Here we are, a little more than half way through the year of 2019. Each year, I like to choose a word to focus my mind on throughout the twelve months; this year I chose the word trust. I figured that with college on the horizon in the coming fall, I would have a lot to trust God with, and I definitely do in that regard. However, I have had to, and am currently, leaning into that word more than I ever could have anticipated. I’m in a slow and sometimes painful process of discovering the complexity that surrounds the word trust.
So far this year I have been challenged with the task of trusting amidst loss, trusting amidst sickness, trusting amidst decision making, trusting amidst fear, trusting amidst doubt, and trusting amidst feelings of inadequacy. Each of these feelings have shaken my faith greatly, but have also led me to an intimacy with God unlike anything I’ve ever known and ever could have imagined. 2019 has thus far been a year of realizing what lies closely beneath the surface of Proverbs 3:5, which says:
“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.”
Whether you have heard it from a pastor, saw it on Pinterest, or read it in someone’s Instagram bio, my guess is that you’ve heard or seen this verse before. If you’re anything like me, I often read this verse and think to myself, “Oh yeah, trust in the Lord, that seems cool, seems like the right thing to do, rad. So I guess I’ll keep this in mind.” While that is not a bad thought to have, it is important as believers to recognize the difficulty that lies within the lines of this verse. I used to think trusting in God would be an easy task, but I think that was more of a reflection of my lack of trust in God, than it was the truth about what trust is. Before this year began, sure I had moments of trust towards God, but I’d never stepped into a season with a complete mindset of trust: a mindset of believing that God would pull through (in every area of my life of which I surrendered to Him) even though I couldn’t see how it would all work out.
I have also learned that trusting in God requires an extreme amount of courage. It requires courage because we have to be courageous enough to make the decision to trust Him in the first place. Courage is the intermediary between trusting in ourselves and trusting in the Father. If we cannot summon the courage to trust Him, we may never be able to experience God’s fullest potential for our lives. Trust is like driving on a foggy road. Sometimes you can only see a few feet in front of you, while the rest of the road is unclear. We need courage to start the car as we begin such a drive. Then, because of our courage, we can trust that the road will take us where we need to be, no matter how foggy or clouded our vision of it may be. We have to trust and believe in our hearts that God sees the road ahead.
This journey of trusting in the Lord wholeheartedly has been one of my life’s greatest challenges, but I believe it will be a journey that produces the greatest abundance of goodness and joy. I truly believe that the things I’ve entrusted to God this year will bear the richest possible harvest. One of the hardest things we can ever do as believers is take a step of faith and trust God with every fiber of our being. Take it from a girl who is the typical “scaredy cat” and who is often shaken by waves of anxiety: yes, it’s frightening; yes, it feels like you are flying from the seat of your pants; yes, it is sometimes hard to trust that God knows better than yourself; and yes, it may make you feel nervous in the moment. But we have to remember, I have to remember, that God wrote the story of our lives and He only writes good things. God has a plan, as Jeremiah 29:11 says, to prosper us and give us hope and a future, not to harm us. God has a plan. He never wastes a hurt. Your fullest potential as a follower of Jesus and as a child of God is probably lying on the other side of trust.
So trust him, blindly. Know that he is in control and that he won’t ever let you go. Believe in the goodness of His story for your life. And step into life He has planned specifically for you.
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