Lessons Learned

Wow. I make trusting God a focus for the new year, and He makes me exercise that trust almost from the get-go. I'm loving it because it reminds me how present the Lord is in my life, and that He is lovingly watching over me and guiding me.

In the past, well before Michael's diagnosis, I did not know how to trust God. I thought in order to have the "blessings" I wanted in life, that I needed to work hard. Not just work hard at work, but work hard at anything that meant something to me. So, I strived for what I wanted. I pushed. I pulled. I persuaded. When the object of my desire did not move as quickly as I wanted him to (yes, I do mean Michael), I experienced anxiety, insecurity, and angst. It was awful! It was no way to live, and it really was no way to live for the Lord.

Presently, I am experiencing the need to trust and wait upon the Lord. The old me would have kicked my powers of persuasion and communication skills into high-gear. The older, perhaps wiser, me is content to trust and wait.  Younger me would have thought that approach was too passive. The older me finds peace in this.

And each day as I'm learning to trust Him more, He gives me beautiful truths like this:

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good;
Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!

Psalm 34:8 

And this excerpt from Jack Kinsella:   

Trusting in God's promises is like putting batter in the oven. If the combination of ingredients, temperature and time are correct, I don't need much faith to know I'll be pulling a cake out shortly.

There are two kinds of promises in Scripture; conditional and unconditional. An example of an unconditional promise is the promise of eternal security. It is unconditional in the sense that, once you take the step of giving yourself to Christ, He keeps you, unconditionally, until He takes you Home to be with Him.

Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath BEGUN a good work in you will PERFORM it until the day of Jesus Christ.  {Philippians 1:6}

First, we are told to be 'confident' of the promise, then a statement of fact, and then the unconditional promise is laid out for us. The statement of fact is that it was Jesus Who began a good work in us at salvation. And the promise is that, having begun that good work, He will continue to perform it 'until the day of Jesus Christ' when we stand before Him at the Bema Seat.

The second kind of promise in Scripture is conditional. We opened with a discussion of a conditional promise. If one seeks a multitude of counselors, then one is promised safety. If one seeks out godly counsel, and then follows that counsel, one is promised a blessing.


I have no idea what blessings the Lord has in store for me in the year ahead, but I have peace about His ways and His timing. And that peace is a by-product of trusting Him.