The sweetness of trusting Jesus

Life may not always be easy, but as a child of the living God even the hardest times can be blessed. In this episode we discuss the challenges and heartbreaks of life and how the sweetness of placing our trust in Jesus carries us through. O for grace to trust Him more!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Hi everybody, you're listening to the People Get Ready Podcast. I'm Heather Duff, and in just a minute, we'll be jumping into a conversation with Barb Ho. We're talking about everyday issues from a Christian perspective while we even wait for people get ready. Let's go.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

We live out our lives, we make our decisions, we make our plans, and then we ask God to bless our plan. Proverbs talks about surrendering your plans to the Lord and not even planning and then asking God to bless, but asking God to make your steps short, asking God to lead you, asking God to guide you, and then trusting God that you will be able to follow the leading that He is already leading.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Psalm 910 says, And those who know your name will put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you. There's three things that we can actively do. Those who know your name. And that goes back to we have to know who God is. So those who know your name will put, if trust, my trust was in a box and I'm walking around with my trust, I can hand that box to people and hope that they're gonna take care of that. Trusting God is completely different. I can put my trust in God. I can hand him that. Those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you. The third step is to go after God, to seek him. I can always be pursuing that will sort of keep me in that position of trusting God and and not get slack in it. To just endeavor to know his name, to intentionally put my trust in him, to seek him, and to trust that he does not forsake those who seek him.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Amen. And I and it kind of reminds me too of you know the verse verses that everybody knows, you know, Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. Trust the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. And all your ways acknowledge him, and he won't make your path straight. Sometimes when things are going well and we're not in that crisis mood, we're not in a bad, you know, situation, life seems to be doing well for us, it's easy to trust in our own understanding. We can let our defenses down, we can really slip up. So what do we do? When we spend our time with the Lord, we bring all of our situations to the Lord. And don't just assume that because you have something planned that you can't just lift it up to God. And Danny and I, if we were going to someone's house for a dinner at night, in the car ride on the way, we would just commit that time to the Lord and say, God, we're, you know, would you go before us? Would you use us, use us to be a blessing? Just aware that we want to go in the in the presence and the leading of the Holy Spirit. That's carrying out the don't lean on your own understanding thing, is to surrender everything you do to God. And it doesn't have to be a long, drawn-out thing. It can just be a lifting it up as you're going through your day, just lifting it up and saying, God, I give it to you. Two things I always pray when I go into situations like that. I always pray, number one, that I will be sensitive to God and sensitive to the Holy Spirit, that if He's prompting me to do something or not to do something or to speak or not to speak, that I will be sensitive to that. And the second thing is that I will be sensitive to the people that I'm with, that I will pick up on them things with them and that I won't be so caught up in what I'm doing or my thoughts, my ideas that that I'll lose track of who they are and what they're going through. When you're going through all of your life situations, even the great times, you want to trust the Lord in it. And that means you want to commit it to the Lord and acknowledge that you want God's leading in it.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Yeah. Throughout the day, ask yourself, how am I trusting God today? When you go to work, how am I trusting God here at work today? Like you said, when you're going to meet someone, trust it's going to have some evidence. Your life is going to look different when you're actively intentionally trusting God than if you're not really mindful of that. Lord, how how can I lean not on my own understanding, but fully trust in you?

SPEAKER_00 4:16

We want to be intentional about trusting in the Lord and what we do. That's just bringing God into our everyday life. I don't take for granted that just because I'm going to do something that it's going to be done well or things aren't going to happen unexpected or whatever. I want God's presence to be in control of everything that I do. It is an issue of control. You're you're giving the control of whatever you're doing into God's hands and saying, you know what, I don't I don't want to be in control of my day. I don't want to be in control of what I do. I want you to be in control of everything. Don't lean on your own understanding. You have to make a choice. I'm not going to lead on my own understanding.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

I've got my my list of things to do, and I'm just a task killer and I'm going to get these things done. But there is a self-reliance to that, you know, and that's that's not good. But there's an opportunity, trust trusting God, it's an opportunity for relationship. It's an opportunity to experience God's care, his love, his comfort, his compassion. And and I want to live my life in a way that I am in relationship with him and not just putting my head down and getting the work done. But I I can just say, like with all of my intention to live and to bring that trust into everything I'm doing, it's still such a challenge for me when I get in the work zone to put those blinders on and look at the task ahead of me. Sometimes I do pause and say, Lord, you understand this and I know I'm not encountering this just so that I can be frustrated and stressed out. Your piece is available and you're you're working in this in a way that's beyond what I can see.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

