trust

*originally posted february 13th, 2009*

It’s vital to a right relationship with God. Over the last year or so, I’ve learned through the example of the Israelites that trust is basically all He wants from us. Time and time again, the Israelites would think that their way was better, or they’d get scared that God would not provide, and time and time again, He would prove to them that He is more than enough. It came to the point where I was honestly getting upset with these people. As an outsider looking in, I kept thinking, ‘Come on, y’all! Get with the program! Just trust Him!’
And now, however many thousands of years later, I find myself screaming that at myself. Now, I know that there are many people who just cruise through life on the safe side (See Francis Chan’s youtube video on balance beams), which basically requires no trust. Of course, we say we trust him, but the way we’re living, our actions, our situations and struggles, don’t really require much of it.
And then there are those situations that do—the times where pretty much all you have left is to trust Him. There is no other way. And these times of our lives stretch us. They make us stronger in Him. They make us fall more in love with Him, because we realize that He is our truest source of strength. As hard as these times may be, when we get through them, we look back and are incredibly grateful for it all.
We almost had one of those times. This morning, our world could have been turned around. It would have been one of those things that was so much of the Lord, it had to be His will, because it sure wouldn’t have been ours. But ya know, it didn’t happen that way. Life is going on ‘as planned.’ At least our human plans. But I was thinking as I was driving to work, praising God that our plan was still in tact…a part of me wishes, for the sake of the matter of trust, that God would have totally rocked our world. Because I want to have the same kind of trust today that would have been required had God given me an outcome not of my plan. I want to strive to live my whole life in that way.