What a weekend! I have been waiting to get to a place where I could sit and write, mainly because I’ve spent so much time processing, I have been struggling to really compile all my thoughts. I have to say it’s so cool how Jesus works when He has something He wants to tell you. This past weekend was full of conversations that centered around trust. And at the core of everything talked about, it came back to this question Jesus asks…“will you trust Me?” Now there is some power in those 4 little words.
“WILL YOU TRUST ME?!”
See, the beginning of that question in itself puts a whole lot of power in our hands. The word “will” is defined like this: “power of control the mind has over its own actions.” So, the power of my mind can dictate my action of wanting to trust or not. Where is the power of my mind? The power of my mind may be on my passion…my own thoughts…my own wants…my own desires….the control I want in my life. The desires of my heart are not directly connected with the will of my mind. But why?
Well it’s simple, I want to have control of my life. I want what I want, when I want it. I want to do what I want, when I want to do it. In both of those statements, the oh so deadly word is “want.” What if I was asking, “Jesus, what do you want me to do?!” Oh how that would sound and look so different and I find myself being challenged with that question many times. I do know that God doesn’t want us asking “why,” He wants us asking “what.” He wants to provide direction through us asking what. Our readiness and willing to take on whatever direction He points us in. When was the last time you pulled away from the chaos of life and found a quiet and intentional place to really experience Jesus…to really welcome Him into the areas of your life of struggle…to bring His light into your darkness…
In Matthew 14, we see Jesus go off by himself and pray. WOW! Our incredible, life-giving King and Savior went off by himself to pray. I just love that! If Jesus Christ Himself can find the time and reasoning to go off by himself and pray, can’t we? I think so! Actually, I know we can! I want Jesus to meet me in my darkness. I want Him to be in the midst of my storms. I want Him in my doubt!
The Christian life is not easy! In fact, it’s pretty much impossible because the only perfect being to ever live is Jesus Christ himself! Jesus never promised there wouldn’t be storms in life. Jesus never promised to prevent the storms we would experience in life. He did promise that He would be with us in the storms! That’s some incredible and comforting news friends. It the middle of my strongest, scariest, worst storm…Jesus Christ is right there with me! What’s even greater is that He WANTS to be in the storm with me.
Thinking about trust I’m taken back to Matthew 14 where Jesus walks on water and challenges Peter to step out of the boat. I’m a lot like Peter most of the time, aren’t you? Jesus commands Peter to “come” and as he does “he was afraid” because of the storm and began to sink. Peter doubted and lost his trust in Jesus. He experienced a lack of faith. I think we find ourselves wanting to experience the goodness of God from inside the boat…but that’s not where real life happens…real life does not happen in our comfort zones. Real life happens when we trust Him and get out of the boat. But do we have the faith and trust of Peter? Or, do we have a full and committed trust in Jesus Christ?! A hard question to answer. How are we trusting? What are we trusting?
Back to the storms of our lives, if we really do believe that Jesus is who He says He is and we trust that He is sovereign, than we have no doubt to really and fully trust Him in everything. If we do not welcome Jesus into our suffering, into our doubt, into our storms, then we will find ourselves wrestling and fighting without hope. We need to be like those in the boat that say without any doubt, “truly you are the Son of God!” We need the hope of Jesus in the midst of our storms.
To get there, we must fully trust Him with all that we are. We have to believe that there is hope. We have to welcome His light into our darkness. We have to want to experience the storms of life knowing that He is with us.
Believe and know with all that you are, hope is alive.
The grave is empty.
That’s enough to trust!
United. 