That that's really, really good. It gets to that core understanding of who God is and who we are to God and who who God is to us, in that the ways that God wants to work through us in our everyday life, I don't think we fully understand. We're in this world to make a huge difference. You know, we talked about that in one of our earlier podcasts is that when when we are in a place, when we are in people's lives, when we go into a situation because of who we are in Christ, we bear Christ with us. I mean, Christ is is in us. We are his spokesman, we are we are his ambassadors, we are his his hands and his feet. And so every single situation we go into, whether it's the workplace or going shopping or going at our friend's house or visiting our family, there's a purpose for us to be there. God wants to use us, and it's not just to spend time with them, it's for a deeper purpose that God has in mind to do amazing things. And I think when we trust Him for that and surrender that to Him and say, God, use this opportunity that I'm gonna have with this person for your glory. Make me sensitive. Like I said, make me sensitive to you and make me sensitive to them. God can use us in amazing ways. We can make a huge difference in situations that we would just think were just everyday mundane things. Yeah, and that is the crucified life, really. It is. And I think that we we don't really grasp that fully what God can do. You know, the Bible talks about he works in us above and beyond anything that we could ever ask for imagine. And that's who God is. God works above what we can expect, God works above our understanding. I mean, he has in mind to minister to these people, he loves these people that we're with, he wants to make a difference in their lives, and he wants to use us to make that difference. And I think if we have that in mind, that wherever we go, whatever we do, God wants to do something special in and through us when we have that perspective and that intention, like we've talked about, God's gonna do amazing things, and we're gonna just look back and say, Oh my goodness, I think of the different times. One of the things that God has been blessing me with just as I step out and I'm willing to trust the Lord and to step out and to be bold with my faith, asking people how I can pray, offering my book. There'd been several times in stores I've gone back out to my car and gotten one of my books and gone back in and said, you know, would you like to read a book that I wrote? You know, just giving that opportunity or taking their name down. And, you know, people I've connected with on Facebook. I have Facebook people. I was thinking about it this morning, people I met in the airport. There's one girl that she follows me on Facebook because of a connection we made in the airport. And, you know, just the different opportunities like that. And when I trust the Lord for that and I ask him to do it, and I have intention to do it, I'm looking for those opportunities. God uses us, commit your struggles to God, but to commit your good times to the Lord. What are the elements of a prayer life that that does trust God for the good and the difficult times? What does it look like? Releasing the control of how you believe things should work into God's hands. Why do people try to control? A lot of times it's the fear of what if. It's the fear of what if this doesn't happen? What if that doesn't happen? And so to try to stop that, they try to tell God all the different ways that He needs to work to prevent that what if situation from happening. What do you think, Heather?

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Yeah, well, I'm thinking again of the crucified life. You you can't lose what you've already given up. If you're dead to your life and you're alive in Christ, that is about fear of loss. It's about fear of losing the life that you're living in Philippians chapter three. Whatever things were gained to me, I count as loss for the sake of Christ. To be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Paul is saying that I may know him and the power of his resurrection. I'm all too familiar with my power. My power is insufficient. I love this passage because it's such a call to the life that I want to live. I wanna, I wanna know what it is to live in the power of his resurrection. And that means that there has to be a death. There's not a resurrection, you know, until there's a death. And that death is the dying to myself and to be identified with his death. As Christians, we know that. That's that's the core of Christianity and the life that we're to be living. We we don't see a lot of people that we could look and say, wow, they are living in the power of the resurrection. We've kind of settled for something that's so much less than that. It's living life in our own power. And like you're saying, that is about control. We are not counting all things as lost for the sake of Christ. We're hanging on to those things with a death grip. And we don't want to let go of them. This is the crux of Christianity. It's free, but it costs everything.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

