(Note: this post is written from a Christian perspective with the belief that God is living and active in our lives)
God has been teaching me a lot this last year about trusting God. ...Maybe that is because I don't. Maybe it is because a year and half ago God asked me to trust him on something and I actively said no.
I went skydiving recently. I got on a plane and let a guy I had never met before strap my harness to his and then let him hurtle me out of the plane.
It was not scary (it was a little scary) because I completely trusted this stranger to keep me safe. I trusted him to know when to pull each shoot and how to instruct me me if there was a danger. So, I let this man hurl me out of an airplane at 13000 feet.
I wish I trusted God that much.
Not that I am going to throw myself from an airplane without an instructor and a parachute to prove that I trust God. That is called plummeting and you can really only do it once. You understand what I mean though. I had no reason to trust this man to keep me safe and no reason to trust the equipment to work properly except for the fact that I have been told they will and do and I read on the internet that they were good and safe. With just that information I jumped out of a plane, against every survival instinct I have.
I do not trust God that much.
When God dangles me out of the side of a plane and says, "don't worry, I've got you. This is going to be fun." I flip out. I do not want to be dangling outside of a plane. I do not want to fly. I am not ready or willing to jump blindly into what I am being asked to do, and what I have probably been preparing for (though, when you are preparing to skydive on the ground it all seems really easy and simple. It does not really prepare you to do the same thing with a wind factor of 180 mph). Even if I do manage to make the jump I am not really trusting God to do the hard work or listening for the signals to do certain things. But I trusted this complete stranger enough to do that. I trusted him to catch me if something went wrong, even though one of the forms I signed said in big, bold, letters that I understood that the instructors were human and could make mistakes.
It is one of the things that I have been learning about trusting God. God has not only agreed but promised to catch me, I just have to trust God and do what is asked of me, and I have to listen for God's instructions while I'm doing it. I do not think I had to sign any waivers at the time of birth (or conception) saying that I understood that God was looking after 7.6 billion of us and could therefore make mistakes. I also didn't just happen to read a few reviews of God on the internet and decide that would be the one I'd try out. My relationship with God is based on; what I have seen God do in my life, what I have seen God do in the lives of those around me, and on God's biblical promises to me. Based on those things I am choosing to believe in a God who is going to catch me when I'm thrown out into what feels like empty space.
If I had not trusted my instructor or my parachute I would have never jumped and if I had never jumped I would never have gotten to fly. And I did. I got to fly.
If I do not trust God. I do not get to fly because I won't do what is being asked of me. It may not hurt at all but it certainly will not be what it can be.
I understand that it is so much easier to trust someone you can see and hear, and it is so much easier to follow instructions when you are being given clear obvious instructions. It is something I have to work on. But when we figure it out and we do it we get to fly because God keeps the promises God makes to us.
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