Trusting God

Martin Luther once said that every Christian problem resolves itself into this simple question: "Can I or can I not trust God?"

I am not completely sure that this is true, but I've certainly found that it is the core question of my life as well as my walk with God.

At this exact moment, I'm also listening to my Theology 501 lecture and taking notes. My professor just said, "A man once told me, 'If you don't learn to trust God when you are young, you will never trust Him when you're older.' "

I'm struck by that statement. Is it true?
I don't want to find out.

So how are we supposed to learn to trust God?
I can tell you the patented Michaela Approach TM. I want Him to prove Himself faithful to me continually without me ever having to take a step outside my comfortable boundaries. Instead, like Beth Moore says in her Breaking Free study, trust in God is developed by first stepping out, throwing it all on the line, and seeing God come through in His power. We learn that He is trustworthy by letting go and taking ourselves to the limits of our weaknesses and then discovering that He has caught us.

Comfortable boundaries. People talk a lot about boundaries and comfort zones in church. Usually those words are followed along with "public testimony" and "mission trips" and "the bathroom was just a hole in the ground." Oh, for the life of a missionary. No, I know that the life of missionary would be extremely hard. I've gone on enough trips and lived that life enough times to know that it would stretch me in dimensions I didn't know existed. But I know I could do it. I can live with no hairbrush and no toilet paper. I can speak in front of 500 people who care or 10 people who don't. I don't specifically enjoy it, but I could do it.

No, stepping outside my comfort zones involves something entirely different for me at this point in my life. I shudder to think about it. For me, throwing myself off the cliffs (of Insanity!!) involves things like:

• paying bills
• paying a tithe
• calling people and asking if they'll do stuff with me in hopes they'll be my friends
• going to new churches and sitting alone during the service
• working
• sending my resume in to places where I don't know what they'll think
• scheduling interviews
• buying things I need
• living alone

Getting up every day in this apartment is stepping out of my comfort zone. Lots of times I'm not really sure if I'll make it. But I've begun to see that I'm not trusting God. Actually, I haven't even been struggling with trusting God. I've not even considered Him as an option. (Friends, always consider God as at least an option.) So I've read my books and buried myself in my schoolwork (good old reliable schoolwork. I love it because it's so wonderfully predictable.) and stayed inside and tried to escape from this life that I'm afraid of living.

But now I think I'm learning to see that trusting God is not only an option, it is The Option.