Trust Amid Life’s Travels

Jason Janz @ http://www.sharperiron.org has some helpful reminders on Biblical wisdom.

Proverbs 3:5-6—”Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (KJV).

He reminds us to ask: "So how can you tell where your trust lies in Christian decision making? One tangible way to gauge our trust level is to simply examine our prayer lives. The very act of a prayer is a declaration of the fact that our trust is elsewhere. Prayer admits that we need Someone greater than ourselves. Prayer aligns the heart and calms the soul as it submits to the power and wisdom of God. In your private life, how much time is devoted to prayer? In church services or leadership meetings, is prayer viewed as simply the “nod to God” at the beginning of the meeting, or does it take up a good portion of the time?

Another way to measure your trust factor is to take stock of how much you complain. I have been convicted about my complaining spirit. Going on deputation seems to put you in the path that yields itself to grumpiness. In July, our van got stuck at a Bible camp. When someone towed the van, a large rock under the van (unseen by us) bent the drive shaft and tore up the muffler. In August, we blew a tire while going seventy-five down an Arizona freeway. Travel began taking its toll on all of us. I vented often. Mostly to God, then to my wife. However, reading a book by the Puritan John Flavel on the providence of God sent me reeling and repenting. He talks about when we get to heaven. When we see the hand of God in our affairs, how differently we will look at life’s problems. He says, “All the dark, intricate, puzzling providences at which we were sometimes so offended, and sometimes amazed, which we could neither reconcile with the promise nor with each other, nay, which we so unjustly censured and bitterly bewailed, as if they had fallen out quite against our happiness, we shall then see to be to us, as the difficult passage through the wilderness was to Israel, ‘the right way to the city of habitation’ (Ps. 107:7).” There is no need to complain when we trust that everything in our lives comes from the hand of God and is designed for our good".