Willingness and Trust
Willingness
- To give your life over to God to be born again
- To follow wherever He leads
- To lift up to Him whatever sin He highlights in us
- To worship Him always
Faith is more than just a belief in Jesus Christ and God. Belief is a good starting point, but it won’t take you very far. What belief is missing is the engagement of more than the mind. Faith is a whole-person affair—body, mind, heart and soul. A dedication of all of ourselves. [Matthew 22:36-40, Mark 12:28-34, Luke 10:25-28]
Faith implies great trust in God. That trust means that whatever comes into one’s life is embraced as God’s will, with the promise of His presence in whatever we go through.
Faith is also obedience and a willingness to follow wherever He leads. That’s one way of describing obedience, but it’s more a Spirit-of-the-law adherence, a totally engaged person, than a letter-of-the-law person who will follow any rules without a commitment to a deeper engagement with God.
This willingness to follow Him means that we are able to give up our own preferences, assumptions, expectations, knowing that God has our best interests at heart always. Essentially, we are asked to give up our free will in favor of letting God bring us to the fullness of who we were created to be. It means that our will and God’s will become one and the same.
Willingness also means we are open to His suggestions, open to changing how we think about things and other people, open to allow Him to heal our pain and suffering, open to what He has planned for us. Open to His call, whatever that may be.
Faith is not the absence of doubt, but a willingness to entertain anything, even doubt that God sends our way in order to open up our minds to thinking like God thinks. And that takes us back to trust.
Trust
- No worries about anything, I rest in God’s arms
- Confidence that I will be okay no matter what happens
- Knowing that He carries my burdens, I am free to follow Him
Faith is tremendous trust in God. For direction. For our education. For His presence in our lives. For His love and forgiveness. For His faithfulness. We put our lives, our free will, our future on the line for our love of God, so that we can bask in the benefits of a life lived in the mind of Christ. We can be free of the unnatural restraints of the culture and live fully as our own true selves. We can live purposeful, fulfilling lives.
To be truly faithful is to live willingly in this world, but not of this world, trusting that God is in charge. To live in the mind of Christ, thinking, being as much like Him as we can. As we are able to do that, then we are gifted with the fruit of the Spirit—peace, joy, love, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness and self-control [Galatians 5:22-3]—in everything we do and say.
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Questions to ponder over the week: How willing am I to follow God’s lead wherever He would take me? What constitutes any resistance in me to God? Is it fear or anger or _____? Do I trust God with my life? My well-being? My whole self?
Blessing for the week: May we be the people of God who willingly and with great trust put ourselves in His hands. May we be blessed beyond measure.