It is so hard not to control. There's there's something about releasing that and just like you said, the power of the resurrection. You cannot understand the power of the resurrection and still try to control what God does. I want to know him and the power of this resurrection, right? And when you do really understand who what Christ did and what his life in us does, there's a there's a surrender there. I don't want to be in control because his power is at work in my life, working in ways that I can't even imagine. So I don't have to be afraid, afraid of anything. I don't have to be in dread. I don't have to be in fear. I don't have to be even thinking about the what ifs because whatever happens, God is in control. When we feel like we're in control, we don't understand the power of the resurrection. We don't understand what it really means to live that sanctified life because we still think that we're in control. And that plays out in not only in our control, but in our prayer life, because we try to control everything that God does. And, you know, there's a r when you really understand that number one, who God is, and that and those um understandings that we talked about, there's a release there. You just say, God, you're you're you know better than me. Your ways are so much higher than my ways, and I'm trusting you for it. And I'm I'm not gonna try to control what you do.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

I just wrote down a note as you were talking, where am I trying to control things? Because if I really do search my heart, I think what I'm gonna find at the bottom of that is a huge fear.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

When we used to fly to Ukraine a lot, and I had a huge flier fear of flying, and we did it all the time, but every time when we landed, I just about kissed the ground and I would be shaking. And I remember one time asking you, I said, Would you just pray that we land well and that it's a smooth landing and it's the landing that I that I always dread? And you said, I think it's better instead of praying that you have a smooth landing, that God helps you to overcome the fear. And I remember when you said that, it hit me like a like a like a board in my head, you know. And I thought, Lord, that really is it. You know, I I need to stop stressing over the the particular landing and pull back and just give the whole thing to God and say, Lord, help me with this fear. And I have to release the whole thing into the Lord's hand and say, You're in control. And I pray and rather than trying to micromanage how I landed and how I would pray for the a good landing and not this and not that, just say, help me to trust you and not to fear it.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

I'm just thinking that is a really good question to ask yourself because when you're controlling things, you're feeling stressed. You know, you it it's sapping your energy because you're trying to cover all the bases, your mind is working over time, you know, you're trying to think through every situation. And no, that's not where God wants us. And so I think a great thing to do is just say, what am I trying to control? Right. What am I trying to control here? Take a look at that and say, what what is the fear that is lurking at the bottom of this desire to control things? And then say, Who is God in this? Who is God to me? Who am I to God? He's our shepherd. He knows things that are going to happen before they happen. He's almighty, he's all powerful, he works all things for our good. We need to make this our practice so that we don't get walloped in the bad times.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

