By Buddy Dawson
Learning to trust:
Part 9 in a multi-part series
Moving back into the Wilmington area after so many years proved to be a daily walk of trust. My wife and I knew very few spirit filled believers and no gathering of like-minded believers for fellowship. Newlywed, our finances were getting low and our lack of direction for our new ministry was of great concern.
One of the life lessons we began to learn in this time of testing changed our lives and I believe could not be learned any other way. When we are looking intently into the future for our value and worth, we are not listening to the Father. Anything we do to try to guarantee stability on our own terms will actually rob us of the freedom to simply follow Him today; we will resort to our own wisdom instead of following His. The greatest freedom God can give us is to trust His ability to take care of us each day.
Thankfully, when our own hunger for him began to eclipses anything else, we found ourselves alongside others heading in that same direction and a new church fellowship soon followed.
At the same time, until we learn how to trust God for everything, we unknowingly will seek to control others for the things we think we need. In the beginning by not trusting Him, the first Eve did what she thought was right for her. So much of what we do today is driven by our anxiety that God is not working on our behalf. We have no idea of the actions and peace that trust produces.
Instead of teaching people how to act more Christian, we should help them know Jesus better through His word and He will change each of us from the inside out. We can change our outward behavior to fit the rules and regulations, but it only pushes the real problems even deeper. When our thinking begins to line up with His thinking, then everything He is becomes available to us.
This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success (Joshua 1:8 NKJV). Without having the assurance that this is God’s will for me, I can only hope. But knowing His will opens the door for every promise to come to pass in my life.
Some do not believe it is God’s will to heal, while others believe it is God’s will to heal, but not heal everyone. Still others believe that God uses sickness and suffering to teach us something, or to bring humility. In the next few weeks we will examine each of these scripturally, so that the Holy Spirit can begin to move unhindered in and through those who believe.
