Finding Trust in God

It’s raining again! Our day started with torrential downpours and flashes of lightening. Sheets of rain poured from overflowing rain gutters in a matter of seconds as the storm blew in.

Dashing through the raindrops, I ran to my vehicle in order to drive my son to the bus stop. I splashed through warm puddles in my sandaled feet as thunder rumbled overhead, and I smiled enjoying the feeling of the first warm spring rain on my face.

Springtime weather in Wisconsin is very changeable. The weather can be cold and windy one afternoon and become sunny and warm the next day. Sometimes these changes happen during the same day!

Spring storms can come in furiously, or they can be a gentle shower to the earth. These nourishing rains are exactly what the newly unfolded leaves on the trees need to expand and grow into their summer canopies.

God knows what the plants need, and He knows what we need, too. As we learn to trust in Him more, we relinquish our control over every detail of our lives. We begin to realize that He will provide what we need, and that He knows infinitely better than we do what our needs are.

How does one begin to trust in God this way? It’s challenging for us as planners and control freaks, as we seek order amidst the chaos of our lives. We need to structure our time to accomplish as much as we can in a single day.

While we are planning our time, we need to set aside some time to just be. Time to breathe, and to focus on finding our inner peace. Time to connect with God, pausing in the midst of our busy day to find stillness within ourselves as we seek Him.

It takes only a few minutes to pause and thank God for any little thing that touches your heart. This begins a connection that can grow into intimacy.

Talk with God about the little things and the big things in your life. As you begin to reach out to Him in your life everyday, you will begin to see that He’s been right there all along.

He watches over us, patiently waiting and hoping we will seek Him. Sometimes it seems we only come to God with our greatest troubles, when we feel we have no other way to solve a situation and we are desperate.

But the truth is if we grow a relationship with God through sharing our daily lives with Him, it becomes easier to share even our smallest concerns, and that frees us from our worries. As we learn to share our lives with God, through both the good and the bad that we come across every day, we become attuned to His ever-present Presence.

Don’t be afraid to show God your weakness, for that is how we gain strength to deal with our problems. By sharing our troubles as well as our gratitude, we connect with God in our humanness. He understands us. He made us to be exactly the way we are. We will grow closer with Him through sharing all of our joys and sorrows, and open our hearts to a new relationship of trusting Him.

The rains have stopped now, and in the stillness of the morning I pause. Soon the winds will blow again and as the skies clear the sun will pour down to encourage growth in the natural world.

 

Life is ever-changing as it swirls around us in our busyness. The only constant in our lives is God. When we open our hearts to seek Him, we will find Him. As we learn to share our lives with Him, we begin to learn trust. And as our trust deepens, we open our lives more fully to receive the goodness that comes from an intimate sharing with our Creator.

The Mountaintop Experience

Have you seen those ads where a climber reaches the peak of a great precipice and stands with arms outstretched as the camera pans around them? While I don’t harbor a fear of heights, if I were exhausted from climbing to the top of that mountain, I don’t think I would balance precariously on a jagged peak. Just sayin’.

The mountaintop experiences I savor are those I share with God, and I needn’t climb to places of thin oxygen to find Him. Mountaintop experiences can happen anywhere, and have more to do with my heart’s proximity to God’s than with where I am.

These intense feelings of joy and peace saturate my spirit, and I can’t help but smile and sometimes weep at the beauty of the moment. Feeling so connected to my Creator, in oneness of thought and pure joy, is exhilarating and peaceful all at the same time.

But I’ve come to realize I couldn’t enjoy these peak experiences if I hadn’t first walked through the deepest valleys. Because it is through the valleys of pain and sorrow where I met my Savior, or rather where He met me.

There have been times when I’ve been at my lowest, when my spirit was dark and my outlook on life even darker, and I couldn’t find any hope to start my day. It was from this deep valley of darkness that I was saved from my situation and from my own dark thoughts by the only One who could save me.

I cried out to God and He whispered into my darkness that I was not alone. That comfort helped me begin to find my way out of the pit of darkness. In my deepest sorrow, a voice spoke softly to my spirit “I am with you.” This ray of Hope shined like a beacon of Light leading the way out of the darkness. “Follow Me.”

I savor my mountaintop experiences with God, in pure joy and oneness of Spirit. Though these may be ephemeral moments, I treasure them knowing how far I have come to know this joy in my life through my relationship with God. I would not have reached these peaks had I not first walked the valleys. And through them I learned that I never walk alone.

"Even when I walk 

  through the darkest valley,

 I will not be afraid, 

  for you are close beside me."
           Psalm 23:4 (NLT)

Music speaks to my soul, and Mac Powell of Third Day shares my thoughts beautifully through this song, "Mountain of God." Subscribers please enjoy this video by clicking here.

Our Place in this World

We are seekers, searching throughout our lives for a connection to all that exists around us. We feel a deep longing within ourselves, yearning for completion. We desire, wish for, hope for, something or someone that can fulfill an emptiness we cannot describe.

