Trusting God in the Process: What to Do When God Doesn't Make Sense
Trusting God in the Process: What to Do When God Doesn't Make Sense
Trusting God in the process is easy when life is working out the way we hoped. It becomes much harder when God asks us to walk a path that does not make sense.
Most people think faith begins once they see signs of success. Once the money arrives. Once the doors open. Once the breakthrough comes.
But the Kingdom of God does not work that way.
Faith moves before it sees.
Before Noah ever saw rain, he built an ark. Before Abraham saw the promise fulfilled, he left everything familiar behind. Before Peter walked on water, he had to step out of the boat. And before I ever saw a breakthrough in writing, ministry, or book sales, God asked me to move while everything around me suggested it would fail.
That is the tension of trusting God in the process.
Will you trust what God said, even when your circumstances seem to say the opposite?
Why Trusting God in the Process Is So Difficult
God spoke, and creation came into being. Light filled darkness. Worlds were formed. Life appeared where nothing existed before. God created through words, and we are made in His image. That is part of our design.
It is interesting how the world tells us, "Seeing is believing," yet God often says the opposite. Believe what I have told you, and then you will begin to see it.
That sounds inspiring when it is printed on a coffee mug or preached on a Sunday morning. It sounds powerful when somebody else is stepping out in faith.
But when it is your finances, your family, your future, and your reputation on the line, trusting God in the process suddenly feels very different.
About fifteen months ago, I was working flat out renovating houses and building rental properties. For four years I had pushed myself to the limit. Two of those years were financial disasters. I had made mistakes, lost money, learned hard lessons, and slowly figured out how to make the business profitable and scalable.
Finally, things were starting to work.
Then I felt the Lord begin speaking to me about changing careers entirely.
For nearly twenty-eight years I had worked with my hands. Building, renovating, fixing, creating. That was what I knew. It was familiar, practical, and predictable.
But deep inside, I sensed the Lord saying He wanted me to start writing books full time.
The whole thing sounded ridiculous.
When God's Direction Makes No Sense
Yes, I had written one book before, but honestly, even that felt like a miracle. I would never have described myself as an avid reader, never mind a writer.
The idea of writing books for a living felt completely foreign to me.
When I looked into the publishing world, it only made things worse. Most books fail. Most authors make little to no money. Many books become expensive vanity projects.
Yet no matter how hard I tried, I could not shake the feeling that this was what God was asking me to do.
Tammie and I talked about it for months. We prayed carefully and weighed everything together. Eventually, we both felt that God was shifting seasons for me.
Ironically, I cannot honestly say I shared her confidence.
Supporting a wife and two children weighed heavily on me. I wrestled internally for months. Part of the problem was my history with writing.
Years earlier, when I wrote my first book Testimonies of a Good God, I printed one thousand copies in faith. Five years later, I had only given away around two hundred.
I could not get people to read my books for free.
That experience stayed with me.
To be fair, the people who did read it often contacted me afterwards and said it deeply impacted their lives. Some said it changed their relationship with God. Others said it gave them hope again.
So I knew there was grace on what I was writing.
The problem was not the writing.
The problem was that nobody seemed to care.
Trusting God in the Process When Nothing Is Happening
These days everyone is creating content. Everyone has something to say. People are overwhelmed, attention spans are short, and most people barely have time to read.
So how was this ever going to work?
Still, I chose to remain faithful.
I took around eight weeks off work and wrote another book. It became an act of worship. For weeks on end I worked twelve to fourteen hours a day, pouring onto paper what God had developed in my life over the previous twenty-five years.
When I finished, I printed copies, gave them to friends, and posted about it on social media.
Again, almost nothing happened.
Very few people showed interest.
Hardly anyone bought it.
I remember thinking, "Well, there you go, Lord. I wrote another one. Even if it only helps one person, at least I gave it a go."
A week or two later I went back to renovating houses.
Honestly, I thought that was probably the end of it.
Yet the feeling would not leave me.
Deep down, I still sensed I was supposed to be doing this full time.
What God Was Doing Behind the Scenes
Eventually I met with a mentor and submitted everything to my old pastor.
Independently, both felt this genuinely could be the Lord.
That encouraged me enormously.
But there was still one huge question.
How is this going to work financially?
The rental properties brought in income, but realistically I still needed to work.
So, being the great man of faith that I apparently was, I delayed things even longer.
I wanted proof before obedience.
I wanted financial confirmation before surrender.
You would think that after twenty-five years of walking with God and seeing Him come through repeatedly, trusting Him again would be easy.
I wish I could tell you it was.
It was not.
Writing still felt like an expensive hobby.
Printing books cost money.
Giving them away cost money.
Advertising cost money.
And so far there had been almost no visible fruit.
The Lesson I Could Not See
Then the Lord challenged me to write the biblical finance book that had been stirring in my heart for years.
I poured myself into it completely.
Months later, after endless writing and editing, I finally held the finished product in my hands.
"This is it," I thought.
"This is the book that will open the door."
I printed hundreds of copies, mailed them to ministry leaders, posted online, advertised, and waited.
Surely now things would happen.
But almost nothing did.
I sold around eight books and lost roughly £1,300.
At that point, doing this full time felt even more ridiculous than before.
Yet looking back now, I can see that God was teaching me something deeper than book sales.
He was teaching me to trust Him.
Not trust results.
Not trust numbers.
Not trust open doors.
Trust Him.
What to Do When God Doesn't Make Sense
That is where many believers find themselves today.
You prayed, but the answer has not come.
You obeyed, but the breakthrough has not appeared.
You stepped out in faith, but the circumstances still look impossible.
What do you do when God does not make sense?
You go back to what He said.
You remember His faithfulness.
You choose obedience over understanding.
You trust His character when you cannot understand His plan.
Trusting God in the process does not mean having all the answers.
It means believing that God is good even when you cannot yet see the outcome.
It means believing He is working behind the scenes.
It means believing that delays are not necessarily denials.
Trusting God in the Process Leads to Breakthrough
A few months ago I heard someone say something that completely changed my thinking.
"People do not follow strangers into pleasure. They follow someone out of pain."
Suddenly I understood why God had asked me to write my latest book.
This was the doorway.
This was the message that would connect with hurting people.
Then I heard something else.
"Stop trying to get people to care about your business. Find the people who already care, and make yourself more findable to them."
That was a revelation.
For years I had been trying to convince uninterested people to read my books.
Instead, I needed to position them where people were already searching for answers.
So I began learning.
I studied Amazon.
I studied marketing.
I learned keywords, categories, and advertising.
Three weeks later, the needle finally started moving.
Books began selling.
Readers started buying multiple books.
For the first time, I could see how this might actually work.
It is still early days.
But in those three weeks I made more progress than in the previous ten years combined.
And perhaps that is the lesson.
Trusting God in the process is not about understanding every step.
It is about remaining faithful long enough to discover what He was doing all along.
Looking back, I can now see that God was not simply teaching me how to write books.
He was teaching me how to trust Him.
And if you find yourself in a season where God does not seem to make sense, remember this:
The God who led you into the process is the same God who will lead you through it.
Keep walking.
Keep trusting.
Keep obeying.
One day you may look back and realise that what felt like delay was actually preparation, and what felt like silence was God quietly building something far greater than you could see.