When we were young, we really enjoyed a game of “Mother May I.”  One of us would be the “mother,” and everyone else were the children.  “Mother” would go down a line of children, telling a set of directions like, “Take two giant steps.”

We had to ask, “Mother, may I?”  If we asked this correctly, we could go forward.  Whoever reached “Mother” first, won the game.  The mother in this game could control who got ahead totally on her whims.  Sometimes she let a child make great progress, and other times, another child could only take baby steps.

Aren’t we glad that God is not like that?  We are not dependent on the whims of some fickle child.  Our God has our best interest at heart.  He has a goal to which He has been leading us.  He has plans and a future for us.  These are “thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” Jeremiah 29:11

There have been times spiritually when I felt like God was saying, “Elizabeth, take two giant steps.”

Then there have been times when I felt like I had taken a tiny, baby step.  That’s all I was capable of.  But these times are usually dependent of where I am emotionally and what my mind has capacity for.

God’s goal is always the same.  It is always “onward and upward.”

Today, whether I feel that I’m taking a “scissor step” or a giant leap, I want to go forward.  I have a goal in mind!  I want to “press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

There is no place to stop.  Onward and upward!

It’s not hard to believe

When things are going well and skies are sunny

When you feel you’re making progress

Doing good

Living in a time of plenty

But if all that should change

Would you still keep the faith

That’s the question

Because believing when believing isn’t easy

That is the testing

I need faith for the time

When the sun does not shine

And the mountaintop is just a memory

When there’s no sign to be seen

And I don’t feel a thing

To the Word of God alone I can cling

I need faith for the days

When troubles come my way,

And I just don’t understand what it means

That’s when nothing else will do

Faith alone will get me through

And believing becomes my victory

(Believing Becomes My Victory by Gordon Jensen, Word Music, LLC)