Trust

Prov. 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart...

I’ve been struggling with this portion of this verse for about a year and a half now, maybe a little longer. I would have to say it was after being separated from my husband for 4 ½ months and he declared he wanted to reconcile. Then after about 2 weeks he declared he did not. That is when my trust in the Lord started deteriorating. Then after the 2nd declaration of working on our marriage and then not, that really ripped my trust apart. My questions were: How could God allow this to happen now a 2nd time? What about my children? Didn’t He care that they were innocent? Didn’t He care that none of us asked for this? Didn’t He care at all?

I began to see God in light of what Joseph did or didn’t do. I completely forgot about Matthew 5:45 (To show that you are the children of your Father Who is in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the wicked and on the good, and makes the rain fall upon the upright and the wrongdoers [alike].)

I also forgot that God is love. He doesn’t cause the bad, but He does allow it; just as He did with Job. He used this situation to grow me and stretch me and I have bucked it at every turn except the first year of my separation. Clearly how could He determine that this would be for my good? But His word is right when it says His ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts; Isaiah 55:8.

I’m still not completely sure what the lesson is in all of this, I’m having to start all over learning how to trust Him again. I am seeing Him in a different light…as a father and not a king with a set of rules. Though He is the King of Kings and He does rule everything, He is not standing there with a stick ready and waiting to hit me over the head each time I break a rule. He does grieve when I go against His Word, but He’s not standing there ready to condemn me to hell.

Let me just be honest, in the last couple of years, I have been a rule keeper. Just obey the law and it will be well with me. If you don’t obey the law He is angry, and look out because you never know when He’ll cut your days short. Sadly, I’ve dealt this to my children. And try as they could, it was getting burdensome keeping all these rules.

But now I know something different. He loves me. He really loves me. Just as I love my children and want the best, so does He. Just as it hurts my heart when they disobey or buck my authority, so it is with Him. God has never really had my heart completely. I gave Him what I wanted Him to have but not all of it. We can NEVER fully be in line with the entire Bible. We are flawed. However, when we love God and are in such a close relationship with Him, it will grieve our hearts when we grieve Him. We will also willingly try to obey His commands, not live by them as though if we miss one we are condemned forever.

Am I making sense?

In a relationship it pleases us to please the one we are in relationship with. It grieves us when we hurt the one we are in relationship with. I never looked at it that way. I saw God with this iron fist, ready to pounce.

The Shack is NOT greater than the Bible, but it did help me to understand relationship better and to understand what it is that God tries to get across in many of the scriptures.
He just wants to have a relationship with us and then from that we will clearly be eager to obey His Word and not grudgingly, but lovingly and willingly.

I know this is long, but my heart was so full this morning. We’ll see where God is taking me. So far I am just cherishing what He has shown me thus far.

Oh to have child like faith.
Lord bless me with the faith of a child.
So eager to trust, so able to trust.
Not looking at the things around them,
but trusting that they will be taken care
of and all their needs met. When someone
is holding them, they don’t worry or fear
that they will be dropped, they just have
faith that the one holding them will continue
to do so. That they will receive love unconditional.
Help me Lord to have this kind of faith once again.
AMEN