This is my friend Tori. She is an incredible person, and I am honored to call her one of my closest friends. She loves more genuinely, believes more recklessly, and trusts more fully than almost anyone that I've ever met. She models the Kingdom principles of boasting in our weaknesses, living out of intimacy with God, loving out of the love we have first received from God, and choosing to go low (being poor in spirit, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, meakness…and all the beatitudes) in such a beautiful way. And she challenges me so much.
This morning she is getting on a plane bound for LAX. When she gets off the plane, she'll find out the next step. God just called her to go, and so she's following. She hopes in and believes in the promises God has made to her: to never leave her or forsake her, to provide for her, to use her as a blessing to people who need His love. She exemplifies trust to me. And God knows that trust is a concept on which I need clearer revelation.
Trust leads to faith in God as my provider. I don't have to push for, strive for, or manipulate to get God's provision. I need to trust. If God has called me to the world race, He will bring me through it. He will place it on people's hearts to support me. I can inform them…$15,500 is a lot of money. He knows that. But He's got it. Fundraising is not my job. It is God's. I get to partner with Him in it. Tori doesn't know where she's sleeping tomorrow night. I too can trust God to do what He says He'll do.
Trust leads me to know that God has something so much better than I could hope for or imagine. In life, in marriage, in ministry, in tomorrow. I trust Him to reveal His wonderful plans, and I get to align myself with His perfect will.
Trust also allows me to question theological realities about God without questioning His character (which leads to doubt). I feel as though the longer I have walked with God, the less I am shaken in my relationship with Him. I've swung in different directions on several points theologically, but I've clung to the person of Christ, and not the idea of Him. I don't know if that makes sense, but it is something that I see as very beautiful in my relationship with Him. I have leaned toward Calvinism and I've leaned toward Armenianism, I have leaned toward Dispensationalism and I've leaned toward Continuationalism. I realize that I've moved theologically in some significant (yet still equally–if not more–scripturally sound, obvi.) ways, but my relationship has only strengthened through these times. Because I trust in the person of Jesus, and not the idea of Him.
Something that Tori constantly reminds me is that love has a face. His name is Jesus. Jesus told us "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me" (John 14:6). Truth is not a belief; it is not an idea. Truth is a person. Jesus is truth. So as I learn to trust Him, I learn to follow Him past doctrine and into truth, out of the realm of ideas (where everything is messy and lines are easily blurred and definitions are misrepresented) and into the realm of reality, where Jesus is the perfect revelation of the Father.
Holy Spirit, take me there: into that secret place with You; where You're so tangible, and so real; where You impart to me Jesus' heart and You restore my desire for unity within the body of Christ and for the Kingdom to be established in places where darkness currently rules. Thank You! I worship You. I magnify Your name. I lift You up high. Be honored in my life, in my love, in my city, and in our world. In Jesus' name,
Amen
