Trust Me

     Have you ever had to go to one of those team building meetings that seem so popular these days with companies and organizations?  The whole bases for these meetings are to get your staff or organization to work together as a cohesive unit.

     Each of those meetings use various games, all geared to solve some problem; creating a stories out of random words drawn from a hat, building a structure out of straws, or drawing a picture from the instructions proffered by their team members.  One of the oldest of these games is a trust building exercise where one person falls backwards into the waiting arms of another person.  At least they hope that they will be caught.

     Building trust is essential in any relationship. In our spiritual life it is mandatory. Hard habits are hard to break. Especially here in Texas we are an independent breed. We hold the notion that we will be beholding to no man. We think that, “If it is to be, it is up to me.” We would not even trust one of our own family members to catch us in one of those exercises.  My family would yell, “Ole,” laughing as I crashed into the floor.

     We spend most of our lives making ourselves into our own personal god. It is extremely hard for us to “Let go and let God.” Most of us would say that I trust God to take care of XYZ, but I’ll take care of the rest. It does not even have to be on a conscience level. We can let God have every aspect of our lives and yet still find ourselves picking up things or worrying about things that are not ours to worry about.

      Jesus said follow me because my yoke is light. It is light because He is taking care of everything. Doing all the heavy lifting. The weary can have rest because He is carrying their burdens. It is all in His power not in ours. If it was up to us we would mess it up every time. Nothing says that we mistrust God like a joyless life filled with drudgery.

     Not too long ago I was blessed to perform the wedding of a dear friend. This was not my first Rodeo, not my first wedding. It was important that it go off without of a hitch. I have been preaching off and on since 2002 and I have always been a little nervous before a sermon.

     While preparing the sermon I trusted God to give me the right words. I trusted Him to give me the right passages to read from. I even trusted Him to run all aspects of the service.  Yet I was more nervous than I’ve ever been.  I almost forgot the sermon that I had spent hours memorizing. The rings got tangled in the strings of the pillow. I had to have one of the groomsmen untie it so that I could do the ring ceremony. 

     I was upset that the wedding had not come off the way that I had thought that it would. I was so disappointed. I had the perfect passages.  I had thought of everything that could go wrong and had minimized it. I had memorized the sermon and I had it down cold. All that I had to do was to preach the service.  Give me a half an hour and I could still do the service by memory today.

   And yet… and yet…  After the service I prayed. I asked God why things had gone wrong, why I was so nervous. The answer that God gave me stunned me. He said,” You did not Trust me.” “You trusted me in everything, but when it came to the sermon you did not trust me.” “When it came to the most important part, you did not trust me.”

     In the clutch I did not trust God to catch me. I figured that he would let me fall so I took things into my own hands. I tried to do it in my own power. I took out the “me” god, and put it at the center of my life. I should have seen the outcome before it even happened.  Trust is essential in any relationship. Our relationship with God is no different. It may take a while but we can cultivate a relationship built on trust. It does not even take toilet paper suits or crayon drawings suitable for framing on you fridge.

Good to the last drop!

 You can get coffee anywhere in the city. It’s pretty hard to go anywhere without passing a Starbucks. You can get coffee at 7-11, a Mc Café at Mickie-d’s, Kona that once could only be had at specialty roasters, can now be had at any hole in the wall. Whether you go for your morning Joe or a tiny thimble full of cappuccino, there is nothing like a good cup of coffee. Nothing ruins a good cup faster than reaching across the diner counter, or pulling a carton out of the fridge before you realize the cream you just poured into your cup has gone bad.

     Anything that is left long enough will start to sour and over time will become unusable. If we were not to use our legs, the muscles will start to shrink and over time will cease to function. If we do not exercise our faith, it will shrink. We can get to the point where we don’t see God working in our lives, after a while we can get to the point where we don’t see the blessings anymore. We act as if there is some kind of point system with God. When we get to that magic number, we get to quit, this far and no more.  We get to a certain age where we think that we have done everything that we were supposed to do. Our faith was never supposed to have an expiration date. 

     If you are living and breathing God has a plan for you. It is us who puts restrictions on how God gets to use us or work through us. Jeremiah was called to be a prophet of the people of God. All he had to do was to repeat everything that God told him to speak, but Jeremiah told God that God was wrong and that he was too young to be of any use to God. If Samuel had looked through the eyes of man, instead of God’s eyes, David would have been left in the fields tending the flocks. He did not look like the kind of King that the people expected. He did not even look like a King that they would have chosen for themselves.

      Moses thought that his time for serving God was long gone, dead and buried along with the Egyptian that he had slain. It was forty years later before God was ready to use him to bring Israel out of Egypt. Moses would later take the people to the very brink of the promised-land. The night before they were to take the land they sent spies into the land to check it out. God had said that the land was theirs, all they had to do was to go in and take it, and instead the people believed not God but the spies who told them it could not be done.

     For forty years the people wandered the wilderness, they trailed behind them the bleached bones of those who would rather listen to men than to God.  God raised a generation that would have the faith to follow Him. Forty years later when Joshua got them to the edge of the river Jordan, he would not listen to any voice other than the one that said the land is yours. They crossed that mighty river on dry land. Joshua told the people that God had given them everything that the eye could see from mountain to sea. There were still those who said,” There might be Giants.” Caleb at the age of 78 came forward and said,” There might be Giants, but God said go.” “There might be Giants, but give me the Mountain.” “There might be Giants for He makes Young out of the Old.”

     If you still draw a breath, God is not through with you. If you still draw breath, God still has a plan for you. We were never intended to sit, soak, and sour. Most of us think , I have done enough, I can sit and be fed; but what we find is that we have nothing to show for it but day old Manna. God has given us enough for today and if he has given you more than you need, it is up to you to pass on the rest. Look around you, there are plenty of ways that you can serve. Jesus tells us that even if we give someone a cup of cool water in His name we show our love for Him.      

      There are plenty of people who need to hear from God. There are widows and orphans who we are responsible for. There are prisoners who need to be visited and not all of them are in jail, some are in the prison of failing bodies.  We are responsible to the least of these. We have a job to do, but we hold to our excuses, I’m too young, God couldn’t possibly use me, I’ve failed God, and it’s too late for me. We tell ourselves, “There might be Giants,”    God still says “Go.”