When God Whispers, “Trust me”

SURPRISE: Internet was better than I thought.  However Pictures won’t come until the next post.

WARNING:  This post turned out to be long.  So for those who want the short version…God is teaching me a lot here.  However years ago I promised God that when he taught me something I would share it.  So for those who want details read on… 

On arrival in Tanzania the exhaustion of life hit and hit hard.  In Senegal we are daily living in our weakness.  We are doing things that are hard and often stretch us to new levels.  However we are choosing to live like that because we know that when we are weak, God is strong.  We want to see him glorified and believe that he is glorified when we empty ourselves and allow him to live through us.  I focused my time in Tanzania on seeking God, because I knew I needed him.  The training is wonderful but it was not my focus this time, God was.  As I read God’s Word, stories and words that I have read all my life came to life in new ways.  I always knew that the words came from God and were his words to us, but now they were my source of life and strength.

One story in particular that came to life for me was the manna in the desert.  That is how I could best describe life right now.  We are living each day on what he provides for that day and that day alone.  We aren’t given extra or more, but just enough to get us through the day.  Living like this really helps me understand the whining and complaining of the Israelites and to realize that in all reality I do exactly the same thing.    God really convicted me of two areas in particular.

•  Worry  –  Living like this is tiring and sometimes I think, “God if you just provided a little more of a cushion, then living would be less tiring.”  Can’t I just keep a little and store it up for tomorrow?  However I realized that the reason I was so tired is because I worried each day about whether we would have the strength to make it through the next day.  I can testify that each day we have enough strength to make it through the struggles of that day, but I doubt and worry each day about the day we will fall over the edge.  Yet if I just trusted that each day the manna would be there as he promised than life would be a whole lot less tiring. 

•  Discontentment  –  I don’t complain about how we live, but I do think we deserve a break and some variety every once in a while (manna gets a little tiring).  God does send us those breaks, but when he doesn’t I start to whine to God.  It is always dangerous when blessings turn into rights.  I had started thinking of “my idea” of breaks as a deserved right and not a blessing that God sends our way in his way.  Rights often lead to complaints, rather than appreciation for what God does provide.  Ultimately it comes down to my lack of faith that God knows what we need and will provide it.  God knows our limits and I need to trust that he will not push us farther than we can go.  Breaks are not a bad thing as even Jesus sought them out, but Jesus was never angry when the crowd interrupted his time and in all honestly that is not my usual response.

This week God took me in my broken, tired state and just whispered, “trust me”.  Even when I am tired and weary, I need to trust that God is my source of rest.  I need to trust that for the moment a place of full dependence on him is where he wants us to be.  It is not flashy or glamorous, but we trust that God is Glorifying himself through our weakness.