When we look at the Israelites in the desert as they are wandering. It’s easy to look down on their level of trust. They see God provide, then a few verses later, they come across a new challenge and seem to have forgotten in just a moment or two how good God has been to them.
But a moment or two of reading for us is much different from the time and experience of those living through the circumstances. It wasn’t just a moment or two of reading a page for them, it was longer in between and legitimate, real life feelings and fears.
We like to think that we don’t do the same things. And yet, we do,
When we look at the Israelites in the desert as they are wandering. It’s easy to look down on their level of trust.
I experienced something very similar recently. I talk about trusting God and what that really looks like.
Promoting a book is something I’m having to learn to do and there is as much advice about how to do it out there as there is for anything else. Some of it is obviously bad or unethical. But, I’ve been fortunate to find a few different sources that all seem trustworthy in both who they are and what they know. And they are all teaching pretty much the exact same things. This is important to me because my book that is out and the next one are both ministry and something that I believe God directed. So, it only makes sense to learn how to spread it far and wide.
I recently had an opportunity to get some help, but that help was expensive. I felt good about it, but neither of the two people I went to for confirmation liked the idea. I said to both of them, “I either have to trust God with my book or my food.”
Amy Connell interviewed me on her Graced Health Podcast. (Catch the interview here.) Even the title she gave it, Why the fortune of brokenness can enhance your relationship with God brought conviction to my heart. Then I listened to the interview and I felt a little foolish.
You see, she got the term “fortune of brokenness” from my own book and asked me what it meant in the interview. In essence, I pointed out that in my early marriage, we knew we didn’t have anything. So we relied on God. A few years ago, I rediscovered that when things looked very dire for us. I remembered my need for complete and utter dependency on God.
So now, my statement, “I have to trust God with the book or my food,” becomes utterly foolish. Even living with our minimal finances, we have developed a rhythm. The income is almost exactly the same each month and we’ve come to where we can count on it. Ahhh, there’s the danger zone. I knew what was coming in and I knew what had to go out. I stopped needing to trust God for it because it felt like a given.
We’ve had a temporary blip where we have lost about 1/4 of our monthly income. I’m confident that it is very temporary, but that combined with my own teachings has reminded me that I need to trust God with the book AND my food.
How much better will we be if we trust Him for everything and give Him credit when we don’t have to rather than the other way around?
