Trusting God with Everything

You may notice that right under the title of this blog is Proverbs 3:5-6, which states, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight." Well, in my short life, I have discovered the truth of these words. I have not had the easiest life, and I have not had the hardest life either. Various challenges, discouragements, and setbacks have happened in which I've had to rely solely on God to get me and my family through whatever the situation may be. There was a time when my parents were in between jobs and we barely had enough money to pay the bills let alone put food on the table. My mom died of cancer less than five years ago. And people I thought I could trust have let me down.

Through each hardship, or challenge, I have learned to trust God with everything. All my fears, all my doubts, discouragements, resentments, failures, successes, insecurities, what ifs, anger, pain, searching--I have learned to give all this and more up to God when I'm at my wit's end, and even before that. As soon as I know something is going to be too big for me to take care of on my own, I go to God immediately and ask Him for whatever it is that I need.

The cool thing is that throughout my life, I have seen God provide for every single need of mine. He has not failed me yet, and I don't expect Him to fail ever. Every time that I have come to God in prayer with a need of mine, He has taken care of it and then some. Recently money has been tight due to unexpected surprises with taxes, car repairs, and whatnot. With all of this I went to God straight away to ask that He would take care of me. Sometimes not knowing what to say I would say, "God, help me! Help me! I don't even know what to say, just help me!" And God, knowing my situation, worries, and needs, took care of me and caused someone to pay for a car repair, caused someone else to give me their patio furniture, caused some friends to take me on a "date" so that I could enjoy myself, caused a certain home repair store to give me fencing for free, and caused one of my volunteers to decide to stay put while in a shortage of volunteers.

It is amazing how things have seemed to just "work out" in various aspects of my life. I don't believe it's coincidence. In fact, I don't believe in coincidence. I believe God purposely made these things happen to show me that He is taking care of me and that I have nothing to worry about. I have never trusted God more in my life than I do right now!

I invite you to take a step of faith and trust God with something in your life. Maybe it's your marriage. Maybe it's a friend or family member. Maybe it's a bad habit or addiction you just can't seem to kick. Maybe it's money problems or health problems. Whatever it is that you're trying to take care of on your own, hand it over to God. Sometimes when it's difficult for me to give something up, I raise my hands in the air and ask God to take it from me. Sometimes it's hard to let go, but when we finally let go and trust God, things work out the way they should. They may not always work out the way we want or expect, but they sometimes turn out better than we expected. The Psalmist was right when he wrote, "In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight."