Let me preface this blog with a prayer for any who are reading it and suffering in the midst of a great trial. This morning I wrote “Prayers without words speak the loudest”. May the Holy Spirit say your prayers today. May the Lord Jesus be your comfort and your hope. Amen.
Would you ever pray, “God, do whatever it takes that I would grow closer to You”? The fear you have is He may have to hurt you to accomplish this. The truth for some is He may have to. He only has to take by force that which you refuse to surrender.
He will not take you up onto the mountain until you first learn to trust Him in the valley. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me…” (Psalm 23:4).
It is easy to say, “I trust God”. The hard part is actually trusting Him. He forces the issue by engineering a circumstance where we must trust Him. He wins our trust by force one area of our life at a time. How much easier it would be if we just surrendered it all ahead of time.
Trusting God does not mean you understand your circumstances, only that you know He will carry you through them. “And the Lord shall help them and deliver them; He shall deliver them from the wicked, and save them, because they trust in Him” (Psalm 37:40).
Faith is not your ability to have Christ, but trusting entirely that Christ has you. He has you.
We say we trust in God, yet leave no room that we would have to.
You must first trust in God to get you through it before He will lead the way. Follow Him whether you see the victory or not. “Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass” (Psalm 37:5).
The question is not if you will survive the circumstance you are in, but will you trust Him through them. Only adversity can reveal the degree to which we trust Him. Trusting is the highest when your understanding is the lowest.
Trusting God does not mean that everything will go the way we want, but that everything is in His hands. The three boys facing certain death said, “…our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king. But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods…” (Daniel 3:17-18). It is in the “but if not” that the trust in God is perfected.
Adversity is the classroom whereby a believer learns to trust in God. Never squander that which only adversity can produce in your life. Sometimes the greatest loss yields the greatest gains. We often see the gain in another, but have no idea what it cost them. There is always a cost.
You wouldn’t worry as much if you trusted Him more. Consider He has arranged your circumstances to teach you this very lesson. “O Lord my God, in You I put my trust; Save me from all those who persecute me; And deliver me, lest they tear me like a lion, rending me in pieces, while there is none to deliver” (Psalm 7:1-2). Don’t be surprised that you have enemies, but let your enemies be surprised that you have God.
We cannot know the level of trust we have in God apart from the test that measures it. Circumstances are not the measure that reveals God’s love towards us, but our trust towards Him. “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him…” (Job 13:15). Sometimes God must slay a man to change him.
You cannot always control your circumstances, but you can always trust in God. It is one thing to say I trust You, my Lord. It is quite another to trust You in a storm.
The thing you fear the most is the very thing that God wants you to trust Him with the most. “…do not be afraid…for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9). He’s got you.
It is when your trust is beyond your understanding, that your faith grows beyond the limits of you. Our peace is never found in what we know, but to Who we place our trust in. “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You” (Isaiah 26:3).
If everything in your life is falling apart, let Him hold it together. Faith is not the lack of obstacles, but trusting in Him to get you through them.
Trade what you imagined your life should have been for the life that God would have you live. You know you are in His perfect will when it is not your own. “For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil” (1 Peter 3:17).
If you ever question why God’s plan for you is so difficult, consider Jesus.
Blessings to you,
Paul