Trust His Understanding

   Trust His Understanding (Sonnet 27)
I cannot trust myself; I am too weak,
But I must trust in God with all my heart.
Completely helpless, He’s the one I seek.
I lean on Him to show me ev’ry part.
My God knows things that I can’t understand;
His thoughts are so much higher than my own.
I cannot lean on help from my own hand,
But humbly seek wise counsel at His throne.
In ev’ry path I must see my great need
And look to Him to be my trusty Guide.
Acknowledging His wisdom, not impede;
Remove myself and let my God decide.
Then He will wisely lead me through each gate,
And He’ll direct each path and make it straight.

In the previous post, I presented this question with which God has been challenging me: “Do you trust Me?” I find this to be a great question for troubling times, because simply remembering the question is enough to make me realize that the answer is “Yes.” There is no doubt that God is worthy of trust. The Bible reveals His dependable and unfailing character over and over again.

If the Bible itself is not enough, (and it is), God has shown me in the past that He is worthy of my trust. He has done that throughout my life, but perhaps never as powerfully as in recent years. At the end of 2009, I went through a major life upheaval, which led to an extended time that was daunting and at times seemed impossible. Unexpectedly and with little notice, I lost my job as a Christian school teacher. I also lost my housing and had to move back in with my parents several states away. This resulted in some loss of independence, and I rationed out my limited savings to meet expenses. I was unemployed for a year (with just a few temp jobs) and underemployed for most of the next year. I ended up being out of ministry for twenty months, and the search for a new school ministry was a series of hopes and disappointments.

When I consider what was most daunting about those many months, I think the most significant can be represented by these two questions: How could I endure the challenges inherent in that extended time? and, How could I know what to do next? In both dilemmas, God proved Himself worthy of my trust, and I am blessed to have visible memorials of His provision in both.

Regarding knowing what to do next, I have a thirty-page typed record of the process God used to bring me to my next place of ministry. It is filled with hundreds of things God did to guide me, many of them precisely timed and intricately woven. As far as making it through the challenges of my situation, I have three bookmark-sized calendars as proof of the time that passed. Each day I colored in another square, switching to a different color each month, and those multi-colored cards are a testament to God’s grace and trustworthiness. Those situations were too big for me, but they weren’t too big for God.

I didn’t understand what God was doing, but God understood perfectly. I can have complete trust in His understanding. Any time I start to doubt, all I have to do is look at these memorials of God’s past work. When I see them, I think, “If God could do what He did then, I have no reason to doubt Him now.” That’s what I love about this question, “Do you trust Me?” Just remembering it is enough to stabilize me and to silence the doubt. It pulls me back to “Oh, yeah, I do, don’t I?” Remembering doesn’t remove the questions and challenges, but it does remind me that, in essence, they are inconsequential. Instead of focusing on them (when I’m not going to be understand them anyway), I need to focus on the God who is in control of all of them and has proven Himself to be bigger than them.

After another job loss in 2012, I’m almost at that twenty-month mark again of being out of formal ministry. I don’t know how much longer that will last. I don’t know when God will make His next move or how He will use me next. I do know that I can trust Him. He has a plan for my life, and He will bring it about in His way and in His time for His glory. The thing that I love about trusting God’s understanding is that when I am confused and clueless, it would be senseless to trust my own understanding – but I don’t have to. I have someone who completely understands, and I can trust His superior wisdom.

 

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight." Proverbs 3:5-6 (NASB)