Prayer ~ a wonderful gift to us. I’ve been learning lots about 2-way communication in prayer. Listening to God in my prayer times is becoming more natural. When I concentrate on just asking or working my way through a list of requests, I’m missing out on the blessing of prayer, a conversation with my Father who loves me.
For several years I have been asking God this question during my devotional times, God, what would it look like for me to trust You for today? I don’t always hear the answer to my question immediately, but I can usually tell you the answer at some point. Our omnipresent, omniscient God has answers and He knows the timing when I’m most receptive to hear.
I’m realizing that my worrying prayers that reached into the future were keeping me from trusting God today. The “I ams” referring to God are throughout the Scriptures. That challenges me to trust the God who is the trustworthy one today. It has been helpful to me to think about what I am giving up when I don’t trust God today.
From reading Truefaced (I highly recommend this book), a principle that has stood out to me is until I learn to trust God, I will never be able to receive His love. ~ By the way this is true in our relationships with each other as well. When I don’t trust my husband, I cannot receive his love. ~ I NEED to be aware of God’s love for me every day. God wants me to be aware of His love every day. God’s love is the security I need to face the uncertainty of life. So I pray, God, what would it look like to trust You today? I don’t want to give up knowing His love.
Brennan Manning has also helped me flesh out what it means to trust God today. He challenged me in his book, Ruthless Trust, (another I recommend) with the thought that I don’t need new insights, but I do need to trust God with the insights I have already received. So my prayer for today might sound like, God I know the truth that You are going to meet my needs, Father help me to be aware of how You are providing today. I don’t want to give up knowing God as my provider.
Manning also says that my biggest obstacle in my journey of trust is my personal sense of insecurity (I’m not spiritual enough to believe God), inadequacy (I’m not mature enough to believe God) and inferiority (I’m not good enough to believe God). When I default to any of those lies in parentheses I’m not trusting God, I’m trusting me. That is scary! I don’t want to give up living out of my true identity and trusting the only Trustworthy One.
So what does it look like for me to trust God today? Not sure yet. But I want to be quiet enough so I can listen for His voice and trust what I hear.
“Listen diligently to me, … delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear and come to me; hear that your soul may live.” Isaiah 55:2b,3
No comments:
Post a Comment