Learning to Trust

I became born again when I was about 19 years old. It’s been over thirty years now. From the very beginning, it has been a walk of learning to trust.

            I had many fears, though I didn’t admit this to others. God knew the hurts that no one else could see. He knew the things that I had buried deep within my heart. I was ashamed of my sensitivity, so I did everything to hide it. I pushed down the wounds and covered them with hardness. I did not want to expose my heart and leave anything open to being wounded again.

            The problem with protecting my own heart is that the stone I placed around it, prevented love from coming in or going out. I trusted no one, including, maybe especially, God. How can you get help when no one can get in?

            In the first dream that I recall having with him, fear and darkness were thick and tangible. He motioned to my heart to come. I wanted to, desperately, but each time I thought about reaching up, fear gripped me again. In the moment that I finally reached up to touch him, in response to his reaching out to me, his love broke through the fear. The brightest light came in and removed all darkness. Where I had only known fear, I was fully consumed by love that I had never known nor imagined.

            I didn’t know at the time, but what a perfect illustration of 1Jn.4:18. Perfect love drives out all fear. He has continued to illustrate that verse for me over the years. It seems each struggle that I have gone through over the years has had a root of fear to it. I didn’t always realize it at the time, often not until God broke through with his love again.

            This same God that has come through for me, again and again, will come through for you. He is love (1Jn.4:8) and He is light (1Jn.1:5). When you are in the darkness of fear, I have found that his light and his love are one of the same. His light is his love and his love is his light.

            My prayer for you and the body of Christ as a whole is that we come into a deeper ability to trust him with our hearts and lives. It is a journey, we are learning to trust. Phil.4:19 says that he will meet all our needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. I pray that he would bring greater trust as he meets whatever your needs are today.

(Photo is Cosmos flowers from Unsplash.com.)