Years ago, I had trouble differentiating the times when I was relying solely on my ability to produce results from times when I was trusting God. I knew that trusting God consistently would always translate to inevitable success, but I felt that the line demarcating my trust in God from trust in myself was too thin. So thin that it would go unnoticed whenever I deviated.
I remember chatting with a lady in my university days; she would tell me how she always prayed and expected her prospective husband to propose to her before she was 25 years old. But from our conversations, it was obvious that the reason she was confident that this expectation would be fulfilled was not necessarily because she trusted God implicitly, but that she was beautiful, God-fearing and, a virgin – and of course, those were the qualities most good guys wanted (her opinion). Then I thought to myself, God gave her all those good qualities, after all “What do you have that God hasn’t given you?” So if she expected her “God-given credentials” to get her a man, did that amount to self-trust?
I hadn’t come up with an answer yet when I heard a fellow believer say – “To excel in your academics, read your books as though you don’t have a God and have never prayed, and then, pray to God as though you have never read”. Wow! I thought it made absolute sense at the time and, I immediately began an attempt to excel by this principle. But as the days went by and I grew as a Christian, I started asking myself – could you ask a fish to swim as though it were out of water? If in God I live, and move and have my being, how can I read as though I don’t have a God? From that day on, I started practicing “Spirit-directed reading” i.e. getting direction from the Holy Spirit regarding the major topics from which the examination questions would be culled, and then actually studying on that basis. I got fantastic results this way, but I knew deep down that there was more to trusting God than I had discovered.
A friend of mine shared this powerful statement regarding trusting God after reading last week’s devotional, and I think he was spot on. He said “It is not that God starts where our strengths end, it is that we start with and follow Him all through our life’s journey or end up failing woefully on our own”. It’s either ALL of Him or NONE of Him. I love this! At any time, our efficiency without God’s sufficiency is a deficiency. We have to walk with him all the way. You don’t need to veer off the road to remember that Jesus can take the wheel; let him take the wheel as you start your engine. You don’t need to be diagnosed with an incurable disease before you remember the healing power of God; learn to live in good health by His power everyday. You don’t need an embarrassing quit notice from your landlord before you remember that God has the whole world in his hands; start seeing yourself as a provider of shelter for the needy.
In a nutshell, the habit of running to God only when there is “fire on the mountain” is not biblical trust. Trusting God goes beyond and should precede our obvious daily needs. You can make living in perpetual trust in God a lifestyle by understanding and appreciating the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Before you knew what sin and success was, Christ paid the price for your redemption. Before you understood how to interpret the clock, He secured the best future for you by his blood. Likewise, before you see any need, your heart should be firm in God. Seek Him for who He is; of course He is also a rewarder of them that seek him. Embrace the redemptive work of Jesus – it is a total package. Rest assured that your challenges are infinitesimal when compared to His infinite love. God did not keep back his own Son, but he gave him for us. If God did this, won’t he freely give us everything else? (Romans8:32 CEV).Let this mind-set rule your heart always.
Tope Aladenusi
