Trusting...

It’s been a rocky summer, but God is good!!! In the midst of several hard situations, He has taken me to a couple of new prayer labyrinths and poured out His Peace and comfort in the process. Over and over again, He reminds me to trust Him in these days, and as always, to hand over the moments to Him and to always lift the people and situations up to Him in prayer…and over it all, Trust.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Never rely on what you think you know. Remember the Lord in everything you do, and He will show you the right way.

Proverbs 3:5 & 6

What does that look like in “real” life? We seem to jump to the end, where He is in charge of our “path”, our life, but look where it begins…Trust. What does trust look like in our day-to-day, how does it play out, especially when things seem tough to get thru? To me, one way to check my path against the Lord’s is to start with these questions of looking at my “trust”:

~   Am I trusting, or consistently questioning the Lord?

~  Are the steps of my day peace-filled?

~  Am I seeking God, or a momentary, personal perspective on things?

God does walk us thru some hard times. He does allow pain to be one of our teachers along with other experiences that we would not choose. Our response, our Guide thru these times is to go to the beginning and Trust. Trust God with it all. Look for Him in every moment of every experience and grow along the journey of the path HE has created…allowed to be.

Trust also means patience, which is always hard for me! I do love the Amplified Version of this verse on the fruits of the Spirit…

 But the fruit of the Spirit [the result of His presence within us] is love [unselfish concern for others], joy, [inner] peace, patience [not the ability to wait, but how we act while waiting], kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Galatians 5:22 & 23 ~ Amplified Version

Our path is carved out in life thru many things. We have the blessing of planting our path with our LOVE of the Lord ~ the JOY of serving others, His love poured out in our every choice, our words being ones of His PEACE poured out in the world, PATIENCE to wait on Him, the KINDNESS and GOODNESS of the Lord’s ways covering every thought and deed and FAITHFULNESS to trust in all things. Our GENTLENESS & SELF-CONTROL, our faith is anchored in Trust.

If you didn’t notice here, out of the nine fruits of the Spirit, only three are expanded on in this translation…and patience is a whole sentence itself! NOT the act of patience, but our behaviour while waiting. “…how we act while waiting” AND all the other fruits have tangible manifestations, but God led these translators to expand on our behaviour regarding patience with a whole sentence in a sentence! Think I need to trust Him on that, too!

When we are wavering, questioning, scared…all of which is normal…, we need to turn that into Trust. Because where we see a rocky path, full of boulders, God sees pebbles, a few leaves that we need to learn to sweep away because they obscure the path He has laid out…the path of Trust.

 

Trust is the key, the perspective changer. Trust is what allows us to see from God’s point of view. Trust brings Peace to what seems a broken, rocky path.