Trust: The Key To Everything (Part 3)

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Trust: The Key To Everything (Part 3)
By Keith Giles

Here are some possible barriers we might face when it comes to fully trusting God:

*We don't really know God.
*We have a fear of letting go.
*We think we know what's really best.
*We don't want Gods intervention in our lives.

Let's briefly examine these four barriers to trusting God.

*We don't really know God.
If we really knew God, we would have no problem trusting Him. I believe this is why God sends trouble and difficulty into our lives. When things are going well we tend to ignore God, but when we are in financial difficulty or walking through uncertainty, we are suddenly desperate for God to rescue us. Whereas our goal during these trials may be to coerce God into making the pain go away, I believe God's goal during this time is simply to teach us that He can be trusted.

Time and again my family has been through crisis after crisis. Each time God has come through miraculously, and yet this fact is lost on me when that "next crisis" occurs. I still find myself wondering, "Will God rescue us this time? What if this time is different?" I believe that God wants us to come to a place where we immediately trust Him whenever we face trials. For now I still find myself freaking out first and then remembering to trust Him later.

*We have a fear of letting go.
I spent most of last year as an unemployed "temporary" worker. This made our financial future quite uncertain and called for us to daily trust God with everything. I can remember clearly the epiphany I had a few months into this ordeal- "If God is in control, that means that I am not." I needed to learn to be ok with being out of control so that God could be in control. This takes courage. It's not easy.

One of my favorite books of all time is "Let Go" by Fenelon. It's only a 99 page book, but the wisdom and spiritual insight found inside is solid gold. The overall theme, as you might guess from the title, is to remind us to let go of our lives and surrender fully to Christ. God knows that we need to develop a deeper sense of trust with Him and He is patient with us as we slowly learn that loving Him means trusting Him.

*We think we know what's really best.
Sometimes I believe we find it hard to trust God simply because we're pretty sure we already know what we want with our lives. God's ideas might not line up with our plans and letting go, trusting Him completely, will probably mean laying that dream (or that plan or hope, etc.) on the altar.

*We don't want Gods intervention in our lives.
Some of us aren't entirely comfortable with the idea of God running our lives as He sees fit, however this is what the Gospel of Jesus is all about. We're called to surrender our lives to Christ. We are expected to die to ourselves daily and put the words and teachings of Jesus into practice. The idea of living life "our way" and ignoring the clear instruction of Jesus is anti-Christian. God does not want to be your Co-Pilot. He is either "Lord" or you are living your life your own way. For many of us, our biggest problem is that we've not understood the "death to self" portion of the Gospel.

THE KEY TO TRUST IS COMPLETE SURRENDER
I know you probably believe in God and the Bible. You've probably received Jesus into your heart. But the Gospel is about giving up your life and allowing God to have His perfect will, even if it goes against your beautiful plans.

Do you feel like God is really calling the shots in your life right now? Is Jesus really your Lord or is He just your Savior? If you want to call yourself a follower of Jesus, you have to let go of your life, your way of living, and surrender everything to Him.

"Then (Jesus) said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it." - Luke 9:23-24

REMEMBER THIS
As long as you are in the drivers seat of your life, you will always be miserable.

God isn't interested in having you believe in Him. He wants you to trust Him to make the decisions in your life. He wants to have your permission to allow Him to change your behavior.

God wants to be God, which should come as little surprise. He designed your life (and my life) to work best that way. I know in my life I've learned that it doesn't work when "Keith is Lord". That's when things get really screwed up.

But, if we can let go and trust God with our entire life, if we can make a total surrender to God and let Him lead us, that's what The Gospel is all about. That's when He can really transform us into something amazing.

This is why Jesus urges us to pray by saying, "Our Father who is in Heaven, Hallowed be Your Name. Your Kingdom come. Your will be done. On Earth (right now) as it is in Heaven..."

Its all about depending completely on God.

To fully trust God we must first fully surrender to Him. It's crucial for us to raise the white flag and let go of our way of doing life.

God is trustworthy. Isn't it time to really trust Him?

