Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean
not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall
direct your paths. Proverbs 3:5-6
Who do we trust in this chaotic world we live in? We are inundated
with ‘trust me’ in a world where we are taught to analyze, synthesize, and
evaluate everything that comes into our life as we take it all in
whole-heartedly and are told to accept it all without ‘judgement’. It’s a very
confusing process. Most of the time our trust is misplaced, and we are wounded,
pulling down all the threads of our beliefs until we become cynical, hard, and
self preserving. We will jokingly tell our friends, and warn our children, “You
can’t trust anyone.” Yet, how many times do we let them down and break those
trusts?
Who we place our trust in is the biggest issue we all face. When I
was a new Christian and newly married, I found myself waiting every day for my
husband to come home. I had lost many of my old friends because they were
living a very different life from me. I was lonely, with the exception of my
husband. It was unfair to put such pressure on him. There were women who took
me under their wing at our church and began to disciple me. They opened my eyes
to things I was doing that were wrong, and it was a painful process of
maturing. I went to many Bible studies, and learned a lot, but as for
friendship, I didn’t feel I had any real friends at the time. I remember crying,
and my husband said to me, “You’re putting your faith in man, and man will let
you down every time. Put your faith in God and let Him lift your head.” I
thought my husband was the smartest man who ever lived, but I found out that
many of the people in our group of “friends” had that saying. When I turned my
thought process around, those women became my friends, and not just my friends
but my family. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or
mother or wife or children or lands, for My name’s sake, shall receive a
hundredfold, and inherit eternal life. Matthew 19:29
As our Master Teacher looks out into the crowd on the mount, both
then and now, I think he sees a lot of lonely people who just have misplaced
trust-issues. They feel alone, when He’s got them right there, if they would
just open their eyes to what’s around them. And so, Jesus taught:
“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good,
your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body
will full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how
great is that darkness!” Matthew 6:22-23
The eye is amazing! If anyone ever doubts in a Creator, point them
to the eye and ask them how that randomly happens. It’s not a simple process. https://www.aoa.org/patients-and-public/resources-for-teachers/how-your-eyes-work
It’s light acting upon a thin tissue which sends impulses to our brains so that
we can tell an elephant from a gnat while judging distance. We swat the gnat,
not the elephant because of light. But
if our eye can’t perceive the light due to injury, or if we just keep it closed,
we could be swatting at elephants, or lions, or other bigger beasts. If we can see,
why don’t we see? Why do we “turn a blind eye” to things around us that so
desperately need our attention? We do it because it’s hard to be light in an
ever-darkening world. We have excuses, but do we really have any good reasons? ”Then
Jesus spoke to them again saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows
Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” John 8:12 We place our trust in
the things we see, rather than in our faith. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for,
the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1
It is strange how much
time we spend gathering ‘things’. With the recent hurricanes and the
earthquakes that have been occurring, and yet, these do happen everywhere, you
think we would learn not to put much of our energies into material possessions.
They can become projectiles in the winds of the storm or buried under mounds of
debris. When the storm was over in Puerto Rico and the news came out, “We lost
everything, but we’re alive!” I praised God and considered it a miracle.
“No one
can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or
else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God
and mammon.” Matthew 6:24
This verse maybe one of the most quoted verses in wealthy
congregations when it’s time to support a fund-raising initiative. It is meant
to get us to realize that we can’t buy a god for ourselves, at times I don’t
think we get the message. Less than 2 percent of church-going Christians
actually give e a tenth of their income as tithe to their local church. This is
a hotly debated topic today. Yet, have we considered that the money we ‘tithe’
isn’t ours to begin with? If we are Christians then we should believe that all
things we have are provided to us from our Master, so He would want us to use
all that comes into our hands as we would His possessions. He’ll provide for
us. It is our job to use His resources for His purposes, and not our own. If we
would trust in Him we would see this come to life in our lives.
“Therefore
I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will
drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food
and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither
sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are
you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to
his stature? Matthew 6:25-27
Worrying is one of the world’s favorite pastimes. It’s not just
musing what will happen next with anxiety. It’s preoccupation with anything we
feel needs our attention. Let’s look at the synonyms for worry. They are
concern, anxiety, apprehension, care, and the worst one, fear. Our cell phones
cause a lot of worry for us. Think about the feeling we get if we forget our
phone somewhere. It’s as though we lost our identity. Imagine a friend
nonchalantly says she is convinced that cell phones are the mark of beast while
she was texting someone. Then her phone dies. How would she react? She would
immediately pull out a charger and look for a way to plug it in, or she would
have a charge stick in her purse. Why? Because she would worry she would miss
something even more than the anxiety she complains about being constantly in
contact with so many people. If such a small hand-held device can cause so much
anxiety, what are the bigger pressures of life doing to us? Birds don’t carry
cell phones, and they communicate so well they fly in amazing formations and
can all change directions in a millisecond and not fall out of the sky.
28 “So why
do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow:
they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his
glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the
field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much
more clothe you, O you of little faith?” Matthew 6:28-30
Did you know the average American family spends around 2000
dollars a year on clothing? That’s a lot of money. Did you also know that the
average income for the people of India is around 1500 a year, and in Ethiopia
it’s around 600 a year, and in Burundi it’s about 250 a year? So why are we so
obsessed with our closet that we have a television channel in which people look
for houses with walk in closets and the realtor tells them to turn a bedroom
into a closet? Because we feel we must impress people. We lose our identity
again. We forget it’s not the clothes on our back that make us important, it’s
that we are His image-bearers. Paul said it well when it comes to the struggle
we face when we are called to live for Christ. “For do I now persuade men or
God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a
bond servant of Christ.” Gal. 1:10 What other people think is important to me,
but not in the way some think it is. I do care what a person thinks because I ultimately
want to persuade them that Jesus is the answer. The answer to what? To whatever
they’re facing.
“Therefore do not worry, saying ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What
shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For all these things the Gentiles
seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek
first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be
added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry
about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” Matthew
6:31-34
The Lord knows all that we need for our physical needs. He will
provide what we have need of. When I was little there were foods I didn’t like,
but my parents taught me to eat it anyway. In doing so I learned not to be such
a picky eater. There were foods that made me sick, and my parents made sure not
to give me those foods and reminded me not to eat them. That is how God is with
His children. He will give us what we have need of, even when we don’t like it,
but He will never give us what we should not have that will injure us, even
when we want it. We must trust that our Heavenly Father knows best. It’s not
easy with so much coming at us which is why we must be seeking Him first. We
should be looking up at Him, the way a child looks up to seek permission from a
parent, for that nod of approval. If we don’t get it we should hold fast to His
hand knowing He will take perfect care of us. Let’s just live in the moment,
resting in Him, knowing He’s got this. What is the ‘this’ He’s got? All of
this.
“You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You,
Because he trusts in You.” Isaiah 26:3