When we when we allow those fears and trying to micromanage how what God does, we we're not understanding God. We're losing track of who God is. There's something there that we need to deal with, and I that's a really good point. I think another thing that when we really trust, trust is it brings peace. And don't be anxious, as a Philippians, don't be anxious about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God and the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. And I love that. You have to make the choice not to be anxious. It is a conscious choice that you have to say through thanksgiving and through surrendering and through supplication and through giving it to God and acknowledging what you're going through, but through trusting Him, you have to release it into God's hands and he will bring the peace. If you're living a life that's lacking peace, you're not trusting God. You cannot be trusting God and living an anxious, stressful, worried life. People justify their anxiousness or their worry or their concern over a very difficult situation. Because we all face difficult situations, some more than others. I know when Danny died, I remember the day that the doctors told me, and you know, he he was in the hospital for six weeks, and it wasn't until the last two or three days that the doctors really knew that he was not going to make it. Up until that point, everybody thought he was going to make it. I mean, he just seemed like he he was going to get over this hurdle of COVID. But the last few days, the doctors just said, we don't know if his body is shutting down, his organs are all shutting down. And I remember one doctor sitting down with me and saying, you know, it just doesn't look like he's going to make it. And it was maybe two or three days before he did pass away. And I remember driving home and I pulled over and I was just sobbing. But I remember thinking, I am making a conscious decision to trust God in this. And I remember saying, Lord, this is humanly impossible for me to trust you in this. I I don't understand it. It's coming out of left field, but I want to trust you in it. And I just acknowledged it to the Lord and I gave it to him because I knew of so many people that have been through situations like this and their world just fell apart or their trust just to to God fell apart. And I said, I don't want to go in that direction. And I just cried out to the Lord and and He was, He was merciful to me. That was the most difficult situation I hope I ever have to face. And God's grace walked me through that. I made the choice that I was not going to allow the hard times of that situation to control my trust in God. And I think we need to make that conscious decision sometimes. And there were times, I mean, I did ask God why. I, you know, people would say to me, Someday you'll you'll understand why God did it. I don't think I ever will. I don't think there's a why. I think there's just God. I mean, God has his plans and he had things in mind to take him that I it doesn't make sense to me, but he's God. His ways are half above my ways. I don't have to understand why he did it in order to trust him for it. I just have to make a choice. And, you know, I've learned through the years that grace is a process. You know, when the Bible talks about coming into the throne to the throne room of God for mercy and grace, mercy comes instantaneously. Grace is a process. Grace takes time. The Bible says you find the grace, you receive the mercy and you find the grace. And so, like with when I faced that situation with trusting God when Danny passed away, it was a process. And God would walk me through that. Sometimes daily, I never thought I could go through it, but God's grace got me through that because I looked to him. I I surrendered to him. I'm not stronger than anybody else. I was just surrendered. Honestly, I was surrendered to the Lord. And so he gave me the grace to go through that. And so I think whatever situation anyone is facing, no matter how hard it is, when you acknowledge it to the Lord, acknowledge how hard it is, and what I did on a daily basis, I poured out my heart. I told the Lord exactly what I was going through, how I felt, what I had to face, how I didn't think I could face these things. I had challenges in all different directions. You know, he died quickly, or there were financial things I didn't know what to do with. There were decisions of what to do with this and that. I didn't even know his passwords to to the different uh things that I had to deal with. I I didn't know anything. And um I just would come before the Lord and say, I don't know what to do. And every day he walked me through that process as I surrendered it to him. And so I've learned that it just comes with acknowledging you you don't have to be anxious, even in a situation like that, even in a situation of losing a spouse or financial ruin or losing a job or a husband leaving you or something, you can still trust God. You don't have to be anxious as you surrender it to the Lord. And as you trust God to do what you can't do, his peace will guide you through it. And I lived that in my relationship and with God and my situation with Danny.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

Psalms 17, 7 says, wondrously show your loving kindness, O Savior, of those who take refuge at your right hand. And he's gracious like that, you know. And as you were talking, I was thinking, you couldn't have asserted your control in that situation. You could have tried, but so many things were outside of your control. And I think sometimes we all go through situations like that, but it reminds us of who God is. And that, you know, he's the one who's in control of these things. And like you were saying, you know, it's not about the why, it's just God. And just to rest in him, you he's a he's you know, he's a savior, and we can take refuge of in him, and he does wondrously show us his loving kindness.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

And I have to say, these three, you know, the three core understandings of God that I've talked about a zillion times, they came to life during this time with Danny when I lost him and you know, and didn't lose him, but when he went to heaven, you know, the understanding of who God is became so real. The understanding of who he is to me and that he was my rock, he was my fortress. He, you know, I hid under the shelter of his wings on a day, and I would say that, Lord, I am I'm hiding under the shadow of your wings and who I am to God. And I learned how precious I am to God and how how much he cares about me and and how much my my hurt, you know, I i i i I've heard it's a common thing with with a lot of widows and maybe widowers, I'm not sure, but I would get up for maybe a month and just just moan, like cry like on a moaning level that I've never cried like that before every day, every morning. And and then it got less and less and less, but I learned during In those times that God was with me and that God's presence was so healing. And I did I have to go through that hurt time? Yeah. Did I and do I have to go through the grief? Absolutely. I've I've gone through the grief. I've not escaped the grief. That you know, man was never made for loss. God never made us to lose. And so grief is not something that we were made to deal with. That's something that came with the fall. And that's something that I've learned. But even during the grief that I've had to go through, I've understood on such a real level of how much and who I am to God and how he values me and how much he loves me. And I felt his tender loving care throughout this process. You can walk through it in and it won't be easy maybe, but it's going to be blessed. I can honestly say that these five years since Danny died have not been easy. I don't think there's been an easy day, but they have been blessed. I've I have I have begun to understand God and these three parts, who He is to me and who I am to Him, on a level that I never would have understood before. And so would I want to have Danny back in a in a million times, yes. But am I grateful for the lessons and the things that I've learned? I can't even I can't even tell you how much I appreciate it. And and God has become so real to me on a level that I don't think I could have done if this hadn't happened. I mean, he has used this to show himself to me and to bring myself into an intimate level with him that I never would have known before. And boy, that that has been the world to me. And God has blessed me on such a level that that is really amazing. He's really blessed me and I appreciate him for it.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

