The Fast Forward Function

The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him (Psalm 28:7, NIV).

Born at the end of 1986, I am a 90s girl. My childhood is marked by beanie babies, Backstreet Boys, and baseball. We had Walkmans to play CDs and VCRs to play our favorite movies. I can recite, almost by heart, nearly every line from the movie Rookie of the Year. And I’m certain there is not a single episode of Full House that I haven’t seen multiple times.

I still occasionally watch Rookie of the Year, especially now that it is available on Disney +. It’s nostalgic, and it brings back so many good memories! One of the benefits of modern technology is the ability to fast forward, with exact precision, to anywhere in the movie I want to go. It’s not like in the old days where you had to repeatedly hit fast forward, stop, and play until you found the spot in the movie where you’d left off watching the night before.

While modern technology has been a blessing in so many ways, it has also created in us an impatience that didn’t exist in quite the same way before. For example, if we want to watch a specific segment in a movie, we use the fast forward function and go right to the scene. And instead of patiently listening to the radio until our favorite song is played, we select it from a playlist. I’m sure you can quickly think of multiple other examples, but you get the point.

I’m just as guilty as anyone else of this impatience. I recently became invested in a couple of movie characters that I really liked. Instead of watching to see the relationship develop, I decided to fast forward to the end just to make sure they ended up together. Typing that makes me laugh, but I’m willing to bet I’m not the only person who’s done that before!

I often wish there was a fast forward function for my life, too. When I start a new project, it would be nice to hit the fast forward button to get an idea of how things will look a few months down the road. Each time I start a new dating adventure, a fast forward function would be helpful to avoid heartache if things aren’t going to work out anyway.

As much as I’d like to think the fast forward function would be a blessing, the reality is the Lord intentionally didn’t give us a fast forward function in life. Truthfully, if we could see all the steps we would have to take to go where the Lord is leading, many of us would never step out in faith to begin with.

As followers of Jesus, He asks us to cling to faith and trust that He knows exactly what He is doing, even when we can’t see beyond the next step. Though this is not an easy task, Psalm 28:7 adequately describes the joy that is found when we choose to allow our hearts to rest and trust in Him: The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him.

While I may continue to utilize the fast forward function when I watch certain movies, I am grateful that the Lord loves us too much to reveal anything to us unless it’s in His way and according to His timeline. In the meantime, I will continue to allow Him to strengthen me, shield me, and help me, all while experiencing joy and rest in Him.

#devotional #90s #trust #christ #movie #thenarrowpath #blog #psalm #jesus #storytelling