Trusting Through The Hard Times

 Trust. It sounds so easy but it almost never is. It's like the trusting game where one person has to fall backwards into another persons arms, trusting that he will be caught by the one standing behind him. If your watching someone else do it, it seems simple. You may think you can do it, and maybe you can, but when it comes down to it, you doubt whether that person is really going to catch you. I know I do. But when it comes to trusting God I've got it all under control. Yeah right. That's how I think some times though. When I'm not in danger or suffering in any way, it's easy for me to say that I trust God and that even when hard times come I'll keep on trusting. I experienced this just recently. I had been looking for a job and found one that would have been right up my alley. I applied but no answer came for a couple of months so I thought I wouldn't ever hear from them. "It's alright," I thought. "I'll just keep looking." Well then they finally did call out of the blue, and they requested an interview. So excited little me went for an interview and fell in love with the job. I waited, and I received no answer for a couple more months and I thought with much disappointment that they didn't want me. I was upset but I reassured myself that if God had wanted me to have the job he would have given it to me. So I tried very hard to get it out of my mind and forget about it. Then one day they called me again, much to my surprise, and wanted me to go in for a trial week to see if I liked it. And by the time the week was over I loved the job and I was led to believe that I had it, but I couldn't start right away. So I was back to waiting for them to give me a call. Everything was going great I thought, and I still couldn't believe that I had gotten a job I loved! This long story does have to do with trusting, believe me, I'm getting there. My younger brother is into music and he and I usually play and sing together a lot. Sometimes we like to make up our own songs, so that's what we were doing one day. He had made up a pretty little tune on the piano and he wanted to come up with words for it. And after thinking about it for a little while I said the song should be about trusting God. What we came up with aren't the greatest lyrics in the world(we aren't professionals after all), but they at least get the meaning across. They basically say about having fear and grief, and not understanding why God is doing this to us, and not knowing what God is doing through it. But then the chorus comes in saying, "But I will trust you, though I can't see you..." and goes on to say that we know he is working in our trials and that we trust him because he is our only hope. It turned out to be rather pretty with my brother's little tune, and I really like it. Then the day after we wrote our song, I finally called the place where I had gotten the job, to see when I would start, and they said they had gotten someone else. I was shocked! After all those months of up and down, up and down, I was at last rejected. I was upset that I wouldn't have the job I had really wanted to do, and that I would have to keep on looking for something else, but most of all I was upset because I didn't know why God had me go through all that. After I had the interview and they hadn't called me back I was upset but I was willing to accept that it wasn't God's will. Then when it finally and officially fell to pieces I was all too willing to be upset with God for putting me through all that. Why did he have to let my hopes go up and then drop them, and then up and finally come crashing down? Why couldn't He have just let me get rejected from the get go? Needless to say, I was a bit depressed that day, but then my brother asked me to go play our new song with him. So I went and sang it as he played. It was an eye opener. Just the day before when I was feeling good I had written those words and meant them. Then the very next day when all my hopes had been trashed, I had forgotten about trusting God and decided to be bitter and question God instead. You know why He did it? Because it was His will. Other than that I don't really know. Maybe it was to test me and teach me. After all, He knew that when it was all over I would be angry and reluctant to trust Him. Of course I don't really know the intentions of God, but maybe someday when my life is over I will be able to look back on everything that happened in my life and see why it had been that way. For now, I'll just have to keep trusting that God's will is always for my good, whether I can understand it now or not.
 I guess my point to this post is about searching your own heart. I have always been one to say to myself that I trust God no matter what. Sort of like Peter who said he would never leave Jesus no matter what. And then sometimes I find out that really I was just putting myself up and trying really hard to be a good christian. I want to be one of those Christians that has complete trust in God and never fails. But you know what? We're still sinners. We fail sometimes. So instead of trying to be what we want to become all on our own, maybe we need to pray to God and ask Him to give us more and more trust in Him. That's the point of the last part of the song I wrote with my brother. We have to count on Him to give us the faith and the trust that we need to rely on Him.