God doesn’t require your knowledge or understanding about any given situation, He only requires your trust.
This is stated in the ever so famously preached, not so famously practised Bible verse:
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.” – Proverbs 3:5-6
If you’re anything like me, you’ll find comfort in this verse, when you’re going through a hard time where you don’t understand God’s ways, or you have no idea what God’s ways are, you’ll probably have this verse preached at you from every angle. I’ve been so challenged by this over the past month, where it seems every plan I made, even plans I thought God had made for me, just fell apart. At the time I couldn’t understand why life kept getting harder and more disappointing, yet deep down I knew God was working for good through every situation, that He always and only works out of love, even if we can’t see it at the time. And with every plan falling apart, through the frustration and confusion and disappointment, I could hear God’s gentle whisper…”Trust me”.
But it’s still hard isn’t it? Hard to really trust that God knows what He’s doing.
Hard to believe Isaiah 55:8-9
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Because actually, we don’t know what’s best for us. And that’s because we don’t know ourselves. Is not the most common self-crisis, one centered around working out our identity? When our journey is about realizing our true identity in Christ, is it not better to hand over control of our lives to the one who’s teaching us the lesson?!
I think when the Bible talks about us acting like children to enter the Kingdom of God, it’s reminding us of how our relationship with God should be like. Father and Child.
As we grow up, we lose our dependency on our parents. When we are children, we are helpless, we need to be looked after and we trust in those who are bigger and stronger and more wise than ourselves. But no matter how old we get or how big we grow, we never stop being God’s children. And so we should never lose our dependency on Him. Because His love NEVER fails, NEVER gives up, NEVER runs out. He is the One who we can place our trust and security in, the One we run to with our lives, the One whose loving embrace is always there, ready to comfort, heal, restore. Written out like this, it still amazes me, how we (myself definitely included!) find it so difficult to trust God. I reckon because He often leads us out of our comfort zone, and into the unknown, our human instinct kicks in to be in control, and anything that threatens that, scares us. At least that’s how I often feel. If I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing, how can I be sure that God knows?! In that mindset, I am totally forgetting who God really is. And so I am continuously convicted through such times to place my trust in God. He hasn’t let me down so far, so I’ve really got no reason to think He will.
And that’s really what journeying as a Christian is all about, isn’t it? Walking with God, and learning that His love never fails, never gives up, and never runs out on us. It’s about learning, and relearning that very lesson, every time trusting God that little bit more.
Walking that little bit more by faith, and that little bit less by sight.
foundationsinlove 