-kg

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RESPONSES FROM [SU] READERS ABOUT TRUST:
Greg said...
"Our inability to trust can be traced, I believe, to our failure to believe that God is good.....really good...we simply do not believe that in our core. At a fundamental level we struggle with grace....we need to take heed to the Scriptural admonition to be reconciled in our minds.....God is reconciled to us but we sometimes don't allow ourselves to be reconciled to Him....He has accomplished an amazing thing by removing our sin and no longer counting our sin against us....we just need to learn to walk in the freedom He purchased.....He IS good, He has removed the law which condemned us, having nailed it to the cross! We absolutely can trust Him....but we never will as long as judgement hangs over our heads....it no longer does!!"

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Chuck said:

"What can we do that will make us more capable of trusting God with everything?
The only thing we can do is submit. It's like jumping into the pool. It could be cold, it could not. You never know until you jump in.

"If we make the effort to come closer to God then He will come to us. I have relied upon this next passage when I have been in particularly hard times.

"And those who know Your name will put their trust in You; For You, LORD, have not forsaken those who seek You." - Psalm 9:10

"I am by no means saying that there is some magic bullet that makes everything swell in times of trouble, but I am saying that there is comfort in knowing that God is near. Trials and tribulations are just that, and they suck to go through, but we must trust in God's wisdom in placing us in those times, or allowing them to happen, or predestining our lives around such things(how's that for all inclusive?)

"I think the very fact that we are fallen innately places us in a position of mistrust.

Blessings,
Chuck"

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Ken Randolph said:
"Good article about trust,
Trust is one of those facets of life that when I think about it is like unraveling a tapestry. When I start pulling the threads apart I discover the Lord's hand in my life.It seems like growing in trust depends on my willingness to engage in this fatih walk that God is continually pointing to. Too many times I find myself steering towards a comfort zone yet I know that comfort is like poison. Think about ole' Moses spending forty years in the wilderness with his little family and the goats. His life was set. His routine predictable and then suddenly there is this bush that's on fire but it doesn't burn up. Moses could have walked away but he engaged.

"A few years ago the Lord put on my heart to pray for other countries. I attended a conference on short missions. This red neck southern boy was crying and so I went to the Philippines in 2000(no, my plane didn't fall out of the sky). I have some what of the same problem as Moses as I wasn't into public speaking. I found myself in front of about 500 pastors and used a canned message from home. I felt terrble. I cryed out to God and He sweetly said "Ken, I sent you for the message I built into you." That meant I needed to spend some serious carpet time and discover what that message was. God answered that prayer and I spoke to those pastors about the difference between dominion and domination.

"In 2001 we returned to the Philippines and I grew some more. Then 9/11 happened. The ministry group I was working under stopped their plans yet Susan and I knew God had called us to serve in that country. We chickened out and stayed home in 2002. Big misstake. I felt like I had abandoned a baby on the front door step.

"In 2003, I said, 'God I've lost my contacts and I dont have a clue what I am doing'. I had developed some fears and was wondering how to proceed. We sent out e-mails. Made calls. Nothing. I felt like I was dangling over an abyss. I had this huge desire and these huge fears fighting inside of me. Then I told Susan, "Buy the tickets. I don't care if don't do anything but walk around and pray. If God wants us in the Philippines then, by God, we are going to go". Suddenly the heavens opened and felt this huge grin coming straight from my heavenly Lord. The next day we began receiving e-mails with invitations to come and plans for ministry.

"Susan and I are still in this learning process and finding that trust like salvation is an event and a process that we walk out on a daily basis. But you have to choose to engage.
Blessing to you Keith,
Ken Randolph"

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"Keith- A thought on trust. We work with a lot of very broken people, and it seems that your thots on why we cant trust are very inner directed. They do not allow much for very wounded people who do not trust because their trust has been so broken, Their lack of trust is not really a choice. Much healing must happen before they can decide to trust.
Well, have to go, we are moving this weekend.
Peace
Jude Tiersma Watson
InnerCHANGE LA
(Fuller Seminary too)"

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