Trust

 "Do you trust me?" was the question I felt being repeated over and over again last night as I lay in bed unable to sleep.  "Do you trust me?"

He was asking, "If you forgive those who have rejected you, do you trust me to heal your heart?

"If you choose to not repay evil with evil and instead choose to do good and to bless others, do you trust me to bless you in return?"

"If you choose not to obsess and worry about how you should respond but instead let me do your thinking for you, do you trust me to give you the right words when you need them at the right time?"

"If you choose to put me first in every single area of your life, do you trust me to take care of you well?

It certainly was so much easier to lay in bed upset, hurt, angry, obsessing, and brooding over how I should best repay this latest hurt.  It was easy making up conversations with people that I feel have really been honestly very uncaring or at times down right mean.  It was easy drumming up lots of emotion and justification for feeling the way I did. 

However, it was getting me more and more upset, causing my heart to race and my mind to race, and it was getting me no where.  It wasn't making me feel any better.  In fact, it was making me feel worse and worse by the moment.  And, it was keeping me from sleep--a very important commodity.

I felt like the discussion between the Lord and I was over whether I would let this latest hurtful situation ruin me, my sleep, my appetite, and my Christian witness, or if I were going to decide to do the right thing anyway and completely trust that whatever resulted would be for my good.

In my mind, it became a Gethsemane moment--a moment where I was struggling enormously with the way we had been treated and I was struggling to keep my mind focused on what was the right thing to do.  Jesus had struggled there in the garden with the burden of what was to come--His crucifixion--knowing that He would be wrongly accused and treated more horribly than one can bear.  Though His circumstances were infinitely more devastating and demanding, I felt last night as if the question were still the same:

"Do you trust me with your life?  Will you follow through on what you have committed to do?  Will you love your enemies even when they wish to have nothing to do with you?  Will you rest in Me and in My ways instead of in your own limited, fallible ones?"

It took three separate times during the night for me to wrestle with the Lord over this decision, and thankfully, three separate times I had to concede that being in His hands and doing things His way was certainly a much safer and wiser road than the one I was headed on. I'm happy to report that sleep did come immediately on each occasion when I said that I would trust Him because, as the scripture says, "You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you." 

May we keep trusting.....
Blessings, kim