I’ve been engaged now for almost a month and I love it. But I have a confession. I was terrified building up to the moment. One of my unspoken (and sometimes it was spoken) mantra’s while my fiancee and I were dating was that “I’m just not ready”. There are a lot of reasons I was hesitant: past pain, fears, and just wanting to give the relationship some more time. And while there’s validity in each of those reasons, we can easily let each reason become an excuse to moving forward.

There are several areas within the church that people can be hesitant to move forward. Maybe it’s in serving. Maybe people are hesitant to lead something. Maybe people are hesitant to give more money. They might tell me that they don’t have the time, know-how, money, etc. Or maybe, “they’re just not in that season.” And, those can all be valid reasons for a time, but they can also turn into excuses. People will pause to serve, give, or lead because they’ve never done it before, or because they got burned last time.

Their faith can become like a stream that has a lot of debris built up. Over the years, logs, rocks, foliage, and sometimes trash builds up along the banks of the stream, until eventually it creates a dam, blocking or hindering the flow of water downstream. And people will think that by storing the water on one side of the dam, they will maintain their faith. The truth is that our faith is actually found on the other side of the dam, where the water is just now trickling. We have, inadvertently, become our greatest hinderance to faith.

As we step out in faith more and more, whether through giving, serving, or leading, we pour out some of our faith unto others around us. But there is something beautiful that happens when we pour out some of our faith; we get it replenished.

There are a lot of good reasons for people to ‘dam’ up their faith, but eventually these reasons will starve your faith. Sometimes the only way to be refilled is to pour out what we have.

In stepping out in faith, we can renew our faith. It happened for me in my relationship, where I’ve found a new depth of trust, love, and security by stepping out. And it can happen in your relationship with God.