Stepping Stones: Trust in Action

As I reflect on my time during the Discipleship Training School, I think one of the biggest things I learned in DTS was about trusting God in a deeper way, what exactly that means and looks like. God asked me to step out and do some pretty challenging and terrifying things during those 5 months. As someone who struggles a bit with social anxiety and does not like being the focal point of most things, I really had to battle my flesh when the Lord kept prompting me to give sermons or preach, help lead worship, lead Bible studies, and share my testimony all over the place! AHHH, I was screaming inside!! Even to the very end of the program. At one of our last outreach locations, a village on Lake Tanganyika up near the DRC boarder, God put it on my heart (yet again) to speak in the church service my team was leading. Torin did the sermon, and Gabriel gave his testimony, so I did the short devotional/word of encouragement that's customary for a lot of the churches I went to in Zambia (think basically a short sermon). This was a Baptist church deep in a village, so women speaking in church was not typical. Needless to say, though God certainly put this on my heart, I was extra nervous. 

During this time, I had put in my staff application to come back to Beulah full time but had not heard back. Nor had I heard when I would hear back. Nor did I know if I was keeping my flight to the States in a few weeks' time or changing it. There was a lottt of reasons to be anxious and I was really struggling to trust God. And as usual, I was preparing to speak and had absolutely nothing to say, just the pure conviction that God was saying to go and speak... Often times on DTS I would even be walking up to the pulpit to give my testimony still asking God for what to say and He would say "just open your mouth" and His Spirit came powerfully, taking my steps of obedience as worship and showed up in ways that pierced the hearts of many and moved me to tears almost every time. I always pray for the people I'm speaking to beforehand and ask that even if one person might be touched by the Lord through the words He gives me, that He'd use me to reach them. But I was like Lord, this is no time to be spontaneous! Not with preaching the Word like this! Thankfully, He agreed. 

The night before, I was up late just wrestling God. After so many hours of sitting and listening for what to say and still nothing, I realized I just needed Him in that moment, even just for all the things going on personally. This whole DTS really was a journey of faith. Even just the journey of getting there: preparing to go and still fundraising knowing what God had said about it all, yet not really knowing if I would be medically cleared to do an Adventure DTS out in the bush somewhere in Zambia! Then God reminded me of Proverbs 3:5-6 which says "trust in the Lord with all your heart; and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight." 

I realized how clearly this text was saying to trust the Lord. He reminded me of all the little lessons I'd learned throughout DTS and before, that trust isn't a feeling, trust is an action. It's walking at the speed of faith knowing you're in the hands of God and that no matter where you step, He will catch you. Trust is a choice, choosing to surrender your plans, your understanding, and your will to His and cling to what He's spoken. Trust is a response to our relationship with Jesus. And as much as it is a choice, it's fair to say that it can be hard to trust someone you don't know... God asks us all to do things that are uncomfortable, even terrifying at times. And it can be hard to trust Him. Though unlike humans, God never fails. And our experience with the people around us can often times distort our views of God making it hard to believe He really can catch us. 

Along with trust being a choice, a bud off the branch of deep relationship with Him, trusting God is also a command. In this passage, it's not some motivational word of encouragement or parable or riddle, it's a directive. It's a clear, authoritative instruction. For the sake of emphatic repetition I'll say it again, it's a command: trust the Lord. Trust Him with ALL of your heart, leaning NOT on your own logic or reasoning or understanding. And submit to Him, ALL of your ways. And there is a promise of His provision in this verse, he will make straight paths for you! If I may be so bold as to say... when we fail to trust God, we are sinning against Him. Seeing as sin is defined by doing what God says not to do or not doing what God says to do, right? Then when we hear God clearly say to take those steps of trust, walking by faith but not always by sight, then we know what we ought to do. Yet, there is that sweet promise that comes with the choice to die to ourselves, laying down our own understanding and releasing the control we think we have over our lives by obeying His command to trust in action. 

So, I realized that not just for me but for all believers, God is calling us to trust Him. Not just when things are going well and everything makes sense. But trusting in the face of hardships and adversity, even in the midst of uncertainty. Trusting when it makes no sense and the circumstances seem impossible. Trusting even when you've asked and asked and still haven't gotten any answers. Trusting because He's God and we're not. He doesn't always do things the way we want or even how we'd think is right. I think that's why a lot of people find themselves asking the question "how can God really be good when bad things happen to good people?" I've wrestled with that question before myself! And to that I find myself now asking in return, "well, who defines what is good and what is right?" His thoughts aren't our thoughts, and His ways aren't our ways. His are higher than ours and that makes Him worthy of our trust because He sees things we can't, and He knows things to depths we will never fathom. 

With all of this, God gave me the message I was ought to share the next morning... I was a bit overwhelmed at the thought that He'd ask me, who I'd thought to be so historically poor at trusting Him, to teach on this. But then I started to see that even though I haven't felt some grand "feeling of trust," I have in fact, by this definition, trusted Him all along. Even though I've struggled to obey Him in some moments, even when I've doubted what He's said, or questioned if I could even really hear His voice to begin with! I still stepped out boldly in support raising, I still helped lead worship and went to speak countless times not knowing what I was about to say. In this story specifically, when it felt like no one was listening to some foreign girl speaking through a translator, I at least preached the message God gave me, if only to myself, and encountered Him in a new way as I finally learned what He'd been teaching me the whole time. Not to mention, I still showed up to an adventure DTS in the middle of some Zambian bush recovering from surgery! I showed up to this strange place with all these boys when I'd never had brothers or many guy friends and learned that I belonged there after all, and I found deep and meaningful connections and friendships I never knew I could have and will be forever changed by in all the best ways. I still put in my staff application, and as I now prepare to return as the newest member of the Beulah team, I see that I heard Him all along and He's used these acts of worship in obedience, step by step, to bring Him more glory. Hallelujah!! 

If you've made it this far reading all of this, some questions I could leave you with are these: How has trusting God looked in your life? What makes it difficult for you to trust God sometimes? Is there anything God is asking you to boldly step out in right now? Whether that last question is a yes or no, what would be your response if God were to ask something deeply uncomfortable or challenging of you today? And what, if anything, might hold you back from giving God a big, bold yes? I want to challenge everyone reading this to examine who you've known God to be and ask Him to reveal more of Himself to you so that you might know Him more and gain more confidence in walking with footsteps of trust.