Sometimes we connect with a person who seems to provide what we are missing in our lives. It could be that we desire to know love, or a feeling of security. Whatever we feel the missing ingredient is, it’s like a puzzle that's missing a piece and we want to complete the picture.

The truth is, people will disappoint us. I’m sure you have your own experiences to validate this. So if we put all of our hope and trust in a fellow human being to provide a “filling” for that emptiness we have inside of us, we may find it will only be a temporary filling at best.

  

Some people turn to things in an attempt to quiet the longing, and may try using food or drugs to satisfy the feeling of emptiness. The satisfaction is very temporary, and will always leave us wanting more. If we use things or people to fill that void, we’ll find we may feel satisfied for a little while, but the emptiness returns.

If we are honest, we must admit that we search for meaning in our lives. Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? Why do I feel empty when my life is so full?

I believe the missing piece is a connection to our own spirituality. We fill our lives with busyness, but miss the understanding that we are spiritual beings and need to nurture ourselves from within.

We are all developing an awareness for our health that is helping us to be cognizant of what we put into our physical bodies and how we can keep them working the best we can. This consciousness in our ability to control our physical wellness is a positive step toward understanding our wholeness.

But we need to go further. We must engage in a conscious effort to nurture our individual spirituality and our connectedness to each other and to all of life. A healthy spirituality depends on the understanding of our oneness with all of creation. When we nurture our own spiritual beings, we develop an awareness of ourselves as part of a greater whole.

I believe that God placed a longing inside of us to seek Him. It is part of our effort to gain an understanding of our place in the universe. The order of life here on earth and in the expanding universe would dictate that it is reasonable to believe in a higher power, one that structured the world and our place in it. And I believe that our Creator wants us to seek Him, to know Him and walk with Him spiritually through all of our days.

In some ways, I believe we will always be searching, as that is the nature of our species. But I know we can find the missing piece to complete the picture of who we are. We will find that in our relationship with our Creator, through knowing Him and by trusting in this Higher Power to guide our footsteps here on earth. 

Resisting Temptation

Temptation. We deal with it every day. What is your temptation? Is it the sweet or fattening food that you are trying to avoid to fulfill a resolution for the new year? Do you struggle with an addiction? You certainly are not alone.

We are all drawn to the feel-good attractions in life. Our spirits crave joy, and we think we can find that joy in the momentary pleasures from a myriad of choices. But when we look to consumption for our satisfaction, we realize it is only a matter of time until we need another “fix” to make us feel good again.

It becomes a cycle. A cycle of addiction to something that will never satisfy the craving within us. It just keeps coming back, taking more and more of our time and our life. It’s time to break the cycle.

Ah, but this is so much more easily said than done. We want a good, healthy lifestyle but we struggle with all that we are “supposed” to do to keep ourselves well. It is so hard to stay on track to meet our goals for self-improvement.

Do you realize some people are actually addicted to exercise? Can this be a bad thing too? I think anything in excess is more than we were meant to do. Too much work, too much food, or turning to drugs and alcohol to quiet our minds only numbs us to what we really crave.

Deep inside we all crave peace. And joy. Belonging. Relationship. It is easier to reach for temporary satisfaction outside of ourselves than to realize that our desires run deeper than momentary satisfaction. Sometimes we hide ourselves in work or busyness to avoid dealing with internal issues we want to avoid. But we were meant for so much more.

I believe that the One who created us set inside of us a deep longing which causes us to become searchers, seeking something that will fulfill that desire within us. Some people search outside of themselves, and some search within for fulfillment.

I think the longing that we feel is a desire to connect with our Maker. I believe we are preprogrammed to want relationship with our Creator. Our belief in a Higher Power predisposes us to crave relationship with Him. It is through knowing our Maker intimately that we begin to feel our place in this world.

It may be hard for you to believe that a relationship with God can cure your addictions to the things of this life, but I know this to be true. Here are words of a song that has yet to be finished:

“You’ve got to give it all to God.

You’ve got to have the love and faith to see it through.

You’ve got to give it all you’ve got -

Enough to let it go.”                            

                                                                ~Colleen Reske

Don't expect your addiction to be cured in a flash of lightning. It takes time to build a relationship and time to understand what drew you to your need in the first place. Giving it all to God opens you up to the healing powers of the universe. All that is available to you for recovery is out there. You need to seek wellness with the same desire as you sought solace through substances. You need to earnestly seek God for help in getting well. 

It is very freeing to “give it all away”, to give it all to God. When you do, you start to develop trust, believing that there is a better way which God will show you. You have to be receptive to hearing suggestions from those people that God will put in your path, and you have to want to get well. 

There is hope for health, and freedom from whatever binds you. You have to take the first step by admitting your weakness, and cry out to God for help. Our God is all-powerful, and He can use that power on your behalf. All it takes is belief, and a desire to know the One who knows all.

