Trust

After almost 30 years of walking with God, I still need to be reminded that God can be trusted.  He is a patient teacher.

As I continue to read about characters in the Bible, I am reminded of their failures and success.  They serve as signs on a highway that mark the road I am now traveling.  Saul, good King gone bad, had a hard time trusting God.  This morning I read how he was told one thing, yet did another.  His doing the other thing seemed like a good idea.  He conquered an enemy yet instead of destroying everything like He was told by God, he kept the good stuff.  Now the good stuff was going to be used to honor God - or that was the plan.  But keeping the good stuff wasn't what God told him.  It was disobedience.  It was lack of trust.

When I read this story, I was reminded that I often don't believe that God will give me better things in place of good things I am letting go of with reluctant hands.  As I pack up good things that I've put in my house over the last nine years, I'm tempted to think that better things will not come as a replacement.  Yet, God has always been faithful.  December 2008, when I packed up 13 suitcases of good things I brought with me from my home in Norman, OK, He replaced them all with better things.  So why the struggle?  Why the back-and-forth of core beliefs that God won't come through or be true to His Word?

I let logic, practical thinking, and short-sighted humanness interfere with the supernatural.  It just flat out doesn't make sense this way of following God.  He's always faithful.  He is edgy and makes me uncomfortable with the things He asks me to do ... but when I surrender ... it's always better than good.  Always.

I have a young friend with an amazing musical gift.  This morning after contemplating this wonderfully unpredictable yet faithful God I'm still learning to trust, I heard this: Lillies  Her beautiful text resounds with my own spirit.

Trust requires my faith in a faithful God to trump logic, defy my own tendency to know what is best, and fight my need to hold on to what is good for fear better will not arrive.  Yes, I must steward well that in which He has given.  However, letting go is really an act of surrender.  And surrender in God's economy is opening myself up for the better things.

Being taught lessons,
Christina