I had trouble sleeping for days. I talked to my husband, but I was ashamed to admit how afraid I truly was. I called my mother and a friend and talked to them. I reasoned it out as I played out all the possible scenarios in my head. I had faith that God could ‘fix’ this thing…. But why was I so scared? I had prayed…. A LOT… and still the fear of the possible ‘outcome’ almost paralyzed me if I allowed myself to think about it too much… and then I remembered something my daughter taught me many years ago…
Brianne and I had just rounded the corner onto our street when I noticed that the garage door was open; and as I pulled into the driveway I saw that the door leading into the house was wide open, as well! Fearing that someone might be in there, I backed out of the driveway just a bit… but I didn’t want to scare my daughter so I said nothing. I knew that her father was just a few minutes behind, so I decided to just pull into the street and wait for him. (This was before the cell phone era)
Being pretty perceptive, my 5-year-old child had quickly assessed the situation and immediately began reciting “God has not given me a spirit of fear; but He has given unto us a spirit of power and love and a sound mind!” (2 Timothy 1:7) As she continued to repeat these words -The Word- I began to weep. You see… I had been a Christian for many years and yet when faced with fear… with a ‘situation’, I ran to ‘man’ to solve my problem, to protect me… and my 5-year-old daughter had it right! She ran straight to the Lord and His Word. She never hesitated. She never even asked me what was wrong or what I was going to do about this… she immediately ran to God and applied the Word that she had in her heart... and she trusted Him to take care of our situation.
Everything was fine at the house, by the way… but the lesson was learned…or so I thought until last week…
Years later… when facing a frightening situation… I still had the instinct to turn to man for the resolution…. thinking that if I reasoned it out or talked through it enough I would figure out some kind of viable solution for my problem. Sure, I had prayed… and I had faith that God could handle this… but what I lacked was the TRUST that He would handle it.
You see… we can have faith and ‘believe’ God can do something… but where the rubber meets the proverbial road is when we have to take the action of TRUSTING Him to do it. Trusting Him means we have to let go of the ‘situation’ altogether, and literally place it in His hands. A simple example is this: you can believe and have faith that a parachute can open, but when you actually jump from the airplane, you take that faith and put it into action… by trusting that it will open. You can train, you can know how to pull the string, you can even know when to pull the string… but once you jump from that plane, you let go of all control… and place all your faith and hope in that parachute by trusting that it will, indeed open when you need it to.
God, as is His way, did intervene and take care of my situation…but I could have saved myself a few sleepless nights had I just trusted Him to begin with. There’s a line to a song that comes to mind: “My God can never fail! He’s been proved time and again. Trust Him and see… He’s got ALL the power you NEED!”
What time I am afraid, I will have confidence in and put my trust and reliance in You. By [the help of] God I will praise His word; on God I lean, rely, and confidently put my trust; I will not fear. Psalm 56: 3&4 (AMP)
My trust and assured reliance and confident hope shall be fixed in Him. Hebrews 2:13 (AMP)
Life Lessons - Lessons from Life for Life by Patti Hamilton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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