The Valley
Between then and now
Last week we talked about the power of words. One example was Biblical declarations over your life to help align your future to God’s promises. Hopefully it got you fired up about speaking positivity over your life and the lives of those around you.
The question is how do you keep that fire going?
When you speak something over your life that you do not yet fully believe, there is a big gap. It almost feels like you are an impostor. How am I unconditionally beloved by God after what I have done? Before you know it your fire is just a heap of coals.
That feeling makes you wonder if you are doing it wrong. But the discomfort is not a sign that your words are empty. This is the necessary friction of faith. If the thing were already visible, you would not need faith to see it into fruition.
Romans 4 is a good example to study. Paul shows us a man, Abraham, operating in full contradiction. Abraham’s body was as good as dead, Sarah’s womb was closed and he was not in denial of this. Verse 19 say he considered what he saw. Yet he simply was not defeated by it. Paul calls this “against hope, in hope, he believed.” A bit confusing, but it basically means against normal expectations, upon non-circumstantial, Godly hope, he believed. The ordinary reasons for hope were not needed, he trusted what God said.
Did he do it perfectly? Obviously not, as Ishmael could attest to. But he still had faith that it would happen and he was rewarded for this faith. And this built even more faith, enough faith to be willing to kill something precious, as Isaac could attest to.
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That is the valley we have to learn to cross. We are promised a mountain on the other side, and we can’t stop believing when the fog hides our view.
There is a psychological reason this uncertainty is so hard to overcome. In 1957, Leon Festinger published his theory called “cognitive dissonance”. His argument was that when a person holds two contradictory beliefs simultaneously, the experience is genuine psychological discomfort. This motivates the person to resolve the tension one way or another. Your mind feels that it has to pick a side and go with it, because staying in that place of uncertainty is just too painful.
What the research also shows is that what you keep feeding yourself tends to win. A 2020 study by Rollwage and colleagues found that high confidence leads to amplifying information that confirms a prior belief. It also leads to reducing the weight of information that contradicts it. A 2022 study by Kaanders and colleagues found something similar: people actively sample more evidence from the option they already chose, and the higher their confidence, the more biased the sampling becomes. Your brain is a filter that finds evidence of whatever you focus it on.
Once again, our words matter, but not because saying them instantly reshapes reality to our will. They matter because they keep orienting you toward the promise even when everything else is pulling you the other way.
So when you’re in that scary in-between place, stop focusing on what “feels” right. Feed yourself God’s truths. Keep returning to your identity in Him instead of your present state and emotions. Soak in His presence. The discomfort may remain but don’t let it control you.
Meditation for the week: Promise
May you have the faith to cross that valley.
Festinger, Leon. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press, 1957, pp. 3, 13.
Kaanders, Paula, et al. “Humans actively sample evidence to support prior beliefs.” eLife 11:e71768, 2022.
