Prayer does not always come easy to me. Many times, I pray and try to trust, but in the meantime, while God is “thinking” about my prayer, I act. I try to fix things. I try to figure out HOW to fix things. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
I’ve bought into the adage, “God helps those who help themselves.” However, lately I’ve run into problems that are so big that not only have I been forced to pray with constant vigor, I’ve had to trust that He knows better than me.
What I haven’t done until recently was stop asking God what His plan is, and wait in hope. While that sounds obvious, simply saying, “Jesus, I trust in You!” is much easier than letting those words permeate into my very being.
Lately, I’ve had no choice. And I now thank God for that. He’s shown me I don’t need to know the plan, but that I MUST trust in Him. Over time, I have concluded that I don’t even want to KNOW the plan; I trust whatever He wills for me and my family.
Something happened today that solidified that response. Actually three things happened. They were long awaited answers. They were tearful confirmations that it will be okay.
When these things happened, I immediately shared them to the same God with which I’ve shed so many tears. I didn’t call anyone or shout it from the mountaintops. Instead, I sat in silence and shared them with God. Only God.
Then I remembered something I recently read about Jesus. It was written by someone whose love and trust for God goes beyond my imagination. They said, “We are never alone because Jesus never leaves us. To leave us would be acting against His very nature and such a thing is impossible.”
We’ve talked so many times on this blog about human nature and sometimes, divine nature. But typically, we’ve discussed them as two separate identities, science and faith. Even in all my research for my book on how God is in our DNA—how close He is to us in every since cell we have—I’ve never considered the impact of what it means for God’s nature to be so intertwined with ours that He simply can never leave us. This certainly bears more investigation!
In a book near and dear to my heart, Behold, I Stand at the Door and Knock, the author says that the only thing that is ours is our misery and that is the only thing God wants from us.
Once again, I am amazed. I’m amazed that a God who made everything would want my misery—and then when I give it to Him—He turns it into joy.
Today I giggled in the fact that I don’t know God’s plan for me. I smiled at the fact that God’s nature is embedded in me, and then I chucked at the fact that it took me so long to get here.
