I must admit, I don’t trust very well. Habit of my childhood perhaps. Habit of long-term worrying. I mentioned some of this in a blog post several weeks ago. (I apologize for being so lax in posting here.) I have been completely swamped with deadlines, summer company, and a ton of little life detours. But I have been learning and hopefully, growing in faith. God has been so good to me! When I’ve been at my weakest, He surrounds me with fellow believers who literally wrap their arms around me and pray over me. When I’ve been downcast, He lifts me up (not literally) on eagle’s wings.
In this year of various trials, God has shown me more of Himself and more of what I need to see of Him. In reading His Word, I learn. I was in Isaiah several weeks ago and wrote down this verse: “This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: In repentance and rest in your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength.”
Of course, if you read the rest in context you see that the people of that day would have none of what God said. They preferred to do it their own way. To flee on horses (to run away). They didn’t want to face whatever threat stood before them, to face whatever trial had come their way. They didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that maybe, just maybe they had sinned and needed to repent before a Holy God.
Why are we like that? Don’t you feel it too? Our whole culture seems to resent the thought. How DARE we call sin sin! There are but a few things in this world still considered evil, but those that deal with morality are untouchables. What used to be sin, even immoral, we call acceptable. And to repent? Well, that’s how they felt in Isaiah’s day. They’d rather run away from God or from whatever foe was chasing them than to face their own possible sinfulness.
Do you struggle with admitting wrong before God? I do. Sometimes I have to search my heart long and hard because I feel justified or I feel self-righteous or I just don’t recognize that maybe my attitude needs adjusting. Maybe worry IS a sin. Maybe trust is a bigger deal than I realize.
Because in quietness and trust is your strength. And you know…the other day I sat in my office looking up at the blue skies and the tree whose leaves are beginning to change and I realized “I trust you, God.” I’d been reading the Psalms and came upon one where David cries out to God in Psalm 25:1. He says, “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul; in you I trust, O my God. Do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me.” In you I trust, O my God.
And I said it aloud again and again. I wrote it in my journal. I trust you, Lord. I trust you to… And you know what? Peace filled me. I really believed God is able! I wasn’t anxious or upset. I knew God was in absolute control of all things, of my life, of the things that concerned me, and He would handle them. I just needed to wait in quietness and trust.
Back to Isaiah, in chapter 30, after you read about those in Israel who preferred to flee on horses, he says, “Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!”
Blessed are all who wait for him!
Don’t we hate that word? And yet trusting involves waiting. Sometimes it also involves doing and speaking, but waiting happens more often than we’d like. And yet those who wait on the Lord are blessed.
How about you? Are you burdened today with an inability to rest and trust in the Lord because life just has you bogged down? Is there a besetting sin you struggle with (mine is worry) that you just can’t let go?
Rest assured God can handle it! He can! And He wants us to believe, to trust Him. To acknowledge that He truly is in control of this wildly spinning universe (which He made) and has our best interest at heart. He longs to be gracious to us! He longs for it!
With a God like that, I think it’s worth giving Him a chance, don’t you? Trust Him with your worries, give Him your besetting sins, rest in His Word. He won’t let you down.
