What if when I say, "I trust you, Lord."
I actually did it?
I said no matter what happens
If I can't find my way
If my dreams are lost
If my heart is broken
I'll trust you. I'll follow you.
What if rather than trying to "hear" God's will
(and ultimately just hearing my own and superimposing God onto it)
I read his word and trusted his promise to be with me?
What if rather than clinging so desperately to what I desired I actually let go
so he could open whatever doors he had for me?
What if when things seemed impossible
a world away
I trusted anyway because I serve a God who moves mountains?
who raises the dead
who heals the sick
the broken
the lost
who loves with a love that I can neither fathom nor hold
who is the only one worthy to be praised?
What if I accepted that I am so small
so insignificant
so utterly flawed and yet
so loved by the creator of the beautiful universe
the glorious sunrises and sunsets
the breathtaking mountains
and lived my life accordingly?
What if I followed God for no other reason than because he is worthy?
What if I truly took that leap?
Here I stand, Father.
At the edge of this precipice,
I don't know what is below
but I trust you
As I was driving to work the other morning—listening to To Our God (Live) on Bethel’s For The Sake of the World album—I saw a church sign that read, “Nobody is beyond the reach of the gospel.” I often look at church signs as I pass them. Sometimes they quote scripture and I find that encouraging, sometimes they have cheesy one lines that make me laugh. Sometimes they are just ridiculous, but this morning for the first time I nearly stopped and turned around to read it again.
“Nobody is beyond the reach of the gospel.”
This is not a new revelation. Not something I had never heard before, but for some reason this one truth reached into my heart and tugged. Hard. My focus shifted to the music playing, “Up from the ashes Your love has brought us/ Out of darkness into light/Lifting our sorrows/Bearing our burdens healing our hearts.” I started to cry as I thought about the friend I had spent the previous evening with. We had spoken multiple times about God and he seemed quite resigned to the fact that we would never agree. I remembered looking across the table to him as he sent a text message to another friend. His dark eyelashes rested against his lightly freckled cheek and I found myself praying, “Father, soften his heart.” I prayed this prayer often when I was around him. This man who’d let me in and shared his heart with me was going through a lot in that moment. His roommate had pulled me aside and told me how thankful he was that I’d shown up that day. “He’s been a mess for the past week. I swear I hadn’t seen him smile until you came in the door.” My heart yearned for his burdens to be lifted, but I saw only darkness in his eyes. And I think a part of me had resigned myself to that permanency in him. What could I say? What could I do to make him see the truth of the gospel? I’d written to a friend earlier that I would continue to love him and all of the other friends in my life who had difficulty believing the truth of the gospel. I would love them in truth—which is the only way to love—and though I might lose friendships because of it I would continue to love. But was I really doing that? My heart wanted to, but my mind kept thinking it was beyond me. I had resigned these people I loved to staying stagnant in their journey towards faith. My own faith was weak and as I drove to work I cried out to God for the strength to believe. To trust that he was working in their hearts even though I could see no evidence of change in their hearts. What a difficult moment for me to reach. The very thing I had been praying for in others was the very thing I lacked in myself. I think we often become stagnant in our faith. We attribute things to our own strength to do them neglecting to see that all that is done through us is not by our own volition, but by the strength of Christ in us. In his 2nd letter to Timothy Paul says,
“Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saves us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.” (2 Timothy 1:8, emphasis added)
There really was nothing I could say or do to help him believe. To help any of them see what I saw, but there was much that Christ could and was doing. I needed to only believe. To believe in all that I could not see which was a hallmark of my faith anyway! But like the apostles I am dumb. I do not see. I do not hear. I miss the beauty of the gospel every day, but like a loving Father I am reminded sometimes gently, sometimes forcibly that without him I am nothing, and that though I do not always see it his plan for my life is greater and more beautiful than I can imagine.
So I began to pray with a new fervency. With a newly molded heart, believing in the power of Christ within me. The next time I saw my friend he was a bit upset. It was clear through our conversations that something I had said struck a chord with him. He told me that he thought his own worldview was strong, but every time he spent time with me I uprooted him a bit and this time it took longer than usual to find his ground again. "I want to believe in what you say, but it is irrational." We talked for a bit and while no real change was made one thing became clear to me.
God was moving.
For the first time he'd expressed a desire to know Christ more. An honest desire that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with his heart, and I felt God changing me. Speaking boldly about things that I knew nothing about. Giving answers, asking questions, and showing love in a beautiful way. When I left I found myself in tears again. God is good.
So here I stand a child broken before a God who loves in big ways. Who continually heals my broken heart. For the first time I did not feel an ardent desire to leave a place quickly. I accept that perhaps God's plan for me really was better than I'd imagined and I could see glimpses of that future.
I guess the whole point of this post was simply to remind you, reader, to simply trust. To humble yourself before God and to pray for the strength to believe in what he is doing. It might not be readily noticeable, but he really is working in each of our lives, weaving a tapestry of grace more beautiful than our brains can comprehend.
