Trusting on a mountaintop or in a valley, it's the same, right?!

Hello!!! It's been a while since we've met here...I suppose that's what you get when 'life happens' and you take a wee vacation :) The kids and I went camping at a fairly local campground - and it was great! I just wish that it lasted a bit longer, as the kids were just getting used to their surroundings and I didn't really get time to just sit and read. (You mothers will agree that even on holidays we don't get much of a break from preparing meals and cleaning up afterward, right?!)

Nonetheless, I've missed writing, but that doesn't mean I've not been pondering many things though!  One of the things that have been rolling around in this brain of mine is 'trust'. Trust in EVERY area of my life. You'd think it should be easy enough to do, right?! I mean there are certain degrees of trust. Ie: there is trusting the person at Tim Horton's to give you the right coffee; there's trusting a friend/family member, with things you hold close to you; then there's the most important one of all - trusting God - with your entire life. All sound easy in theory, but unfortunately, it's more difficult to put it into practice. Like really...is your life going to be ruined by the wrong order at Timmy's?! Maybe your day, lol....or a moment, until you realize the little significance it actually bares in this temporary life - or at least it should! But when it comes to the latter two, we need to be vulnerable in a much larger way. There's so much more at stake and it requires us to give up the control we often think we have over things.

"Trust is the key that opens the door to blessings." This is the title of the second chapter in a book I own and am reading again for the second time; "The Secret Things Of God" by Dr. Henry Cloud. It was by no coincidence how this book came into my hands last summer... I had just gone through a very hard and sad ending of a relationship that I shared with a wonderful man who's heart was clearly for God, and someone I considered a very close friend above and beyond anything else. What made it sad was the fact that we were simply in two different places and it was clear to both of us that it needed to end. The hardest part of going through all of that wasn't necessarily the fact that a relationship had ended, but more so the fact that I didn't have my friend to go to and help me through it - my 'shoulder to cry on' so to speak like I'd been able to do with so many other things in the time we shared together. What on earth was I going to do? How was I going to get through this? I 'knew' that God was there, and believe me I talked to Him a lot! But there was something about my broken heart that I honestly didn't feel that God was understanding. Sounds kind of silly now I know, but that's where I was in my brokenness at that particular time and I just needed to get 'away'. So a girlfriend and I took off for a night, just a couple hours away. It was a great time of healing - just what I needed. As our time away was ending, we went to the mall and hit a bookstore. She'd wanted to get a specific book and I had nothing to get - or so I thought! I was just browsing and this book jumped off the shelf and into my hands. I couldn't wait to crack the spine and dive into it! I recall reading it in quite a short amount of time and having a paradigm shift as a result of reading it. Looking back on that time now I am aware that going through that difficult time is one of the best things I've 'suffered', because it brought me once again, to the foot of the cross and made me realize that the only One I needed to rely on and trust was Jesus to get me through it - and anything else in my life. For this lesson alone, I am forever grateful. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take." (Proverbs 3:5-6)

I want to share some nuggets from this chapter that really stood out and spoke to me. I pray that something from the following touches your heart in some way as well.

"Through trust, we connect with God in a way that shows our reliance on him and our surrender to him. This is what he desires most from us. He wants us to trust him and depend on him more than any other thing. In fact, he says that without trust, or faith, it is impossible to please him, to have a relationship with him, or to receive anything from him. Trust is the essence of "faith," and it opens you up to all that you need from God."
"As you trust, you will step out in faith and receive blessings you never would have received and accomplish things you never thought possible. It is the way that your life becomes larger."
"All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen." (quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson)
"We don't always know what's in front of us or what will happen next; but if we know the One who knows, we can trust him to take care of things because we know he loves us."
"Trust moves us beyond where we are and connects us with what he wants to do for us and what he wants us to do for him."
"If we do not trust, we are limited to our own resources, and we weren't created to do it all on our own."
"It's easy to believe God on the mountaintop; but when we're in the valley and it's dark and we feel all alone, that's when our faith is tested. When we lose a loved one or a job, our health, or a relationship, these are the times when trusting God is difficult. But they are also the times when we need him the most. They are the times when we need to know that no matter how bad it is, God is there with us, that he loves us and it going to take us through whatever we face. If we keep holding on to God during the dark times, we will find that he never leaves our side as we walk through the pain and that when we come out on the other side, he is still there beside us and that our faith has been strengthened in the process. And so the next time we encounter difficulty, we are stronger and our trust in him is even greater. Sometimes he does not deliver us from our difficulty at all, but simply gives us his presence and the presence of others."
"I know he is real, and I trust him with the things I do not understand and take comfort in the fact that he gets it even when I don't."
"When we connect ourselves to the source of all that's good - even when we don't quite understand it all - we open our lives up to unimaginable blessings."
"Trust is not the same as stupidity. God is not responsible for our idiotic decisions and will not bail us out when we make them. He gave us brains to use. Don't confuse foolishness with faith."
"Remember, faith without action is dead. If you are not stepping out in some way that is vulnerable, you are not being stretched and are not growing in your faith."
"Trust is a muscle that can grow as you learn to be certain, that he can bring about what you cannot see."
Ask yourself if there was anything from your past that has harmed your ability to trust. Was it people? The church? Did you have a traumatic experience? All of those can affect our ability to trust. I challenge each of us to be stretched and open the door to the blessings God has for us by putting our trust in HIM.....
Until next time,
K

Great poem for pondering...

Life is too short to wake up with regrets.
So, love the people who treat you right and
Love the ones who don't, just because you can.

Believe everything happens for a reason.
If you get a second chance,
Grab it with both hands.
If it changes your life, let it.

Anger slowly.
Forgive quickly.

God never said life would be easy.
He just promised it would be worth it.

This was from an email a long-time friend had sent me a while ago. When I came across it I realized why I had kept it. Where I am in my life right now, everything in this poem rings true. I don't know if it's because I've become more sensitive, or because of the significant amount of growth I've seen in myself the past year - perhaps both! Each line, although written together, can stand completely on its own and makes just as much of a statement independently as it does collectively.

Although these things seem so simple to do, I find it very difficult to sometimes follow through with. I suppose that's 'human nature', however, that's no excuse - just the 'worlds' way of justifying our downfalls when it comes to living a life modeled by Christ. I don't know about you, but I don't care to be judged or justified by the 'world' - my identity is in Christ, not the world. This being said, and 'knowing' it in my heart, doesn't mean I never get duped by the enemy. If anything, the enemy uses that to try and win us over or at least pull us away as far as he can from God. I've experienced this first hand, time, and time again. What I've learned from that is that without taking every thought captive to the mind of Christ and talking to Him constantly, the relationship with him can suffer and the results are NOT good. Thankfully the Lord's grace is bigger than any of our wrongdoings, and his love is unmeasurable! Doesn't that make you smile and warm your heart?! It does mine!

So, I guess what the Lord has put on my heart today is that, for me, it comes down to the last two lines of the poem. "God never said life would be easy. He just promised it would be worth it."
Amen? Amen!!

Until next time,
'K'