Trust Issues

Declaration 5:  The new creation that I am TRUSTS.  She will not allow the lies of the enemy to hijack her thinking.  She will believe that her God is at work in her and through her, towards the end that all things will be HIS good for her because of her love for him and her calling to his purpose.

Read: James 1:2-8

Trust.  It shouldn’t be that hard.  The entire cosmos is a monument to God’s faithfulness.  Every breath I draw is a testimony of His enduring love.  Yet trust, the act of giving up my prideful I’ve-got-this or I-know-what’s-best-for-me delusions, is the oldest challenge to weak humanity.  It’s what seduced Eve into the bite that caused creation to crumble.  It’s what led Adam to abdication.  It’s what I struggle with daily.

Now, I have no problem believing God can [and did] literally speak the universe into existence.  Nor do I doubt that the blood of Jesus Christ is the sufficient once-for-all atonement for those who choose to accept it.  And I do not question the presence of the Holy Spirit, the manifestation of His power, and the endowment of His gifts upon believers.  I don’t even wonder if God will act on behalf of other believers.  My struggle is with whether He’s going to act on behalf of me.

That sounds rather double-minded.  To believe in God for others; all the while doubting God for me.  Without treading too far into more exacting theological discussions: it is, but it isn’t.  The double-mindedness to which James, the biological, half-brother of Jesus Christ, refers is not whether God will give me what I ask for if I just believe hard enough.  It is doubting whether or not God will give wisdom to those who ask.  Not human knowledge, not intelligence; but the wisdom of the Psalms (119), the wisdom of Proverbs.  The wisdom that testifies: God is who He says He is, and He will do what He says He’s going to do.  A wisdom that asserts that fear of the Lord and love of the Lord are requirements of those who desire to follow Him.  Wisdom that ultimately leads to surrender.  Because this wisdom brings me to the realization that I am but a mote in His eternal light; momentary and fleeting, helpless and seemingly superfluous.  And as always, in desperate need of Him.               

Thus I can do naught but trust God.  Trust Him when things don’t go the way I want them to, or anticipate them going, or even worst-case-scenario them.  Trust Him when it feels like He is hiding His face from me.  Trust Him with the happy endings, as well as the sad ones.  Trust that when I don’t see it, or when it doesn’t feel like it, or when it drags on and on, God is at work in me and through me [assuming I’m submitting myself to Him].  That He is using my time and circumstances to bring about His perfect will.  That somehow, through even me, He will be glorified. 

I commend to you probably the most difficult passage of Richard Foster’s Prayer of Relinquishment, at least for me—the couplet I’ve come to call the surrender.      

I surrender to you

I could stop there.  I should stop there.  I surrender to God.  I surrender.  Surrender is a forfeit of control, or any attempt thereof; a relinquishment of authority; a voluntary submission to another, in regards to my own person and well-being.  Trusting someone other than myself with my welfare, my life.  No matter the outcome.  No matter the cost.    

I surrender to you

my hopes,

my dreams,

my ambitions.

My.  My.  My.  All mine.  All what I want for me.  Lord, let me want what You want for me. 

Do with them what you will,

when you will,

as you will.

This part is the hardest.  What if You don’t want for me, what I want for me?  What if it takes my whole, entire life for these dreams and hopes to come about; what if I feel like I’ve wasted my time until then?  What if, in the end, it doesn’t turn out how I’ve pictured, how I’ve planned?  Lord, help me to surrender.  My wants, my time, my outcome.  Let me trade them for Yours.

For the sake of Jesus Christ.

I will trust that the Divine Man Messiah who hung upon the cross at Golgotha and the God who allowed His Son to die in my stead, had my best interested at heart.  Both now and forever. 

Amen