Take Heart! Why is it so hard to Trust?

We’ve come to trust so many things.

So, I’ll start with this question…

Why is it still so difficult to trust God?

I think there are two answers to this questions.

ONE -It’s because we haven’t had a chance to trust him.  We want to be in control and by our human nature we trust others and ourselves more.  People are something we can see.  We can’t always see, hear, or feel God.

TWO -We are still learning who God is and growing in our walk with him.  We don’t know just how powerful the one living in us is and we don’t understand that he really did overcome the world.

I’ve gone through some hard things, as have most of us.  And when one of those things is really hard and squashes me, I tend to lose trust in God… Things like the Death of a loved one, marriage problems/Divorce/Separation, Moving, Major illness/injury, or Job loss, we tend to blame it on God.   Or we think we know the better way to handle it.

When things get messy I find myself asking God why he would let them happen?   God why do we have to be out of work so long? We have a family to support and it’s coming up on a year and now we are running out money. Or Why would you let me marry a man and then turn around and make it so that my marriage is in serious trouble?  Or, I don’t understand why the only job available is across the country and we will have to leave family and friends.  Lord why hasn’t our house sold?  If you don’t hurry up, don’t you know we could lose it? God why did you have to take my mom?  She was still so young and such a wonderful person.

We think it’s not fair and we lose trust in God, which in turn leads to our lack of faith. The five things I just listed…Death of a loved one, marriage problems/Divorce/Separation, Loss of a house or Moving, Major illness or injury, or Job loss; according to psychologists, are the top five major stressors in our lives.   How do you handle it if you have the death of your parent and then you are getting ready to go through a divorce and then you lost your job?  How would you handle that all at the same time?  Is your trust in God still solid?

Well I had to handle all three of those things at the same time.  Actually lets throw moving across the country and having an illness of my own in there too.  Month (job loss), after month (marriage shattered), after month (my illness), after month (moved across the country), after month (trouble selling home) after month (out of money), after month (mom died), kids trying to adjust to a new life and so many more.  God let these things happen simultaneously in my life all within about a year and a half.

How did I handle this?  Well at first I went through depression.  I’m the kind of depressed person that will crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head and stay there.  So as you can imagine with young kids that didn’t work out well for me.  Eventually I had to draw strength and live in my world that was falling apart.

I’ve learned that when troubles come, most of the time, God is in need of transforming us into something special.  He wanted me to see a side to him that I didn’t even know existed. A side that I never would have found, had I not fallen into a path where there was no other way, but to reach up. While going through our messes he lets others see the amazing things he can do in our lives when we trust him in those messes.

I finally broke and gave in, I couldn’t cry one more day, or feel sad for one more minute.  I was sick and tired of arguing with God and not trusting him. It wasn’t working out very well for me. I stopped trying to control things and I stopped being mad at God for creating this story for me.  I decided to respond in a way that he was desiring me to so I could get out of this. Still I did not understand, but the only way to get through it was to face it head on. It was clear to me that I wasn’t going to get out of this any other way, but I knew He was going to walk me through each painful step.

NO OTHER PERSON TO TURN TO BUT GOD   I wanted to call the one person who I knew would have the answers, but she had died.  I remember coming back to Colorado after the funeral.  I was sitting on our back patio steps.  Reaching for my phone to call my mom. Realizing I could not and nothing, no matter what I did could change that.  It was at that moment that I felt God tell me to finally turn to him and that I’ve never been alone while I was going through these things.  He took all of these hard things in my life to teach me lessons in a short period of time.  Most importantly, he made it so I had no other choice but to turn to him.  God had a plan and way the entire time.  It’s because of these HARD couple of years that forced me to finally surrender and stop reaching out horizontally when I needed to figure out life.

I reach up now, and draw strength from God.  There was a time in my life when that’s all I could do.  I was stubborn and suffered panic attacks because of life that that i lived well before I got married.  I was stuck in a life that was going to continue on a path that was not chosen by God for me.   I couldn’t make a change.

All of these trials/loss/crisis finally broke me of my ways and I surrendered to His will.  I surrendered to a path he needed me on. One that I am now happy on. I dealt with life that happened prior to marriage and found healing for my panic attacks.  I decided divorce, no matter what, was not an option for us.  I wanted to break the cycles that continued to happen in my family.  Divorce, addiction, insecurities, and being down right lost.

I became determined to seek out the life that God had written for me. While on this path we had more trials and some MAJOR ones once again.  Some that left me face down on my bedroom floor crying out to jesus.  That one was a doozy and left me having multiple panic attacks daily for about three months.  Fear was standing on my neck.  I finally jumped all in with God and surrender to His will not matter what and not mine.

Having said that, I don’t regret one single thing.  Even the marriage troubles.  People don’t understand me when I say that but it’s because of those things that I decided to work on myself and seek out God.  I found my inner joy.  I don’t regret the job loss, the betrayal, losing a home, out of money, failing health, the move across the country, the big doozy a couple of years ago, the death of my mom (I do regret this one.  I do wish she were here, but God used her death to help me grow in more ways than I can count)

I’m reminded of Peter when Jesus asked him to walk on water.  Jesus was asking Peter to step on the very thing that Peter considered to be impossible to do. I keep that visual with me when I’m facing the waves that satan pours over me.  Like the impossible task of walking on water, I stepped into my mess and met Jesus.  He was already there waiting for me.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding…” Prov 3:5-6

 

Jesus is the way the truth and the life. Through him all things are made new.  He goes behind us and before us.  God knows all and sees all.  There is no hiding from him.  And with his all knowing powers, he still loves me.  He still has a plan and a future for me, in spite of the ways that I have managed to make a mess of things.  Through sin and more sin. Lack of faith, lack of  trust and lack of devotion, I managed to slip away and lose myself and become a person I didn’t respect.

In a short time, God gave me a lot of big trials.  He did this because he loved me to much to leave me where I was.  I was stubborn, I lived in victim land, I was set in my ways, it was everyone else fault…

How can we trust God to get through those dark days and step on the water with him? Sometimes he forces us to trust him by giving us no other choice but to turn to him. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding…” Prov 3:5-6

So next time I’m faced with another messy situation where I feel suffocated or squashed, I trust that God wants me to lean into him: He says so in John 16:33, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world”

I can trust him and rejoice that he is just as faithful today as he was then. The one who has overcome the world has a way through.  Not around, not over, not under.  He wants you to step on the water with him and walk through.  He wants you to Trust him and take heart!