Recently, with a tear streaked face, I told the Lord, “Okay, here’s the thing God. I’m struggling right now … with trusting You.” I paused for a few minutes looked at my Bible that lay open on my lap and read a few verses. Then, in brokenness and sobbing, I cried, “Okay, it’s not that I don’t trust you, God. I do trust you. It's just that I don't trust that you will work things out the way I feel like I need them to be worked out!"
If God spoke audibly, I probably would have heard a resounding, holy “Well, DUH!”
That’s usually the way it is. If we’re honest, we simply want things to go our way. It’s like the viral You Tube video where the little boy asks his mom for a cookie. He says to his mommy, “I – I – like you, but I don’t like you all da time, I like you when you give me cookies though.” We trust God as long as He’s giving us all the cookies we want, but when the cookie jar dries up and things don’t go the way we would like, our faith is shaken and we begin to wonder if we can really trust God, or worse yet, if He's truly trustworthy.
For some of us, “trust” is a very hard verb to apply. Yet, it is the very thing that can reverse the effect of adversity in our lives. The adversity that the enemy meant to harm us is the very same adversity that God uses to bring about the greatest change in our lives. Joseph understood the effect of adversity by declaring to his brothers, “what you meant for evil, God meant for good.”
The reality is, the more we know God the more we can trust Him … even on those days of uncertainty and human frailty. And, the only way to get to know Him is to spend time with Him -- by seeking His face. How long has it been since you sat at His feet ... just you and God, basking in HIS presence … in expectation … longing to hear from Him? My favorite method of spending time with the Lord is, “reading until He speaks to me.” When I long to hear His voice, I turn to the books of Isaiah, Colossians, Romans, Hebrews or James and I read … until He speaks to me, and then I make a note of it. The truth is, the more you hear His voice, the more you’ll long to sit at His feet. And the more you sit at His feet, the more you’ll get to know Him. And the more you get to know Him, the more you’ll be able to trust Him even when things don’t turn out the way you think they should or hoped they would.
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If God spoke audibly, I probably would have heard a resounding, holy “Well, DUH!”
That’s usually the way it is. If we’re honest, we simply want things to go our way. It’s like the viral You Tube video where the little boy asks his mom for a cookie. He says to his mommy, “I – I – like you, but I don’t like you all da time, I like you when you give me cookies though.” We trust God as long as He’s giving us all the cookies we want, but when the cookie jar dries up and things don’t go the way we would like, our faith is shaken and we begin to wonder if we can really trust God, or worse yet, if He's truly trustworthy.
For some of us, “trust” is a very hard verb to apply. Yet, it is the very thing that can reverse the effect of adversity in our lives. The adversity that the enemy meant to harm us is the very same adversity that God uses to bring about the greatest change in our lives. Joseph understood the effect of adversity by declaring to his brothers, “what you meant for evil, God meant for good.”
The reality is, the more we know God the more we can trust Him … even on those days of uncertainty and human frailty. And, the only way to get to know Him is to spend time with Him -- by seeking His face. How long has it been since you sat at His feet ... just you and God, basking in HIS presence … in expectation … longing to hear from Him? My favorite method of spending time with the Lord is, “reading until He speaks to me.” When I long to hear His voice, I turn to the books of Isaiah, Colossians, Romans, Hebrews or James and I read … until He speaks to me, and then I make a note of it. The truth is, the more you hear His voice, the more you’ll long to sit at His feet. And the more you sit at His feet, the more you’ll get to know Him. And the more you get to know Him, the more you’ll be able to trust Him even when things don’t turn out the way you think they should or hoped they would.
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