I clearly remember in the midst of my freshman year of college, laying in my bed in a small dorm room, ‘giving it up to God’. I can’t remember who had told me I needed to give my worries to God or how that phrase even came to me, but having studied all night for a Biology test, I gave my worries up to God. I felt a great release of stress and lived by that motto, ‘give it to God’ for a few weeks before I realized God expected me to give a little too. We can’t do it alone and God isn’t going to do it alone. It’s a partnership.
Most of the books I write have an underlying theme of trust in the Lord.
Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.
However, in order to understand this verse you need to understand where God is coming from…and we do that by being familiar with his Word.
The story I really relied on when writing the last book in my Thousand Moments series was the story of Abraham. I love that story. Abraham started off so good! He left his home because God called him to. He obeyed unquestioningly the commands as he received promises from God that he would have many children one day. Abraham was off with his wife, his nephew, and all his money and was ready to do what God asked, well until the land he was supposed to go to was in a famine and he changed God’s plans. Changing his route caused Abraham to lie and be deceitful. His lack of trust that God was going to take care of his family and his taking the control from God caused a plague to be brought upon the pharaoh and a huge mess he had to get out of. You see we all seem to be ready to trust as long as we have some control over the outcome.
My husband will willfully admit trust is his biggest struggle in his faith. He trusts that God will get us through the Covid virus and that he has a place for him in heaven, but he lacks the trust when life gets tough and decisions need to be made on an Earthly level.
Years ago, God made it very clear to my family that my husband was supposed to change jobs. However, he didn’t put the new job out in front of him, he just said you need to quit. My husband wasn’t willing to trust that we would be taken care of and he would be given another job. So he took promotions and moved up in the company, all taking him away from the family he was supposed to be leading in faith. God must have seen that he need a good kick in the pants because I became very ill and couldn’t take care of our boys, so my husband had to quit. Although I always tease that I had to take one for the team, just like Sarah did for Abraham, we never had to worry about anything during that time because God showed us he would take care of us. Now I am that person who is able to say, trust the plan. God knows the path he has for you, it’s our job to follow until he puts a road block up and changes our direction.
In this time of political unrest and a virus that sends out contradictory information I feel Christians are being asked to trust at an entirely new level.
Jeremiah 29:11 says, For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.
God is not the one putting the trials in front of you. You are, by fighting the will of God. And if you aren’t reading your Bible daily it is difficult to hear his plan. He isn’t coming to you through a burning bush or a falling star, he has crafted the stories of the Bible to give us hope. For us to see the journey of the characters in the scriptures and use those as our examples, our lessons. The stories tell of a very similar path the world took. One we are experiencing in 2020, but how can we know the love God gave to his people, the safety, and the comfort, if we aren’t studying his Word. We begin to rely on the word of man, the posts on social media, the latest Tik Tok video. Think about it…if we picked up our Bible as many times as we picked up our phones where would our faith and trust in his plan be?
1 Corinthians 2:5 So that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men but on the Power of God. Test every truth claim against the truth in scripture.
About the Author:
Connie was born and raised in Seattle Washington but recently moved to Montana. She lives with her husband and her three dogs and enjoys any activity which will get her outdoors. Connie has two sons who have successfully graduated from college. Her oldest works as a wildland fire fighter in Montana while the other is in Georgia in the Army.
WHERE TO FIND CONNIE
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Faith in romance. A Guest Post by Connie Ann Michael, author of A THOUSAND SILENT MOMENTS.
OTHER BOOKS IN THE 1000 MOMENTS SERIES
OTHER BOOKS BY CONNIE ANN MICHAEL
Anaiah Press 