To Truly Trust
Make sure that you read my first post in this series here
I ended my last post with this sentence: All it takes is trust. Easy to say, not so easy to do. Especially if you do not know what it really means to trust.
So how do you trust? How do you give up your wants, desires, and needs? In the midst of the laundry, cleaning, teaching, chaffeuring that happens each day, how is surrendering to His will played out in the everyday boots on the ground life? 
The definition of trust according to the dictionary is
Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing.
or:
When I prayed that prayer so many years ago to ask the Lord to teach me to trust Him, I had no idea what it would involve. We all have a need for control that we enter this world with. From the moment that we are born we take charge and try to control our environment. When I lose control of my circumstances or my environment, a panic builds deep in my stomach and the need to take back some of that control threatens to overwhelm me.
In the few years that God was teaching me to trust, I fought to retain control of whatever I could. I talked to friends, read self help books, imagined ways to get revenge on those who had hurt me. Through His grace He gave me friends around me for support, but at the end of the day, I was on my own with God. Slowly and gently He began to teach me how to trust and let Him take the control that I so desperately wanted.
The day finally came when trust was my only option. I forgave my ex-husband. I stopped looking for love in all the wrong places, and I finally surrendered to the idea of being single. My dream of having a family I surrendered to the Lord and told Him that my life belonged to Him. It was my first step.
But it was not the last. I have not completely learned to trust, even now. But I know that I am farther along on the journey than I was when I prayed that prayer. So how do you learn how to trust?
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You pray.
Many nights I prayed and begged God to help me. Sometimes the pain was so intense that all I could do was cry. A lot of times it didn’t feel as if God was answering my prayers, or even hearing them. I don’t know the exact day when my healing began, but looking back on it I know that He did. He was always there, even when He felt a million miles away.
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You study His Word
I went to the Bible to find comfort. The first place I read was Job. He was a man who had everything, and God allowed Satan to mess with his life. Everything was taken away from him, but He did not give up his faith. However, he asked lots of the same questions that I had and I heard God’s answers to me in his answers to Job.
I also read Jeremiah and Lamentations. In those two books I found a lot of crying, something that I did a lot of. But I also found comfort. God expressed how much He loved me in those two books.
But even with God’s Word, I struggled. I felt better when I was spending time with Him, but when I went to my life and the responsibilities that I had each day, I didn’t know how to appropriate that comfort. I still operated under the belief that it was up to me to move on. It was up to me to get over my sorrow. I still had some measure of control.
By the time that I believed that I had learned how to surrender my life to the Lord, my kids came along. Now I struggled with surrendering them to the Lord’s care. Many nights when they were babies I would spend time praying and crying over them while they lay sleeping. I spent a lot of my time giving them up to Him and then taking them back again. How I wished that I could just leave them in His hands and let go.
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Let Go and Let God
I have not yet learned how to completely surrender everything to Him. I still play the back and forth game with the Lord, trying to grab control back from Him. But I think that I understand more. than I used to. I will never completely figure out how to trust in the Lord before He takes us home. But maybe the back and forth game has a purpose. Every time that I try to control my life and my circumstances, I get overwhelmed. But that overwhelming worry forces me to go back to the Lord and ask for His help. He wants me to come to Him. I now go to Him first when I can’t handle my life, my circumstances, or my emotions.
But going to Him is just the beginning. And it is the difference between knowledge and faith. I am very good at knowing what God’s Word says, but not so good at applying it. But when the the rubber meets the road, it is the difference between knowing and believing. That is what I need to do.
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Believe
I just need to believe. Do I take God at His word, or not? I think that is where childlike faith comes into play. I know that my kiddos just trust that we will provide what they need, and a lot of times even what they want. Believing that He will do what He says and resting in His promises is where I need to go every time.
In my next post, I will talk more about trusting in Him. Do you have any areas in your life where you find it hard to trust?
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