That was such the heart cry of Jesus when he was preparing to leave this earth in that prayer in John 17. So much of that was his concern for us because he was bodily leaving this earth, but he wants us to know that he's he's with us. And even at the end of Matthew, where he says, Hello, I'm with you always. Um, and he said he was going to send a comforter to us. And that that comfort is because he knows that we need him. We need to know his nearness. And so, yeah, such a blessing that, you know, that is the um what sustains us is the nearness of God and his his his love for us.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

Yeah, it's just it's amazing how, you know, we are in this world and we have to walk in this world. We have to live in this is a dark world at times, and it's a difficult world, and we don't understand so many things that we have to face and others have to face. But I believe that when we walk in the trust that we've been talking about these la this time and the last time, that we do not have to live the anxious life that so many live. You say, how can I live a life free but free of anxiety and stress? Well, because that's what God wants to do in us. It's miraculous. It is miraculous, but it's a God thing and God will do it as we trust Him for it. We don't have to be living out sleepless nights. We don't have to be living out, you know, difficult times that, you know, we can't handle. I might we need to go get counseling? Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. We might need a counselor to help us work through these times and and and uh you know different ways of handling these times, but God's presence and God's spirit will walk us through those times and he wants us to walk in a way that that we can handle it through the power of his spirit, that he can actually use it for our blessing. You know, um I'd like to close in 1 John 4.18 tells us that perfect love casts out fear. And I think that um, you know, that's not just that, you know, we can love God in a perfect way, because we will never love God in a perfect way, but understanding what love really is, and understanding who God is, and understanding who God is to us, and knowing that as we grow in that love of who God is to us, that we will not have to live out a life of fear or dread or anxiety or stress. We need to understand Him and understanding His love for us and growing in our love for Him, and we can live that type of a life. That's what God has in mind for us. That's good. Okay, well, I think I will close in prayer and you know, just I really want to again lift up those that are struggling and battling and and those that are living the good life and don't have a have a tendency to bring God into it. And we need to bring God into every part of our lives. He wants to come in because our life will never be as good as when we bring him in. I mean, we can live a good life, but boy, when we bring God into it, it's it's an unbelievably blessed life, and that's the life he has in mind for us, you know. So let's pray. Father, we are so grateful, Lord, for just this life that you've given to each of us, Father. I I thank you, Lord, even as I think back of my time of when you took Danny home, Lord, how difficult it was, and it still is. But Father, you have been so close to me. Just the presence that I've experienced and that I continue to experience, just feeling your warmth and and your encouragement and your guidance. And Father, the the the ways that you've guided me and led me and provided for me, Lord, just when I needed a word or financial help or physical help or whatever, Father, you've always done that. And I just thank you so much for who you are. Lord, I pray for those that are listening. I pray for those that, first of all, I want to pray for those that haven't really been bringing you into their lives on that daily basis, Father. For those that live their life just thinking that they have it, they haven't, that they they have it made, that they have it set. And God, I pray that every single person that's listening to this will have a deeper desire to bring you into each and every situation that they face, whether it's a mundane thing that they do every day, or whether it's going to work or going to a store or just living out the life that they're living or going places or whatever they do, Lord, but that they will have the conscious, intentional thought and plan of bringing you into that, Father. I pray, Lord, that we would surrender our lives to you to work in ways that you alone can. God, you are the God of the impossible, Lord. You are the one who looks at an impossibility and just knows that there's nothing that you can you cannot do. And Father, like I like to say, impossible is your starting point, God, that nothing is impossible for you. Teach us, Lord, what it means to walk that sanctified life. Teach us what it means to release into your hands the life that you've given us, Father, to know on a daily practical level what it means to trust in you. I thank you, God, for your working power. I thank you for each person that's listening. I thank you for what you're doing, what you've done, and what you're going to do. We just surrender our lives to you and trust you to work. It's in the precious, holy, miraculous name of Jesus that we pray. Amen. Amen.