Skip to main content

T R U S T



I spoke at church last night about TRUST. It is not an easy or instant thing to trust someone, especially God. You have to get to know them, and as you do, you can trust them more.

Last week I felt God challenge me on trusting Him with my time. There are many things I like to do with my time and when someone or something threatens to take those away from me...well, I get protective of my time. And I know that whenever I get frustrated or annoyed or anxious about something being taken away from me, it is probably because I am in some way using it to fill some need instead of going to God - it is an area I have not given over to Him. The bottom line is, whose time is it anyway? Who has given me this life and every breath and every moment on earth? My time truly is His and the more I realise it, the more I will do the right things with my time instead of just the things I selfishly desire to do. Here are a few notes from my talk last night...

What happens when I don’t trust God?
– He will appear untrustworthy
– When I try to “help” God instead of trusting God, I sabotage His care for me
– I end up opposing what He is doing in my life instead of co-operating with Him and things become difficult
– I get tired
– I do not accept discipline or learn the lessons God has for me and thus, am not equipped for future tasks and responsibilities

When I do not trust God, I am trying to play by my own rules. This negates the rules of the kingdom of God that he has set in place to protect and prosper and grow me into everything I am supposed to be. I end up fighting against Him instead of co-operating with His incredible purposes for me.

What happens when do I trust God?
– I change my perspective: God takes me to His realm instead of my trying to fit Him into my realm
– I mature into my purpose
– I can be at peace; no stress
– Every day is an adventure

“I believe that God is good. No thought I have ever had of God is better than God actually is…I have never overestimated how good God is because God’s goodness overflows far beyond the limits of human understanding.” - Brian D. McLaren

This photo was taken in Guadalevaca in Cuba on March 18, 2007.

Labels:

Comments

Tobi Elliott said…
Matte, I love it when you speak (or write) at church, at home, wherever.. you challenge me and make me pause to think. Keep going! Your words have weight.
1:10 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go
3 comments
Read more

it's a mad mad mad world (of theology)

The mad dash for the end of term has begun.  I have finished all my required readings and have jumped into research reading.  One of my papers is on the madness of theology (the correlation seems more obvious to some of us than to others).  Truly inspiring stuff, I am finding.  Let me share a few quotes here: There is a certain madness in Christianity – in a desert God who is jealous and passionate, in a saviour who speaks in apocalyptic terms, in a life of sacrificial love, in the scandal of particularity.   In principle, a confessional theology should bear the mark of this madness, but the mark or wound must constantly be renewed. - Walter Lowe, "Postmodern Theology" in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , 2007.   “In the Scriptures the odd phenomena constituting the ‘Kingdom of God’ are the offspring of the shock that is delivered by the name of God to what is there called the ‘world,’ resulting in what I call a ‘sacred anarchy.’   Consider but a sampling o
10 comments
Read more

comedic timing

Comic by Joel Micah Harris at xkcd.com One of my favourite jokes goes like this: Knock, knock. Who's there? Interrupting cow Interrupting cow w--- Moooooooo!! Timing is important in both drama and comedy. A well-paced story draws the audience in and helps it invest in the characters, while a tale too hastily told or too long drawn out will fail to engage anyone. Surprise - something which interrupts the expected - is a creative use of timing and integral to any good story. If someone is reading a novel and everything unfolds in a predictable manner, they will probably wonder why they bothered reading the book. And so it is in life. Having life be predictable all of the time is not as calming as it sounds. We love surprises, especially good surprises like birthday parties, gifts, marriage proposals, and finding something that we thought was lost. Surprises are an important part of humour. A good joke is funny because it goes to a place you didn't expect it to go. Sim
Post a Comment
Read more