I will never forget the moment the text came in. I was sitting in my bathtub… candles… bubbles… music in the back ground… prayer journal in hand. This is not a rare occurrence for me; this was, in fact, just a normal Tuesday night.
That’s when it happened. Just as I had begun writing down my thoughts and requests to the Lord, I heard the beep - beep. It was a text. I looked down… and there they were - the sweet words of a sweet guy checking in on my day.
But, as I stared at the text and stared at the name, I felt my anxiety begin to rise. All of a sudden, I saw my hands writing these words, “Oh, dear God, please don’t let it be Him."
I "knew" deep in my soul that this was the good and Godly man the Lord was going to make me marry, and I was destined to spend “forever” bored, trapped, and treated kindly. As I was picturing him in his pull over sweater vest and Wranglers teaching our son to ride his bike, I couldn’t breathe. Something has to be done - please, Lord, please no… please.
On about the fourth and final “please” I found myself overwhelmed by the Lords presence and overcome by my own laughter. When had my thinking gone so array?? Somewhere, somehow over the few weeks and months leading up to this moment in my life, I had forgotten who God was.
Now, let’s ignore my skewed view that this text was somehow equivalent to a proposal of marriage, and focus on the even more skewed view that the God who made the Heavens and the Earth, who parts seas and raises people from the dead - that that God’s best for me was going to, in fact, be “oh dear God, please don’t let it be him.”
So clearly I heard the Lord impress upon my heart, “My dear child, after ALL we have been through together… after everything I have saved you from and carried you through, you think the best that I can do is someone you don't even want??”
{Please keep in mind that this is a great guy. If I felt at liberty to disclose his identity, I would tell all you single girls out there to run as fast as you can towards him (so that he can, in turn, pursue you) - he’s kind - he’s gracious - he’s smart - he loves the Lord and he would love you well, but he does absolutely nothing for me. What kind of spark should be there… what “it” feels like… what we should be looking for… all of that is a whole new topic for a whole ‘nother day and, frankly, something the Lord and I are still wrestling out.}
Somewhere, in my pity-partied, pathetic, pea-sized brain, I had forgotten that, if God is worthy of my trust in one area, He is worthy of my trust in all areas. And I find myself wondering if any of you have ever forgotten that as well?
I know the Israelites did. Think back to their days in the wilderness… God had not only taken them out of slavery, but he had also been leading them through the wilderness - he had allowed a sea to part and them to safely pass - he had fed them daily with bread from the sky - he had quenched their thirst with water from rocks and yet, when they looked into the Promise Land, the land that God, pardon the pun, had “promised” them, all they saw were giants… all they saw were obstacles… all they felt was fear.
Deuteronomy 1:29-33 states, “Then I said to you, 'Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the desert. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.” In spite of this, you did not trust in the Lord your God, who went ahead of you on your journey, in fire by night and in a cloud by day, to search out places for you to camp and to show you the way you should go.”
The King James Version of verse 32 is even more convicting: “Yet in this thing ye did not believe the LORD your God.” I remember hearing a lesson on that passage a few years ago and those two words, “this thing" kept ringing in my head.
If we were honest, I bet we all have “this thing” - an area of life that we have difficulty fully or even partially giving over to the Lord. It took me all of two seconds to realize that mine is my heart, especially the romantic side. I hoard it, I hold it close, I assume the worst.
Now, some of this, like the example above is completely irrational. Some of it is not. I have been hurt. I have been wounded. I have been lied to. I have been let down. BUT not by my God.
Trust doesn’t come with an asterisk. Trust isn’t: “I trust you to do what I tell you to do.” Nor is it “I trust you as long as you don’t do this or that.” It is “I trust you. Period.”
2 Timothy 1:12 states, “Yet I am not ashamed because I know whom I have believed and am convinced He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day”
I realized that I had forgotten the God that I know. I had somehow, at some point, begun to picture God as just a big “us” - someone who was moody, flaky, and susceptible to whims. Someone who, the minute I fully gave in, and said, “ok… you can have me” would laugh, say “gotcha" - and take all my happiness away.
But God isn’t just a big “us” - He’s God. He is good to His core… He is faithful… He is true… He is altogether worthy of my trust and of yours. The more I know Him the more I love Him. The more I love Him the more I trust Him.
So I trust Him. I trust with Him the "him" and I trust Him with whether or not there will be a “him.” I don’t know who he will be or when or if he will arrive, but I do know my God and He’s never been predictable nor has He ceased to amaze me.
-Biblically Blonde
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