It’s kind of strange that trusting a good God is one of the toughest assignments the Christian walk has for us. I mean, if God is so good and loving and merciful, shouldn’t it be easy to simply do everything He says? I guess that’s the whole idea of faith and trust. We cannot know for sure that we are able to fully trust in God if everything is easy. Faith is tested in tough situations and when things don’t seem to be going the way we want it to. And it often seems in life that the plans that we make don’t quite work out, and the journey of walking with Christ seems to be in a manner that goes against everything we believe in.
And it seems like this tension is greatest when it comes to desires of the heart. I mean in Ps 103 doesn’t it say that God “satisfies your desires with good things, that your youth would be renewed like the eagles”? If that is the case, then why do my desires seem to be the very thing that I need to lay down in order to be able to fully follow God. To sum up in a nutshell what I believe God spoke to me about this, I believe that our role in this is to lay down our lives including our desires, and then we trust that God will bring about everything that we need, and will satisfy us. This doesn’t happen in our timing, but according to His. And with that, our deepest desire is God, who is our Creator and our everything.
In trying to live according to that, I find myself constantly having to check whether I’ve surrendered myself totally to God, or whether I’ve slowly shifted control back to myself. The way to do that is to ask myself the hardest question: “Should (insert personal desire here) be unfulfilled, would I still be able to love and follow God totally?” In different moments in my life, the personal desire has been different. At one point it was whether I would ever have a girlfriend. More currently the desire is to see my campus grow and increase in influence under my leadership. And to be honest, I haven’t always been able to answer a resounding “yes” to that question. It is a tough question after all. But when I find a “no” bubbling up inside of me, I try to switch back and remember the goodness of God, and everything that He’s already done for me. I choose to continue to love and serve my God even when it feels like it doesn’t make sense, or it is going to bring about some hurt in the present. I believe for God to bring about His victory, and I choose what He wants for me because He sees beyond me.
As I read the story of David in 1 Sam 21 and how he had just found out that King Saul was after his life and so he fled to Nob, I sympathise with how messed up life must have seemed to him. He had been anointed king, but he was a fugitive. He was promised the kingdom, but now he struggled to even feed himself. In the midst of all of that he is given the sword of Goliath, a token from a time that must have seemed long past. It was a reminder to how God had used him to bring a great victory to Israel, and propelled him into a place of authority in the kingdom. It was a reminder that God had called him, and no matter what the current circumstance was God hadn’t changed. What is your sword of Goliath? Have you got your token that you can hold on to when your destiny seems to be slipping away from you? Have you got something to help you say “YES” to the hardest question you could ask yourself? If you don’t, why not step out in faith and kill your giant?
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nateandbec 