The Beauty of Trusting God.

This approaching summer feels promising.

I mean, the weather is cooler than I feel that it should be on a late May day. The sun is out at least, and the wind blowing into my open window still smells welcoming and floral like it should in spring, so I can't complain.
The state of the weather hardly matters to me; that's not what I'm talking about. Life itself is beautiful and I'm feeling like the coming months hold so much goodness in them.

As a Christian, something that is so key to the faith is trusting God. I for one, am pretty terrible at that. I want to be in control, I'm scared of taking risks, I want to know the outcome of things, what's going to happen tomorrow. I always get frustrated with myself because I know that God is so much more constant than any earthly people that I know, and if I can trust my friends, how much more should I be able to trust my heavenly Father? Trusting is so much harder than it seems.

I feel as though I may be getting better at it though. Almost a month ago, I had to hand in a freshman year reflection and here's a little something that I wrote in that.

"Something that I have been consciously trying to work on for almost two years now is trusting God. I've been told that that's something that everyone needs to work on, and I know that's true, but I also knew that I could definitely work on it. Throughout these past eight months God has placed many obstacles directly in my path that have given me no choice but to trust in him because there was absolutely nothing in my power that could be done to deal with these situations."

I'm finding myself still seeing the beauty in everything and not stressing out nearly as much in these situations as my eight month ago self would have. It's really exciting to witness the changes that have been occurring in my life lately.

In early July, I'll be heading off on a one week missions trip with a small group of others from my church. We're going to be leading a Vacation Bible School for children on a Native Reserve. This will be my third year going and it's a great opportunity in which I know I must trust my God. The first year I went on the trip, I really went because my friends and my brother were there; I wasn't in it on a really spiritual level. Last year I went back because I just knew that God was calling me to it. A good way to sum up last year's trip is by pulling up another paragraph from a freshman year paper; this one comes from my testimony.

"This past summer was a completely opposite experience [from the first year], but somehow even though it was worse, it was better. Nothing went right; we, as a team, worked so hard to plan everything out very well so that the program with the kids would run smoothly. Apparently God had an entirely different plan, and his plan always prevails over ours. The team leaders told us that no other missions trip to this place had been as rocky as this one had been. I was let down... As a team we all realized that God didn't let any of our plans work out because we weren't relying on him. Of course we had all said that we were relying on God, but the problem was that we were asking him to let our plans work out, instead of asking him to work his hand in everything that we were planning to do. All of this being said, the camp experience for the kids there was great; they didn't realize that everything wasn't as we thought it should have been. The point of this missions trip that members of my church take each year is to minister the Gospel to the Native children. That's exactly what happened. Our plans didn't work out but God's did, and all the while his and our purpose was still accomplished."

The missions trip last year was a huge testimony in itself to trusting God. He is so good "and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him" (Romans 8:28).


Today I saw God in a certain friendship that I have. Everything is falling together; I can see God's hand in it and in my life as he's comforting me and assuring me that things are right!

Blessings,

Elizabeth