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Strengthening Your Stakes: Preparing for What Only God Can See
Description
Uncertainty about the future, unanswered prayers, and dreams that haven’t taken shape yet can leave you wondering whether your ordinary, everyday faithfulness really matters. Scripture reminds us that God may be preparing us for something we cannot yet see.
Noah spent years building the ark before a single drop of rain fell. In the same way, God often calls us to prepare, obey, and remain faithful without showing us the full picture. The small things we do each day—our work, responsibilities, relationships, and acts of obedience—can be part of a much larger purpose. We may want the big answer or the completed dream, but God is often strengthening our character and our faith through the seemingly mundane tasks right in front of us.
Highlights:
- What Isaiah 54:2 teaches us about preparing for what God may be doing
- Why obedience sometimes requires faith before we understand the outcome
- Lessons from Noah’s years of faithful, unseen preparation
- How God uses ordinary and seemingly small tasks to prepare us for greater responsibility
- Why we should focus on faithfulness today instead of needing to know what comes next
- How seasons of waiting can strengthen our character, trust, and obedience
- Remembering that what seems insignificant to us may have a much greater purpose in God’s plan
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Full Transcript Below:
Strengthening Your Stakes: Preparing for What Only God Can See
By Hannah Benson
Bible Reading:
“Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes” (Isaiah 54:2 ESV).
God often does things we don’t expect.
As I read Isaiah 54 the other day, God showed me that He will often tell us to prepare for things He’s bringing us. In this passage, He tells a barren woman to expand her tent and strengthen her stakes for a family she doesn't even have yet. Our job isn’t to know the why but to prepare in obedience even when we don’t know what we are getting ready for. All we can do is walk in obedience even when we don’t know where the obedience will lead.
It reminds me of the parable Jesus told of the 10 virgins in Matthew 25. When they went to meet the bridegroom, only 5 of the virgins took extra flasks of oil with them before they departed. The other 5 foolishly didn’t. They didn’t prepare.
Or in Genesis 6, when God commands Noah to build an ark. Do you think Noah might’ve thought it a bit strange, the command to build an ark when there wasn’t rain anywhere in sight? Not to mention the earth had never flooded before. Undoubtedly, the idea would’ve been a foreign concept to him.
But Noah chose