The hope in finding help begins with prayer.  We can't do this all on our own, but there is hope and there is help if you want to find it. Blessings on your journey.

Third Day performing "Cry Out to Jesus", especially for my Christian viewers though this powerful message is for all. Email subscribers click here to view the video on my blog. 

  

Sunshine on Snow Sparkles like Diamonds

I believe all the riches we will ever need go mostly unnoticed. I wrote a poem decades ago where I lamented that most people probably don’t even pause to see a beautiful sunset. I wonder how many people took a moment out of their busy morning to notice the diamonds strewn across the fresh snow blown smooth by yesterday's winds.

As I gaze outside my window, the long shadows from a low-lying winter sun cast patterns in blue across the smooth surface of the snow. Where the sun touches white, tiny sparkles appear as the light is reflected off of even tinier surfaces on thousands of fallen snowflakes. Am I the only one who finds delight in this?

The other evening another sun pillar formed as the sun set. I’ve seen them even more rarely in the sunrise. A perfectly formed column of light shooting straight up from the orb as its light reflects off ice crystals. I watched in awe and delight.

Ice formed an enormous ring around the full moon the other night. It was Cosmo’s moon (from Moonstruck), glowing huge and bright and drawing me outdoors into the cold night. I was awestruck by the gigantic ring of light reflecting off ice crystals some distance from the moon. It seemed to fill the entire night sky. If I hadn’t ventured out, I would have missed seeing the spectacle.

One morning several summers ago, as I walked up the hill to our house, I stopped in my tracks. Sunlight was caught on the dewdrop at the tip of each blade of grass. I’ve never seen that before or since. The light was just right, and I happened to be at just the perfect angle to see the sparkling grass dewdrops, jewels strewn across my lawn.

How many of these precious moments of beauty slip past us as we hurry through our busy lives? How can we slow down to appreciate the moments of our lives before they become the past?

 We live in a forward-thinking society. New developments and inventions bring technological and functional advancements in living; ever faster, always more. While all of this is good, it seems we are always looking to the future rather than appreciating the time we have now.

Busy calendars keep us looking to the next task at hand. Appointments to be made and kept, birthdays and outings to look forward to; each day has a multitude of minutiae vying for our attention.  But can we pause long enough to pray, to seek connection with the Lord of our universe?

I believe we were meant for more than the hurried lives we lead. And the only way to slow things down is to purposefully do so. Pause. Look at the clouds today. What color is the sky? I fear people living and working in large cities never look up and see the expanse of glorious blue and the great variety of clouds that pass by.

Maybe I have more time to observe the natural world, but it is because I make it a priority in my life. That connection, for me, is what sustains me. And it is not just for its beauty alone, bur for the connection to my Creator. The One who made me also made the world I live and breathe in. The flowers and the trees and blue skies and mountains and rolling fields of wheat are gifts for us to enjoy. The vastness of the night sky and the oceans’ depths are made for us to ponder our smallness in the grand scheme of things.

Our self-importance leads us to believe that we must complete each and every task to feel worthy and accepted, when what we really need to do is stop and realize that this day will never come again; this moment in life is so brief, and should be savored. Bask in the sunshine, feel the breeze across your face. Watch the antics of a squirrel as he goes about his busy day of living.

We are all connected, all of life. Pause to feel that connection. Breathe. This is sustenance as much as food, water and sleep. Life won’t wait. Take the time today to believe in the importance of just being still for a moment. Be thankful for all you have been given. And give yourself the gift of peace.

Hope in the Gift of New Life

What comes to mind when you think of new life? The incredible blessing of babies being born? New growth of plants in the landscape in spring? These indeed are gifts of new life given to us here on earth.

But what about being reborn? Being made new. Inside of you. In your heart, in your mind, and in your outlook.

We all have an opportunity for God to work in our lives and change our perspective. Before this can happen, though, I believe we need to submit our lives to him.

For many people, giving up the wheel to let God steer is a scary proposition. But if we think we have it all under control on our own, we are misleading ourselves. Submission to God’s plan for our lives is an act of obedience. We acknowledge we really can’t do this on our own, and understand that He has a better plan for us.

This Sunday we are planting spring bulbs with our Sunday school children. We will talk about the promise of new life hidden inside the bulb and how, with the right conditions, the bulb will begin to grow in the spring and will produce a beautiful flower. The flowers will be there for all to see and admire God’s hand in creation.

Through trusting God that the bulb will grow and produce a flower, we can see how trusting God to work in our lives can produce something new in us, too. When we submit to his greater authority, and trust that He has our very best interest at heart, we can hope for new life or a new direction in our thinking.

Sometimes the changes are dramatic, and sometimes they subtly sneak up on us as we realize we are seeing things a little bit differently. There may be a great hurdle in your life that you need to overcome. Or you may just need an attitude adjustment to open your heart to see the world a little bit more through God’s eyes.

When we are open to have the Creator of new life work within us, great changes can be made. And hopefully, our light will shine for all to see the beauty of God’s creation in us.