“We have to learn to trust God!” Her tone was emphatic as she challenged me to stop the worry-talk and trust God. My Mother at 82 has served Jesus since her birth! Her life-story is filled with incredible challenges, heartache and strange twists and turns yet the not-destroyable rope weaved throughout her story is her faith - simple, uncomplicated, and child-like.
Through the years, I have often sought her counsel. She has her strong opinions of what should and should not be done, but the bottom line is always the same: “We have to learn to trust God!”
Learning to trust God is a two-way street. Through life, we are learning to trust God but He is also testing us to see if we are able to let go and trust Him, not just half-heartedly but totally and fully!
My worry-points have been many and varied –from the ridiculous to genuine and real concerns. I’ve worried if a parking ticket mailed in at the post office would get lost in the mail and I would be doubly fine or worse yet, get arrested! I’ve walked miles working through stress-filled-worry kind of praying trying to build up my faith and believe that my house would sell in a season when the buyers were scarce and we were strapped into a short selling time. When I found myself in a Montreal hospital in a life-threatening tubal pregnancy and facing immediate surgery, I worried.
It’s only as I’ve looked back on my faith-growing journey that I clearly see, I worried far too much. “Learning to trust God” has been a long process and the one “its-taken-forever to-learn” lesson that has developed my character the most.
One of my Bible heroes is the little boy who gave Jesus his lunch. Five thousand men plus women and children gather to hear Jesus. It’s lunch time – a panic moment – because there is no place to buy the amount of bread they need and it would cost a small fortune to feed such a crowd – money they did not have. Philip is stressed, Andrew gets silly and points to a little boy with a lunch that would at best nourish 3 normal-sized appetites. Jesus takes over.
He asks everyone to sit down, takes the small five barley loaves and two fishes and holds up the problem and resources on hand, to His Father and prays. What a glorious day to witness God at work and see more and more lunch appear to feed every last man, woman and child and then have an astonishing 12 baskets of left-over’s picked up for the community food bank!
How is God developing my character? He is teaching me that worry must not be part of my agenda. I must hold up the problem and the resources I have and give them to Jesus and allow Him to take over and do His work. The result is always astonishing even when I have to wait for it. “Trust in the Lord with all you heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will direct your paths.” Prov. 3:5
How is God developing your character?
Your friend,
Margaret
Showing posts with label Trust. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trust. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
Consequences of Life's Mistakes
Mistakes are inevitable. Life is a teacher. Mistakes are lessons that develop and change us.
My mistakes have covered a wide-range of choices and experiences from speeding on a residential street late at night because I was too tired to care (and, as a consequence, getting a ticket ) to making 30 apple pies in one day and working myself into a very horrible snap-at-everyone mood because I foolishly took on too much.
Other mistakes have been more costly. Trusting people, one of the key characteristics in my personality type, has very rich rewards as well as sorry consequences. Experiencing betrayal from what was a trusted relationship makes the heart pain and leaves one with the understanding that trust is strong like steel, unable to be easily broken, and it can also be as thin as ice in a post-Winter season. Once broken, it is almost never repairable.
A recurring mistake that has been part of my developing story is what Zachariah experienced when an angel told him that his wife, Elizabeth, who was aged and barren would give birth to a son. Zachariah, a priest, did not believe the message and as a consequence his capability to speak was taken away until the child, John, was born.
I too have battled faith and doubt when the circumstances in my life seemed, at the time, impossible for even God to answer and all I saw was a dark and miserable future. Or, when amazing opportunities came as open doors, yet I struggled with self-doubt and my perceived lack of ability to meet the responsibilities -- inwardly fighting to pull back, yet that divine call like a woman giving birth, was there pushing me to walk through the open door into something new and greater.
The consequences have been a long journey in releasing the draining emotional toll of belief and doubt, hope and fear, asking yet going into full-blown worry, and then finally in surrender reaching out with my two arms to my all-caring, all-giving Father and saying “Take it, I surrender again.”
I have learned about God’s redeeming grace in my lifetime. He has worked to provide answers, has never disappointed me and has remained consistently faithful. He had has His own way of showing me that I acted like a foolish child who put herself through an emotional wringer when it wasn’t necessary. He is in charge, in control and working. I continue to need to trust Him.
What mistakes have you learned from in your life?
Your friend,
Margaret
My mistakes have covered a wide-range of choices and experiences from speeding on a residential street late at night because I was too tired to care (and, as a consequence, getting a ticket ) to making 30 apple pies in one day and working myself into a very horrible snap-at-everyone mood because I foolishly took on too much.
Other mistakes have been more costly. Trusting people, one of the key characteristics in my personality type, has very rich rewards as well as sorry consequences. Experiencing betrayal from what was a trusted relationship makes the heart pain and leaves one with the understanding that trust is strong like steel, unable to be easily broken, and it can also be as thin as ice in a post-Winter season. Once broken, it is almost never repairable.
A recurring mistake that has been part of my developing story is what Zachariah experienced when an angel told him that his wife, Elizabeth, who was aged and barren would give birth to a son. Zachariah, a priest, did not believe the message and as a consequence his capability to speak was taken away until the child, John, was born.
I too have battled faith and doubt when the circumstances in my life seemed, at the time, impossible for even God to answer and all I saw was a dark and miserable future. Or, when amazing opportunities came as open doors, yet I struggled with self-doubt and my perceived lack of ability to meet the responsibilities -- inwardly fighting to pull back, yet that divine call like a woman giving birth, was there pushing me to walk through the open door into something new and greater.
The consequences have been a long journey in releasing the draining emotional toll of belief and doubt, hope and fear, asking yet going into full-blown worry, and then finally in surrender reaching out with my two arms to my all-caring, all-giving Father and saying “Take it, I surrender again.”
I have learned about God’s redeeming grace in my lifetime. He has worked to provide answers, has never disappointed me and has remained consistently faithful. He had has His own way of showing me that I acted like a foolish child who put herself through an emotional wringer when it wasn’t necessary. He is in charge, in control and working. I continue to need to trust Him.
What mistakes have you learned from in your life?
Your friend,
Margaret
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