What does it mean to have complete, total trust in Christ?
A lot.
If you look at what Paul writes when he is talking to the Romans, he makes it clear that God carries things out in His time, and everything that happens has a purpose to it.
Romans 8:28 says that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
God truly can take the broken things in our lives and turn them into the beautiful things. However, this requires trust. We have the free will to choose to ignore God and try to work things out on our own. Trust me, I have done this plenty of times. (p.s. it doesn’t work….)
We also have another option: to place our trust in God. Now, this is a lot easier said than done. It’s easy, in my opinion, to say “I’m giving my life to God. Here we go. I’m open to your will. Do whatever you want.”
That’s the easy part.
Most pastors and priests go on and on about that we should be open to following God’s will in our lives. What often goes unspoken of is the actual following of this. We know that we should follow God and seek His plan, but we leave it at that: just a good idea.
Christ didn’t come into the world to tell us that Christianity was a good idea. He didn’t just pop by earth to ask us to go out and let everyone know that He made sense.
He came to love, to save, to redeem. And he left us with the command to spread His love and His church.
In the Gospel of Matthew we see Jesus’s command to ‘go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them…’ (Matthew 28:19)
It’s not a cutesy idea to make friends and be a good person and have a “successful life”. It was a call to something radical, something different, something actually kind of crazy. He asked those apostles to go, leave their families, place their trust entirely in Him, and live out faith.
Our God is unchanging. He desires the same of us today. We have watered down what it really means to be a Christian just to gain some popularity as a people. But has that left us with a bigger, stronger church? Not exactly. It has left many people with lukewarm faith and a longing for something more.
So what do we do about that? We have to be a witness not just to the name “Christian”, but to the life Christ leads us to.
God is creating His masterpiece of the world. We are each but a brushstroke in this work. But, without that stroke and beauty of our life, the masterpiece would not be complete.
Jeremiah went through this…God told Him that He had some pretty awesome plans in store for him. He was going to prosper and have great life (Jeremiah 29:11). BUT, did that come immediately? No. Jeremiah had to wait 70 years for God’s promise to play out.
Abraham was the same way…God promised him a son. When that didn’t happen as fast as Abraham wanted, he tried to take it into his own hands by having a son with the maid Hagar. God later blessed his wife Sarah with the birth of Isaac, but the point is that Abraham didn’t have enough trust to wait for God’s plans to play out.
I think a lot of us expect that as soon as we call ourselves open to God’s will, He is going to start doing just spectacular and great things with our lives. The thing is, sometimes the spectacular and incredible things that He will do are in the most simple and mundane things of life. He takes time to form our hearts. Faith in God means faith in His timing.
We have to look beyond ourselves and the immediate concerns of our life and remember that the world isn’t about us. There’s no need to worry or stress out about the unimportant things. We have no control over them. God has a plan, He is creating a masterpiece.
Just trust.
I’ll leave you with a prayer I can’t make it through an hour without saying. It’s incredibly short but says so much.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will direct your paths.
Proverbs 3, 5-6