When people talk about overfamiliarity and how it breeds disrespect, we almost never see how we do it with God. You all of a sudden know how he should move and what the move should look like.

Sometimes, He divides the red sea, sometimes he feeds arrogant people in the wilderness

Sometimes, he follows you with clouds, sometimes when your hands are lifted, you are winning a battle, when it's dropped you start losing as was the case with Moses.

Sometimes we know the move God will make, so overtly seem all too Familiar with God, but what if, what it?

What if he doesn't show up in the way we expect him to? Are you still confident you know this God who didn't show up? or do you round yourself up as faithless and lower your expectations of him?

In Sunday School, this was 2005, I remember it, I was in JSS3, I'd just given my...

Life to Christ (the last time apparently) and told myself it was the last time I'd make an altar call, I just had to keep working my relationship with God as I grew, no sudden surprises to Jesus because of wonderful worship songs and an energetic teacher... looool

That day, this teacher illustrated hanging on from a cliff and said "Trusting God is taking both your hands off the cliff, and still being confident that you wouldn't fall."

This image never left my head anytime I was trapped in a helpless situation. I am confident of a way out

But all of this is about to change for me, because when you know too much of God, you begin to plot his moves by the coordinates. We begin to know God by the names we call him, the commonplace religious ones that we know him for, but who says He doesn't want your own experience?

So in 2016 when my mom got sick, I prayed my eyes out, I knew how he would save her, he was that guy for me, and I'd given him an ultimatum by the tank where I got water to prepare for work...

"God keep my mother, I'd never say your name from these lips again if my mother dies"

and she died, I'd prayed my eyes out, I'd stay at the church chapel. I remember one sunday afternoon after church and Pastor Paul wouldn't typically make a tour around church at 5pm, but he did, walked up to me and said "Son, what are you believing God for" and we prayed together

If God wasn't hearing me, he'd hear Pastor Paul... But God did hear me, I just wanted only one answer, I wanted my own answer.

Some days you don't need to read the bible again to see him again in the words you have read and the last few years since she passed has been my...

Personal walk again with God. I had to put one foot in front of the other, it was an extremely "you won't hurt me again right?" moment for me, but I did it anyway because my mom would say "Who else have I brought you to every morning?"

So here it is, I'd try put it together.

Is there going to be a way? Yes? will the way be what you'd hoped? maybe not, maybe yes.

Will it go through the middle of the Red Sea with walls of water on your left and right? would you even go in if he made a miracle like that for you?

Through it, will you know him better?

Trust me, you will.

We read the bible with the commonplace eyes of the ghenghen movies we watch, like there's a camera in front of these people and they know the outcomes, banish that idea, perish that thought.

Esther could have been killed for approaching the king unannounced.

For all we know, Joseph could have died in prison, Even God said "I have heard the crying of my people in Egypt"... so why did he take so long?

Daniel didn't know if the Lions will eat him or not, the Hebrew boys didn't know their boast will get them to a fire, were they ready

to die? yes they were.

I've been watching homeland the series based on the Gideon Raff's Prisoners of War, there are some deaths of favorite characters that have hurt me... there I am thinking, no, the CIA will get this guy, forget, next thing they've shot him, movie continues.

The craziest for me was Fara, Max Pietrowski, Peter Quinn, Even the german intelligence lady "Astrid" which I think is a fake name... Yemisi calls her "Ashtray", looool.

When Brody was going to be hung from. a crane, I kept telling myself "this a setup, he is a body double..."

They hung him and that was it, the bro was as dead as dead could be... You know helpless and dangling.

And it's been a crazy lesson in "anything can happen and that will be it" but you see trust?

And then you fast forward to James, and James is killed, and it pleased the king

Crazy overwhelming yeah?

Something I started telling Yemisi recently is "IT hasn't ended if it doesn't end in good, but good isn't what you determine, it's not yours to decide, and that's what trust would mean".

Something I started reading recently, a book by Oswald Chambers.

"My Utmost for his Highest". @ojodui put me up to it, it's been instructional.

There's this part I love.

“He went out, not knowing whither he went." Hebrews 11:8”

“Have you been "out" in this way? If so, there is no logical statement possible when anyone asks you what you are

doing. One of the difficulties in Christian work is this question - "What do you expect to do?" You do not know what you are going to do; the only thing you know is that God knows what He is doing.

Continually revise your attitude towards God...

and see if it is a going out of everything, trusting in God entirely. It is this attitude that keeps you in perpetual wonder - you do not know what God is going to do next.

Each morning you wake it is to be a "going out," building in confidence on God.

"Take no thought for your life, . . . nor yet for your body" - take no thought for the things for which you did take thought before you "went out."

Have you been asking God what He is going to do? He will never tell you.

God does not tell you what He is going to do; He reveals to you Who He is. Do you believe in a miracle-working God, and will you go out in surrender to Him until “you are not surprised an atom at anything He does?

Suppose God is the God you know Him to be when you are nearest to Him - what an impertinence worry is! Let the attitude of the life be a continual "going out" in dependence upon God, and your life will have an ineffable charm about it which is a satisfaction to Jesus.

You have to learn to go out of convictions, out of creeds, out of experiences, until so far as your faith is concerned, there is nothing between yourself and God.”

The next chapter talks about clouds and darkness around him, and that part overwhelmed me a whole lot.

“Clouds and darkness are round about Him." Psalm 97:2

A man who has not been born of the Spirit of God Will tel you that the teachings of Jesus are simple. But when you are baptized with the Holy Ghost, you find "clouds and darkness are round about Him."

When we come into close contact with the teachings of Jesus Christ we have our first insight into this aspect of things. The only possibility of understanding the teaching of Jesus is by the light of the Spirit of God on the inside.

If we have never had the experience of taking our commonplace religious shoes off our commonplace religious feet, and getting rid of al the undue familiarity with which we approach God, it is questionable whether we have ever stood in His presence.

The people who are flippant and familiar are those who have never yet been introduced to Jesus Christ. After the amazing delight and liberty of realizing what Jesus Christ does, comes the impenetrable darkness of realizing Who He is.

Jesus said: "The words that I speak unto you," not the words I have spoken, "they are spirit, and they are life." The Bible has been so many words to us - clouds and darkness - then all of a sudden the words become spirit and life because Jesus re-speaks them to us...

in a particular condition. That is the way God speaks to us, not by visions and dreams, but by words. When a man gets to God it is by the most simple way of words.”

Excerpt From: Oswald Chambers. “My Utmost for His Highest”. Apple Books.

I recently have learned to trust the totality of every outcome in his hands, it is a mad place to be, to trust God with the outcomes as well, not just the process, not just to know him enough to predict his next move, but to say "the moves are yours too Lord."

He brings us to that place even as we battle cultural division, overwhelming societal issues that we can't talk about without hurting people we love deeply, he says "trust me, will you"

Does that mean we won't pray? no? It just mean we thrust ourselves helplessly unto his will.

I hope this blesses you.

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