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Trusting in the Lord February 28, 2012 We're looking at the final Alliance Core Value on Sunday mornings. "Achieving God's purposes means taking faith-filled risks. This always involves change." We realize that this trip to Africa represents a serious faith-filled risk for Rachel and I. We’re trusting the Lord in this trip in many ways. We’re trusting Him to provide the cost of the trip (just about $5,000) and He did. We’re trusting that He will provide safety in travel (airplane and ground travel in Africa). We’re trusting that He’s going to speak to us on this trip and show us what plans He has for a potential partnership with the work going on in Guinea. Then there’s that whole "fear of snakes" thing. We’ll be sleeping just a couple of inches off the ground and realize that any creepy crawly creature can just crawl up onto us while we’re sleeping. Ugg, it’s creeping me out just writing it. I was thinking that I could bring mouse traps with me – set them up all around the bed and then: 1. I’ll know if anything creepy crawly is there, and, 2. The traps going off will scare them away. Of course, there is that issue of stepping on them myself if I have to get up in the middle of the night. Moth balls – someone told me that moth balls would keep them away. But the smell of them might keep everyone in the room up all night. Ugg. Trusting the Lord in this too! Bob said the problem with putting traps around me is that the snakes are looking for mice to eat, so my putting the traps around the room might just draw the snakes there. Yikes! The more I think about trusting the Lord for our fears on the trip, the more I realize that we must trust the Lord each and every day of our lives. Every day I’m trusting the Lord with my health, my relationships, providing for my needs, providing for the needs of my family, providing for good friends and solid relationships at church, for good leadership skills as I lead the church, etc. The list is endless when I think about it. In fact, the error in not thinking about it is that I’m taking the responsibility of those things onto my own shoulders – and I know that God can do these things WAY better than I can. Solomon knew what it was to trust in the Lord. He wrote in Proverbs 3, “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.” Jesus knew what it was to trust in the Lord. In fact, His whole life was all about trusting in the Father. The miracles, the teaching, the whole “assignment” to humble Himself, cloaking His glory as God to come to this earth as a man, and the final wrestling over it all in the Garden of Gethsemane. Remember what He told to his disciples about trusting Him? In Matthew 6 He tells us to trust in the Lord. The opposite of trust is worrying. Check it out: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Now that’s the kind of trust I want to have in the Lord. How about you? -PJ |
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James E. Bogoniewski, Jr. |