Hi how are you all this week? I am well. Even though everything seems to be getting back to normal from the last two years, the world still seems to be in turmoil. The Bible was right about this time – wars, rumours of wars, floods, famines etc. The world and the future can be a scary place if you don’t know Jesus.
This brings me to the blog post this week – when it is hard to trust. I don’t know about you but sometimes and in some situations it is hard to trust God and His Word. I think I know why and it is a little word with a lot of hold – that word is control.
It is easy to trust God when there is an element of control in it. If you are believing for healing for a headache, you know that you can still take medication to make the pain go away.
But when God says trust and you have no control, then it becomes harder to trust. The story of Jonah is a great place to see this.
In Jonah chapter 1, God told Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh and cry out against it. This sounds like a simple command. However, Jonah did not want to do it so he ran away. Why would he do that? We find that out later in chapter 4.
You see for us to trust God wholeheartedly, we must also believe wholly in His love for us and others. It is when we don’t accept that God loves others as much as He loves us, then we have a problem of trust. We base our love on other peoples deeds and actions but God bases His love for us on Who He is. God is love and as such He is wholly love.
In chapter 3 of Jonah, Jonah eventually goes to the city of Nineveh and preaches to them that unless they change, God will judge their city to destroy it. What happened? This ungodly city repented of their deeds and sat in sackcloth and ashes. Then God relented of what He said He would do.
Jonah should have been happy but he wasn’t. In chapter 4, verse 2, Jonah complains to God. He basically said that God I knew you would do this because You are a gracious and merciful God Who is slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness. You see Jonah knew Who God was.
But we still see that Jonah didn’t trust what God said. In verse 5, Jonah went and sat outside the city to see what would become of it.
Trusting God is hard when we don’t accept the nature of God. God is always good, always merciful and always kind. He only has ours and others best interests at heart. We don’t need to control the situations around us, we just need to know Who God is.
This week, if you are finding it hard to trust God in certain areas, find some verses in the Bible that speak about Who God is. Remind yourself often of them and I will too.
As we see God working in our lives and others, our trust in God will get easier. He loves you dearly and uniquely and He loves others the same.
Bless you heaps and keep living the life God intended for you.
Karen
Living the life God intended 