My oldest daughter came home from school one day. Entered the living room where, earlier in the day, her youngest siblings (with some help from dad) had made blanket tents. I’m sure many of you are familiar with the blanket tent. Big blankets strewn across furniture to make a tent like structure that often spends more time falling down that it does actually being a tent.

Well, Lily, she walked into the living room… and promptly sat down.

Not on the couch.

Not on the chair.

Not on the floor.

On the blanket tent.

I must have gasped, or made a face, or some sort of comment…

Because Lily looked at me incredulously and said, “WHAT?!”

I was flabbergasted that she had walked right over and sat down on a chair, which was sitting on a toddler table, under the blanket tent.

I exclaimed, “You could have fallen off! That chair is on a table and you could fall!”

Lily, shrugs her shoulders, “I knew it was a chair.”

[Oh, for the ability to have that level of trust. I knew in that moment that there was a lesson God was speaking to me, hence the picture.]

I don’t trust easily. At least, so VERY often, it feels that way to me.

Sometimes following God seems like sitting on that chair… the form of the chair was visible, but it was covered in a blanket and the whole stability of the situation could not be determined. I would not have sat upon that potential death trap. But Lily saw it a different way, it obviously was a chair. So she sat. And don’t people often have a similar experience when it comes to following or trusting in God?!

To one person God is who God is… trust is easy.

To another, there is too much unknown, too much that cannot be understood, too much that is not seen… trust is hard… near impossible at times.

Proverbs 3:5-6 says
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.”

 

Trusting in God with ALL MY HEART isn’t easy. I think what makes it difficult is when my own understanding gets in the way. Call it my intellect, reasoning, life experience, survival instinct… whatever you want to call it, the truth is I get in the way of being able to trust God when I make the choice to add the qualifier that God must make sense, be understandable, show me His reasons THEN I will trust.

But it doesn’t work that way.

Sometimes you have to sit in the chair of trust/faith even despite what your understanding of the situation may say.

God isn’t trustworthy BECAUSE his ways make sense to us.

God is trustworthy.

That is a hard thing- to trust without seeing. To choose to submit to him and then he will make your paths straight. Not the other way around, mind you… it is not: first God makes your path straight, therefore you submit, nope not in that order. Proverbs 3:6 says first we submit and then he makes our paths straight.

Sometimes my path in life seems to be wandering, unclear, or even in a dangerous place. So I begin to wonder if I can trust God… ‘cause things aren’t looking so good.

But that thinking is backwards.

Perhaps my path isn’t clear and straight because I am leaning on my own understanding or not submitting to the Lord.

What about you? Where are you having trouble setting aside your understanding so you can truly trust in God? In what ways are you waiting for God to make things clear or right so that then you will submit to Him?

Oh God, Proverbs 3:5-6 is a beautiful promise of your love and care for us. Yet, so often WE get in the way… our need for understanding… our need to know how everything is going to turn out… But our true need is to trust whole-heartedly in you! God help us to be people who trust you, not in ourselves. Help us to be people who learn to truly submit to you and allow you to clear the way.

~Jillene