My word of the year is trust. God and I have been fleshing out what that means through prayer, experience, and His word. This past weekend, He made it abundantly clear why He chose that word for me and how I was supposed to understand it.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding Seek His will in all you do, and He will show you which path to take.” Proverbs 3:5
I went on a special retreat that is centered around service to others, loving others, and showing people the grace of God through actions. Intended or not they also showed me a tiny glimpse of what it means to trust God. The weekend started on Thursday and because of its design, very little about the weekend is known to the participant.
God kept saying, “Do you trust them? Do you trust Sherrie? Do you trust your husband?” “Okay, God, yes, I trust them but couldn’t I just know what is going to happen? It’s not a big deal, right? I don’t need to be surprised by everything. Can’t I just know what is coming?”
Those in charge planned out by every single little detail and by the end of the weekend, I trusted people who had been complete strangers only 72 hours before with my life. If they said to crawl through a dark hole and stay, or jump off a cliff, I would have done it. I knew I could trust strangers with my life, with the reality of my depression, with my biggest secrets, because I knew that they are going to do what is best for me, even if it was scary and even if it hurt. If I can trust them that much, how much more so could I trust Jesus? For me that had to be lived out. Trust cannot be gained when you don’t understand it. When your trust has been violated so much that you no longer trust even the people who are supposed to love you, then trust is an in-explainable concept. It has to be acted out.
This weekend was like a huge play. They acted out human trust in such a way that it mirrors a tiny bit of how we should trust God, just a teeny tiny bit. I was blown away by the way they loved us, served us, and knew what was going to be best and when it was going to be best.
If I can trust people I have never met, with that, how much more should I trust Jesus with my life?
“Jesus shouted to the crowds, ‘If you trust me, you are trusting not only me, but also God who sent me For when you see me you are seeing the one who sent me,” John 12:44-45
As I reflected on what did happen this past weekend, I could see the one of the most powerful parts was that now I have a visual image of, “If you will trust me, I will bless you. If you will not require me to tell you every step, if you will not require knowing the end of the story, if you will trust Me enough to let go of having control, I will bless you. You trusted these humans – whom you didn’t know then will trust me. Trusting people is a huge thing. Trusting people with my time, energy, and schedule, all of it, was so foreign to me. I just didn’t get it.
Now, I sit in the place where I can say, “I trust Him. He hasn’t screwed it up yet.” My thought before the weekend was honestly that He had screwed it up. Let’s just be real – while that sounds awful to say, it is reality. Clearly, He screwed it up by letting my grandfather abuse me. Clearly He screwed up by …….Oh, snap, no He didn’t. They screwed it up. They skewed my vision of who He was. But that’s them – not Him – and it was their choices that hurt me. I have made choices that don’t represent Jesus well. The place I came to, for at least this five minutes, or at least this hour, or even for this day is, I trust Him completely.
Sometimes I would think, “what are they up to now?” And then I would remember, everything they had done had been to love us, to serve us, and so I could just wait in peace. We have a God that would never ever think about hurting us. He is never going to hurt us, that’s not going to happen. Can we hurt ourselves, yep. Can other people hurt us, yep. Does God hurt us? Absolutely not. Does He discipline us? Yes. He does so for good reason.
My friend Lee has a stunning backyard down south in Alabama. In that yard there are bunnies, bees, flowers, plants, and trees. Her son wanted to see the bunny run through the flowers, the problem, there were huge bees that would sting and hurt him. So, she did not allow him to watch the bunny from that area – she denied his request – because she knew it would hurt him. Not five minutes later, he decided that he wanted to go inside. What he didn’t know was that his father was working hard in the playroom to put up ceiling fans. There was a whole mess of things that he could have gotten into and gotten hurt. So, they denied him entrance to his very own playroom. When a kiddo is two, that makes no sense. You cannot show them your reasons well enough for them to understand, but they are good reasons to deny him what he sees as good. They were reasonable expectations from his point of understanding– but they were also dangerous. There is no way to rationalize what God is doing in our lives sometimes, sometimes we just have to trust that He is who He says He is.
We all have to walk our journey. I have been on this journey with depression since at least sixteen – diagnosed 21 years ago. I believe that I had to walk each step to get to the next place, the next right thing. It is not until we hear or see something that so deeply resonates with us that we begin to understand peace, joy, and trust. Little things click for us along the way and then add up to allow us huge revelations. We are not all in the same place on our journey and I’ll just be honest, if you are not ready to take this next step, it won’t happen. I have read book after book on the subject, but it wasn’t until I opened up my hands and was willing to accept the truths God had for me, that I was able to see and feel them. If you aren’t ready to fight for your own health, if you aren’t ready to see God blow you away, you will miss it. Those of us who are walking this journey have got to share along the way – we have to share our steps. We have got to use the time we have left well, there is no more time to wait.
My friend Lee said that I look victorious and empowered when she saw me. I am victorious because Jesus was victorious. I am empowered through His power. I can trust Him, because He is faithful and worthy of trust.
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