it.

We only know an ounce of what people were thinking and saying when little tiny David decided to take on the big Goliath. But this story illustrates exactly what we do when we decide to step out in faith. We are a little David, who through the big power of God can take on any Goliath that steps in our way.

3 Things To Do Before You Step Out Of Your Comfort Zone for Faith

Are you kind of convinced to step out in faith now but don’t know where to begin? That’s okay. God will lead you where you need to be. If you are on the fence of whether to make that step, here are three steps that can help you step out into faith.

1. Pray

Pray, pray, and then pray some more. Not just at night-before-bed-prayers. I’m talking throughout the day as if you are preparing for battle. 

Praying also means getting into God’s word. We have many resources about creating an effective prayer life that you can look into for any help that you need. We even have a whole category of sample prayers that can help you with any steps that you need.

2. Be Prepared To Wait

This is probably one of the most crucial steps in stepping out into faith. Being prepared to wait is one of the hardest parts. 

Back to when I was telling my story about God calling me to write a Christian blog? This is not the first Christian blog I wrote.

I thought that my original blog was going to be the one that led me to writing for Jesus full-time, but it wasn’t. I thought for a while that my first blog was a year of wasting time and failing, but God created that blog to lead to one specific person to Christ: a random person that came across my blog on social media that was a dead-set atheist. 

Being a part of God’s plan means that it is not our plan. If it was my plan, I would be writing on my first blog still today. But I was just a small tiny domino in many dominoes in someone else’s life that finally led a girl back to Christ.

It’s been over two years now, and although I love working for myself, I still have clients that I provide social media mangement services to until this site can be my full-time ministry. Waiting is hard. But I know that this isn’t me just praying to God to have Him do my plan, it’s me asking to step out in faith with God’s help to do His plan.

3. Find a Prayer Partner

No one should do this alone. God never called us to be alone. 

However, there are times where God is asking us to do something so outside of our comfort zone that it may be outside the comfort zone of your normal support system as well.

Hopefully, this isn’t the case. I pray that your closest support systems cheer you on as you do something brave and new. Yet I’ve found time and time again that sometimes God calls us to do some crazy things in His name, and even the people that go to church the most, even the people we normally call out to, can’t understand what we are about to do. 

God knows that, and He has given examples of that in the Bible.

In the book of Jeremiah, this prophet led a very lonely life. Yet God was always with Him. 

We also know from many of the Psalms that David felt lonely many times. Yet God was always with Him.

Even Jesus had lonely moments! Before He died, when He asked those to pray with Him, and everyone kept falling asleep? My heart can’t even handle how lonely Jesus must have felt.

When stepping out in faith though, it is never God’s desire for you to do this alone. If you go to your normal support system, and they try to tell you all the reasons not to do what you are about to do, take their words in with a grain of salt. Pray about what they said. At the end of the day though, don’t only use them to make your decision if you feel strongly that God is calling you to do this. 

Sometimes, finding a prayer partner outside of your normal circle can be a huge help. Finding Christian women support groups online can be a great starting place with connecting with women around the world. Because Pray With Confidence has seen a strong need for that, we plan to start a Facebook group that not only helps people find prayer partners/ prayer accountability partners, but people that actively pray for each other each and every week. If that is something you are interested in, let us know so we can notify you when it opens.

Let us know below how you are stepping out in Faith!