How Do I Trust Today?

With all my heart.  I must not lean on my own understanding (Proverbs 3:5).  What does that mean to me?  It means that no matter what happens, that if everything around me gets all topsy-turvey, that I must not even try to reason about it, that I must know in my heart that God has already taken care of it. 

The next verse (v6) says that in all my ways I should acknowledge Him and He will direct my path.  How do I do that?  I must exercise doing that. I need to more consciously place Him in front of me.  I pray to the Holy Spirit in fervor, "Please stay right in front of my mind!  Let me always keep my eyes on Christ!"  But it doesn't happen.  I believe that God wants us to do that ourselves.  Sure, He could do that, but then what have we accomplished?  Nothing.  We didn't learn to rely on Him for ourselves.  He will not make slaves out of us, forcing us to see only Him.  He wants to be the desire of our heart.  He wants us to keep realizing we have strayed and to come home.

It isn't hard to stray, is it?  So many times I walk off the path of righteousness and find myself in a dangerous place.  Sometimes my own flesh holds me back from coming 'home.'  For instance, there are mornings when my husband and I have prayed together, and then sometime before I leave for work in the next hour something will go wrong and I will take it out on him. He is innocent, I am the one that is off schedule.  But my pride isn't quick to step down and let me ask for forgiveness.  I can see the hurt I have placed in his heart by something I've said, yet I speed off in anger.

Not far down the road, the Holy Spirit quickens me that I need to apologize for my actions.  To Him and and to my husband.  I weep, dear reader, I sob.  I cry out to God for forgiveness.  I know He has shown me compassion once again, but I also know that I am not done.  Part of my repentance is to apologize to my husband.  So I call, and I cry and tell him that I am sorry, that I love him, and he forgives me because he understands me better than I do, and he loves me without limits.

There are times when I feel so bad about what I have done that I don't feel good enough to walk back in God's light.  Has that ever happened to you?  You want desperately to know that God is smiling on you but in your state of misery for hurting someone you love so much you just don't feel like you're worthy?  That isn't a good place to be. You ARE worthy!  God forgives us and then throws the sin into the sea of forgetfulness.  He forgets about it, totally.  He doesn't hold on to it like I might.  I don't understand it.  I know that it is the devil that causes me to hold on.  While I am deliberately keeping myself out of the Kingdom and all God's blessings, he is free to go corrupt someone else.  His job is done, he has left me wallowing in condemnation, and I am not in the light of the Lord.  I sin again by staying in self pity.  How can I not forgive myself when God and my husband already have? 

That is something I keep working on, and I think I am getting better at it.  God doesn't want us to condemn ourselves.  Forgiving ourselves is sometimes harder than forgiving someone else, isn't it?  We must remember that God sees us much different than we do.  Because of Jesus' sacrifice, we are the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Cor 5:21).  And when we obey, "the Lord will make you the head and not the tail; you shall be above only, and not be beneath." Deu 28:13.

This is all part of trust as well.  That God WILL forgive us and forget the sin if we are truly repentant and obey Him.  He has told us that He will not leave or forsake us. Do we trust Him to really be there?  Even when it is so dark we can't see the hand in front of our spiritual face?  We'd better, because the only way we are going to conquer evil in our lives is to allow God to lead us!  We have to trust that He will always be there to do that.  Start today.  Just accept that Jesus is with you.  He is in the car with you as drive to work, He sits at the same desk, He is on the school bus with your child, He is at the grocery store, the cleaners, the park, the subway, everywhere!!  You can't run away from Him, and you really don't want to.

So, I keep saying out loud, "I trust You, God!" again and again.  That's all.  Out loud.  Try it.  I brings me peace, maybe it will for you too.  And if you have to say it every few seconds, so be it.  Eventually it comes easier and easier.

God bless you today, and everyday.  Together we will get this, I know it in my heart.  I want to trust, I really do.  There is so much to share with you as days go on.   I must defeat the enemy and my own flesh.  I am more than a conqueror!  Amen!