There are countless pins on Pinterest, thousands of home decor canvases and wood pallets, and hundreds of people with Proverbs 3:5 tattooed on their bodies. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” I think we all like that verse so much because the next verse promises that God will make our paths straight if we live by it. Sounds pretty simple: trust God, acknowledge Him, and walk a straight path. The promise of a straight path is especially comforting in a world of so many twisted paths. But no matter how many times that verse is pinned or posted on social media, hung on the walls of our homes, or written permanently on our bodies, the truth is that REALLY trusting the Lord is freaking hard.
I think there are two types of trust between people and the Lord: trusting in the Lord and REALLY trusting in the Lord. I think the first one is the easier and naturally, the more common. This is when we put our trust in the Lord only after we do everything we can to make sure what we are trusting Him with is going to go the way we want. It’s like you are driving only to let God take the wheel as you’re pulling into the parking lot of where you wanted to go (shoutout to Carrie Underwood for inspiring that simile). We are all human after all, and we want what we want. But to REALLY trust the Lord is to be willing to lose everything. It’s sacrificing any kind of guarantee of getting what you want, so that the Lord can give you what He wants.
My first experience with REALLY trusting the Lord happened about a week ago. When I was accepted to Gap Year, the $12,500 I had to start raising started coming in conveniently easy (not mad about it). As the deadlines came around, so did the money. How to raise money didn’t really occupy my thoughts until I came home from training camp and realized I had about $2,000 to raise in 3 short weeks. I tried to put together a couple different things to bring in some money, but none of them ended up working out. As reality hit that if I didn’t get this money raised then I wouldn’t be launching to the Philippines with my squad, I decided to let God take over (something I wish I would have done before I got to the point of googling “how to make $2,000 in 2 weeks”). As I prayed for a way to get this not so fun fundraising business over with, I expected an answer that involved a significant amount of work. Instead, God said, “Be still.” That’s it- just be still. If I’m being 100% honest, I was relieved to hear those words because it meant I didn’t really have to do any work (so I thought). In reality, it was a lot of work to not freak out as the days went by and the amount in my account didn’t change. It was even more work to try to explain to the people who started to freak out for me that I was supposed to just trust God to get the job done. It was freaking hard to sit back and simply trust that $1,800 was going to show up without me doing anything. It was hard because everything was at stake. I wish I could say that I didn’t have any doubts, but I can’t. There was fear and tears and a lack of sleep because of the “what if” game. But that $1,800 showed up anyways as if God was saying, “Oh, ye of little faith, I told you I could be trusted.”
It was hard to REALLY trust God for the first time, but it was worth it. It will always be worth it.
So here’s to REALLY trusting the Lord all the time. And here’s to being on a straight path to the Philippines.
