choosing to trust

Lately, there has been so much going on in my head and heart that I feel like I just need to write. I realize that this is much deeper than the silliness that usually makes up my posts, but this too is a part of me and I feel I should share it (without going into too much detail). Someone else out there probably needs to hear it too.

There is a major area of my life where I am failing to trust God. In reality, there is probably more than one, but this is the biggest. Its the area where He most wants to teach me and yet I am most fearful to let Him because I don't think He really wants the best for me.

A few months ago God opened my eyes to this issue and I was impacted then, but I went back and read my journal entries and the Bible Study I was doing at the time and man...WHAM!...it hit me to the core - again. Here are some of the quotes that really spoke to me:

He (God) knows when something glorious in the future necessitates
something difficult in the present.

A good friend told me recently that she believed God had great things in store for me and I do get small glimpses of that in the future. However, I tend to get discouraged easily when I don't see the manifestation of God's work in the present.

If our trust is in manifestations of God's favor rather than God Himself, we will crumble like dry clay when He calls us to walk a distance of our journeys entirely by faith and not by sight.

Can I get an AMEN? This is me. My journey right now is by faith, but DAILY I look for visible, tangible signs. In Sunday School, we talked about viewing God as a cosmic vending machine. We ask for what we want and put our "money" (prayers) in, but if we don't get what we want, we have a temper tantrum and demand our dollar back and turn our backs on God.

God is with us and for us even when His face and favor seem hidden. Mountain-like security only comes from trusting God, not what He's done for us or given us, however glorious and eternal those things may be.

I have been praying for something specific for a while now and my specific prayer was for God to do "whatever it takes" to answer that prayer. What I realized after talking with my friend was that my prayer had been conditional - "God, do whatever it takes to answer this prayer, but just don't mess with what I've got going on." I see that the difficulty I'm going through right now - all the changes going on in my heart as well as the testing of my faith - may very well be part of the "whatever it takes".

Yesterday I was reading a devotion from a book that I have . This particular devotion was called "In the Storm" - hello, is this for me or what? Here are some excerpts from the devotional.

God is always working for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28). However, our definition of good and God's definition of good may be completely different and may collide head-on in hard times. Our definition of good usually equates to happiness. We want (and even expect) God to make us happy. But what's good for God? Good for God is when He's working for His glory, or when He's working to make us holy.

...God cares more about our character than He does about our carefree lives. We may not be able to figure out what God is doing in the hard times of life. Those answers may not come this side of heaven, but we know God can use the tough times in our lives to help us grow. Giving God our lives during hard times means trusting that He's working for good no matter what - or walking through the process with Him until He brings us to the point where we can believe that. That means being where we are with Him - crying, mourning, even being angry, and discussing that with Him. Over time, as we continue to seek Him, He'll align our hearts with His by changing our definition of what's good, or He'll teach us something about Himself, or He'll simply give us what we need to trust Him even though we don't understand.

May it be so, Lord.

**Excerpts taken from April 17, 2008 devotion; Journey: A Woman's Guide to Intimacy with God; April 2008;