In God We Trust?

8.19.09

John 14:1

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God;"

About 10 years ago I had an awesome opportunity to serve at a Young Life camp in upstate New York. My job for the month was working on the ropes course where I would get to spend time getting to know each camper as they climbed their way to the top of the trees and put their lives in the safety of only the ropes and me and the other course workers. The month started out great with a few folks who would be in tears by the time they got to the final obstacle which was the free fall. This turned out to be the hardest thing in the world to coerce some people to try. We spent hours trying to convince people that the rope was there to secure them and there was no way that they would get hurt. Some just got lowered down and gave up and others spent so much time in literal tears of fear of not knowing what would happen if they just jumped and trusted that the rope would secure them before they hit the ground. There was one girl who spent forty five minutes crying and screaming that she didn't want to be lowered and certainly didn't want to jump down. There was no way to get her to budge. It took the words and quite literally prayers of four course workers to convince her to trust us that the rope was secure and that she was in no danger by just jumping and trusting that we were trained and that the ropes course was secure.

She finally jumped after the forty five minute therapy session. The look on her face as she plummeted was awesome, but nothing next to the reaction she had when she got unhooked from the ropes. She turned to myself and her leader and asked if she could do the course again later in the week, and maybe even try a flip during the free fall. She went from tears of fear to desires of repetition all because she trusted. To think if she would have never trusted she would have never have had one of the greatest experiences of her week and possibly her life.

Trust is not always the easiest thing to give God. Sometimes it is because we have some stuff that we do not want to hand over to God. Other times it is because we feel like it is just to big. Other times it is because we feel like the stuff we have is just too dirty to bring to God and trust that He is not going to look away. The fact of the matter is that there is nothing that is too big, too ugly and too difficult for God. He wants it all.

The question that we have to ask ourselves is are we going to trust God enough to give Him all that burdens our heart and trust Him with it. One of our biggest struggles as human beings is not wrestling with God it's wrestling with thing on our own and not trusting that God is there for us and will provide for our needs.

We sit on that ropes course ledge in tears not wanting to go back and certainly not trusting enough to drop off and let God be who God is. In His very nature God is a loving, secure, understanding, merciful Father. He has always been and will always be there for us to catch us when we fall. The thought that we have to keep in mind is not whether we CAN trust God, it's whether or not we will trust God.

If we do not trust God to be who He claims to be we may miss out on the best experience that He created us for and that is a life to the full. If we lean on our own understanding and not on who God is than we might miss that free fall at the end of an exciting ropes course.

Thought question: What are you holding onto and trying to figure out on your own? What is it in your life that you will not trust the God of the universe, the creator of life, with and why?