Fierce Faith || What Faith IS (Part 2 of 4)
Faith Requires Trust
I did a Keyword Search on the word Trust that produced 170 results. Here are 12 of those 170 verses.
Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.
Psalm 9:10: Those who know your name trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you.
Psalm 21:7 For the king trusts in the Lord; through the unfailing love of the Most High he will not be shaken.
Psalm 28:7 The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him.
Psalm 62:8 Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.
Psalm 112:7 They will have no fear of bad news; their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord.
Isaiah 12:2 Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The Lord, the Lord himself, is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation.
Isaiah 26:4 Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal.
Jeremiah 17:7 But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.
Nahum 1:7 The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him.
Romans 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
1 Peter 2:6 For in Scripture it says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”
Trust. Such a small word with a BIG meaning.
Over and over again God reminds us to TRUST in the Creator. Trust in the one who knows all. Trust in His understanding and not our own. I am not sure about you, but this part of “not trusting in my own understanding,” which the book of Proverbs speaks on can be hard. We want answers. We want to know the WHY or WHY NOT in what God is doing. In fact, sometimes we, in so many words, demand an answer. And it is in these moments when my own understanding, my own ideas jumble up Truth. And at these moments I have to revert my eyes back to the One who created all things. The One who KNOWS all things. I have to lean not on my own understanding, but in ALL my ways, in all things, in all moments, acknowledge God’s authority and Trust in Him.
When we chose to adopt my friend Janay, who went before us in adoption, gave me a warning. Not a bad warning, but a good warning. She said, “Be ready to have your faith stretched. You will be an eyewitness to God doing miracles that are hard to put into words. But be ready. Your faith will be stretched. And at the end you will wonder why you ever doubted God in the first place.” And she was sooooo right. My faith was stretched and my trust was tested. There were so many moments that I had to release control and place my trust in God’s timing, especially the moment I saw Tristan’s medical needs for the first time.
Prior to knowing who our child was, I would pray that I would immediately have an immediate connection with our child. And the day I saw Tristan’s photo something sparked in my heart.
I audibly said the words, “That’s my kid.” Little did I know that for the next 2 weeks, God would take me and Jerry on a journey of Trusting in Him.
A little background about Tristan: he has a metabolic disorder that requires him to receive all of his protein from a special formula that he will be on for life. It also requires him to eat a vegan diet in which all of his food must be weighed and measured. At first, to me his metabolic disorder felt impossible. I mean, we’re meat eaters. After looking at his medical file I told Jerry, “How are we supposed to feed him? We have half a dead cow in our freezer?” But Jerry kept saying, “But it’s manageable through diet.”
When we started the journey adopt, we also knew that our child would have some form of a special need. 95% of the children waiting to be adopted in China have a need from very minor to major. They are abandoned because of these needs. Much of it has to do with superstition as well as the affordability for kids with medical needs. But we knew that our child would have a need. In some ways you feel brave and say “God I am willing to take on anything!” Then you’re flesh and selfishness creeps in: “But can you make it easy?”
So I did what you shouldn’t do. I allowed fear to enter in. I allowed doubt to creep in. I allowed what looked like something impossible to manage and said no. I didn’t pray about it. I trusted in my own understanding and what Google chose to tell me about Tristan’s needs and not God’s. I didn’t allow God’s word on Trust to flood over me.
Word of Warning: Don’t do that. I don’t recommend it. Choosing not to pray about something when making a big decision is dumb. And when God is calling you to something VERY specific and you say “No” - get ready. Remember Jonah?
The next two weeks God took me on a Trust journey. My heart was burdened and massively heavy. I was bummed. Frustrated. I constantly went back to Tristan’s picture. “God, why can’t he be my son? Why does he have to have PKU? Why can’t his need be something else?” It hurts to even write these words. To know I chose fear over faith.
During these two weeks our church was also getting close to starting a new series called Yes, No, Wait. A sermon series on prayer. And I did NOT want to start this series. Why? Because God was whispering to me, “Get ready.”
Side Note: God has a sense of humor.
Shoot. Remember that thing I didn’t do prior to making my decision? Yeah - you can probably see where this is headed.
I didn’t want to start the series. I knew God was going to do something and I didn’t want to start it.
Sure enough, the first Sunday of this message I was a MESS. Jerry and I had been processing and talking about Tristan’s medical needs throughout those two week and particularly that weekend. God was working miracles that to this day blow my mind. He orchestrated conversations, introduced us to someone who has the same metabolic need that attends our church, in which the chances of that actually happening are slim… because only 15,000-20,000 people in the U.S. actually have this metabolic disorder… He showed us that the cost of this was nothing to worry about… God aligned EVERY impossible thing and showed me that through HIM - ALL things are possible.
That Sunday Pastor Nate gave a hunting sermon illustration that rocked me to my core. He was out hunting with some seasoned fellows down in Oregon early on in his marriage. The men took him to a ravine with canyons and told Nate that he was going to follow a very narrow path along a cliff to the other side of the canyon and then look for them through the binoculars to locate them. Sounds sketchy, right? They would then direct him to be exactly over the deer they were hunting.So here was Nate, on the other side of this deep canyon. He would look through the binoculars and they would wave him left, then right, then down until all of a sudden, he found himself directly above his target.
I sat in my chair trying to to cry.
When I got home I emailed Nate & Amy and wrote: I told Jerry that I feel like I am at the edge of a that steep cliff standing there looking out over the edge, not being able to see through the fog, not being able to see the outcome saying, "There's no way..." But God saying, "Do you trust ME?"
DO YOU TRUST ME? The GREAT I AM.
Yes.
The moment I took the step of Trust - the fog split in two. Each step became clearer and clearer. Why? Because my faith was no longer in what I could do, but what God WAS about to do.
Hebrews 12:1b-2a says “let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.”
But, in order for Jesus to be the perfecter of our faith, we need to ALLOW Him to perfect it. My faith is not perfect - but Jesus perfect it. When our faith begins to waver, when our trust begins to wiggle, we need to run to Jesus and not Google. The Bible - this is truth.
One of my favorite passages in the Bible is when God speaks to Job. Job, a blameless and upright man, was tested. His faith and trust were put to the ultimate test. His children were wiped out. His home destroyed. Everything he loved was gone. And through his painful loss Job questioned his existence. He questioned God. Questioned his troubles… His friends were kind of jerks. They weren’t comforting, but instead, told Job he must have sinned because of all his troubles. His very own wife even told him to end his life of misery. This goes on for the majority of the book of Job. Yet not once did Job curse God. But then, God answered Job’s questions. And when you read this, do not read it as some soft conversation, but a conversation of authority and power.
Job 38-41 specifically 38:2-18:
“Who is this that darkens my counsel
with words without knowledge?
3 Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you, and you shall answer me.
4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
7 while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?
8 “Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
9 when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
10 when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
11 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?
12 “Have you ever given orders to the morning,
or shown the dawn its place,
13 that it might take the earth by the edges
and shake the wicked out of it?
14 The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;
its features stand out like those of a garment.
15 The wicked are denied their light,
and their upraised arm is broken.
16 “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
17 Have the gates of death been shown to you?
Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?
18 Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
TELL ME, if you know all this.
(z-snap)
I don’t know about you, but this dialogue Job has with God is POWERFUL. It is a reminder of how GREAT and MIGHTY God is and WHO He is.
Throughout life there is nothing more that the devil would enjoy than for us to doubt God. Doubt His plan. Doubt His purpose for our life. Doubt our very existence. The devil wants you to doubt. He wants me to doubt. The moment we allow doubt to sneak in is the moment we stop trusting. Our eyes are no longer fixed on Jesus, but rather, the large wave to our right or to our left. And when things start to shift and become uneasy he wants us to question God.
Did God really mean what He said?
Are you sure nothing is impossible for God?
Can God really help you through this situation?
In Ravi Zacharias’ book, JESUS AMONGST OTHER GODS Ravi states “…in the Genesis account…doubt was planted as to whether or not God had spoken and given the ground rules for life.” And it is this doubt, this unbelief that separated us from the One we should Trust. This moment of doubt not only brought sin into this world, it catapulted Faith into a never ending pendulum of doubt and faith, doubt and belief, doubt and truth into mankind.
It is easy to doubt. It is easy to allow fears to enter into my mind and allow doubt to begin questioning God’s authority over this world and in my life. BUT - and this is a big fat [ B - U - T ] being grounded in the Word breaks that doubt. Doubt may sneak in, may whisper lies of untruth BUT God’s word quickly floods in reminding us of Truth. And being grounded in Truth binds up doubt and says, “Not today. My hope, trust, faith, is built on nothing less than Jesus’ name.” And it catapults our faith into action. It catapults our faith from fear to TRUST. A trust that requires action.
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Visit links below for next post in this series:
Bookshelf Faith || What Faith Is Part 3 of 4
Faith Pushes Boundaries || Part 4a of 4d
Faith & Comfort Don’t Mix || Part 4b of 4d
