This is both parts of a two-part e-mail devotional by Andy Elmes of the UK ministry Great Big Life. It’s about the times you sense God has a purpose and plan for you which is somewhat specific, but you’re “on hold” or at the “in-between” stage. He compares it to waiting in the “corridor” or what we might in North America call the “hallway” or even “waiting room.”
The Corridor of Faith
2 Corinthians 5:7 (NKJV)
For we walk by faith, not by sight.
Oh, how we love instant arrivals and instantaneous miracles. Why? Partially because we live in such a fast-moving world, we love things to happen “like yesterday”. The problem is, most often God is not like that. He is not in the hurry we are so often in, and does not struggle with patience issues. In fact, I believe that God is more excited about the journey we take in faith towards what He has promised us than He is about our moment of arrival.
Recently I have been considering again something that I have named the Corridor of Faith, that time between when you get a promise or a dream from God and the moment you arrive or see the manifestation of it in your life. This gap between ‘leave’ and ‘arrive’ is a corridor that God provides not with any intention to crush or destroy us but rather to refine and make us. How we perceive and behave while being in a corridor of faith can actually determine how long we spend there, because it is not a place that is a mistake but rather one of design. You see, God works in us more in the corridor of faith than we realise. Often we don’t fully see what He has done until the moment we leave it. Think about all your favourite stories in the Bible – all of them have a ‘leaving’, a ‘journeying towards’ and an ‘arriving’ to them. This week I want to concentrate on that bit in the middle – the journey or corridor of faith you pass through en route to arriving. Hopefully this will encourage you and help you understand and behave in that journey as God would have you.
Abraham left Haran with a promise but no map, and journeyed many years, not a few days, to his “promised spacious place”. Did he arrive? Yes, he did – but consider all that God did in him during that journey.
Joseph had a dream as a boy of being a person of godly prominence that would lead his brothers, and indeed a nation. Did that happen the next week? No, there was a corridor of faith to walk through first. That must have been very confusing at times. Did he arrive at the moment God gave him in his dreams? Yes he did, but again, look at what God did in him and what God made him during the journey.
These, and so many other accounts, reveal to us that when God gives us a promise or a dream there is normally always a journey or “corridor of faith” that has to be walked through. This is a God design because what He does in us as we walk by faith through the moment in between actually makes us the person He needs us to be for the promise or dream He has given us. Joseph entered his corridor of faith a dreaming boy but came out as a wise prime minister. David entered his corridor a boy with a prophecy of kingship, and came out a king able to lead a nation. What is God doing in your present corridor of faith? Are you so anxious to “land the plane” that you are missing out on what God is doing in you and through you “during the flight”? If God gave you the dream or promise and you refuse to quit or walk away then you will arrive exactly where He said you would – but don’t forget the corridor of faith, that time between ‘leave’ and ‘arrive’ will make you everything God needs you to be for your moment of arrival.
Genesis 37:5-8 (NKJV)
Now Joseph had a dream, and he told it to his brothers; and they hated him even more. So he said to them, “Please hear this dream which I have dreamed: There we were, binding sheaves in the field. Then behold, my sheaf arose and also stood upright; and indeed your sheaves stood all around and bowed down to my sheaf.” And his brothers said to him, “Shall you indeed reign over us? Or shall you indeed have dominion over us?” So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.
We spoke yesterday about ‘The Corridor of Faith’ – that time between dream or promise given and the arrival or manifestation of it. Let’s look further at Joseph’s Corridor of Faith to learn some things.
In our text today we see the moment when the “God dream or destination” is given. What we know about Joseph at this point is that he is just a young man, and a young man despised by his brothers. The dream related to them but was a much bigger promise, I believe, of the influential person God had appointed him to be. In the final verse you see the brother’s response to Joseph’s God-dream – a response of hatred and disdain that launched him into his Corridor of Faith. If you read on in his storyline you don’t see any form of instant arrival, rather a series of events that must have been totally confusing and given him daily the opportunity to quit on the dream. His brothers throw him in a pit and come up with a plan of faking his death; they sold him to a bunch of travelers; later in the story, when things are starting to go better, he is falsely accused of adultery, and he loses a job that looked like it was heading in the dream’s direction. He does a fairly long stretch in prison when innocent, also interpreting other people’s dreams while in there. But one day he opens his eyes, and he is Prime Minister of a nation, his brothers bowed before him, with the power and wisdom to save a nation from famine.
Let me underline this thought again: a boy with a crazy dream entered the corridor of faith, and a man able to lead a nation stepped out. Where did the change take place? In the corridor. It was what happened as he continued to journey by faith through things that did not make sense that made him the person God had seen when he gave him the promise.
God also promises us according to what He knows we really are, but sometimes He needs to journey us through a Corridor of Faith so that we can “find ourselves” and discover the potential we actually possess. I am not talking about sickness or infirmity, I am talking about ‘stuff’ – things that happen that don’t make sense at the time, but later, when you look back, you smile because you see that God was working in that moment for your good – not to harm you or allow harm on you but to make you the person He knows you can be. Faith is trusting God in the moments that don’t make sense, trusting Him that indeed in “all things He works for your good”. Trusting that God is not obsessed by our present moment, like we can so often be, but rather He is focusing on the larger picture of our lives. He is doing things now that will produce great things later. In these moments you need to believe that though weeping may endure for a night, rejoicing will come in the morning. It’s often not until we are leaving a Corridor of Faith, or a confusing moment, that we look back and fully understand the Godly ‘why’ to what just happened.
Trust Him – when you think you have worked it out and when you have not got a clue what His next move is, He who began a good work in you (started your journey) will complete it (bring you to a place of great arrival)!
Christianity 201 