timeless truth

                                                    

Yesterday John and I had the privilege to join other Florida Navigator colleagues and listen to Jerry Bridges teach on trusting God.  If you are unfamiliar with Jerry Bridges, he has been serving on Navigator staff for 50 years, he is currently 81 and still working, serving the Lord.  He served in the Navy as an officer in the Korean War before joining The Navigator work.  He has written 17 fabulous, time and truth-tested books. The Pursuit of Holiness, Trusting God, Respectable Sins and The Gospel for Real Life to name my favorites.

I needed to hear what he had to say yesterday.  Trusting God, he said, can be harder than obeying God.  Often obedience is clear because scripture is clear about commands to obey.  But trusting God can be harder because we do not know what God has planned for our lives, even tomorrow is a blur.  

A helpful truth that he communicated was God’s control over EVERYTHING.  I want to blame.  I want to blame myself, others, choices, timing and anything else I can get my hands on when my life is not written how I dreamed it would.  Blame rests on someone who has done something wrong, and I cannot say God has done anything wrong.  He is purely and always GOOD.  Despite the circumstances or the presence of blessing, He is good.  He is good because He is good, not because of the "good" He gives us.

The way certain circumstances in my life are playing out may be a disappointment to me, but to God it is pleasing.  He sees the whole picture.  And I am not forgotten.  Details of the past few years have made me feel forgotten, by God mostly.  But when everything and everyone else seem to move forward, I feel stuck, left behind, forgotten.  Thankfully Jerry pointed us to verses where God states He cannot forget me.

In all of this there is purpose.  And it is not for me to know or be able to explain.  It is for God to carry out and fulfill.  

It has been made very clear that I am weak.  I have proven over and over that I am not able to do what I want, when I want it and how I want it.  My heart aches with this realization.  But God's power is made perfect in my weakness. Will I trust Him with this weakness?