The ninth P in the The 10 P's of Trusting God to Overcome Fear Devotional.
Our monthly devotional on trusting God to overcome fear is almost complete. This is the second to the last installment.
For those of us who are type “A” personalities and who must control every element and situation in their lives, this is probably the most difficult. (I’m speaking from experience).
Allowing God to pilot us is against our very nature. It has taken me a lot of years to “Let go… and Let God”. But once I learned to remove myself from the equation, it became incredibly freeing. And isn’t that what the Bible tells us, anyway?
Think of it more not in terms of Him controlling our every move, but more in terms of Him piloting our course. You wouldn’t get on a ship that you didn’t know how to pilot without a captain, would you? Heck, no!
It’s so important in the life of a believer to allow God to give us divine direction and wisdom given to us through His word. I always think of the Bible as God’s instruction manual for our lives. When I view it as such, it’s easier to give my life over to Him. He sees the beginning from the end and can help us avoid the dips and curves, not to mention those nasty sink holes of life.
Moreover, He provides purpose, direction and assurance when we search his Word for those things that will uplift and carry us forward through life.
There are basic Biblical foundations for God’s guidance in our lives. We definitely have scriptural assurances.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct your paths. Proverbs 3:5-6
Translating trust in this verse from the Hebrew means “to lie helpless, facedown.” Your trust must be complete. To trust only halfway, that is to trust half in God and half in ourselves is failure to trust God at all.
Think of when you were a kid, and you rode the merry go round. Perhaps you kept one one foot on the merry go round, and the other on the ground. It starts out slow, then speeds up and you had to decide… are you getting off or are you getting on and taking the ride of your life?
It then becomes a choice. Will we trust in the world (the ground) or will we trust in God (the merry go round.) We must decide and get on board with God and give Him all our trust. Not an easy feat for an “A” personality.
Sadly, self-sufficiency and self-dependence have been the bane of mankind’s existence since the fall of man. It’s their perennial sin to live independently of God.
As a Christian, we cannot.
But many are afraid. So the action steps are:
When we’ve done these three things, we can trust God will direct our paths and we will have peace about the direction of our lives.
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will guide you with My eye. Psalm 32:8
God uses various methods for His guidance. I’m always amazed at how complete His word is and how timeless it is for every generation.
Through His Word:
Your word is a lamp to my feet
And a light to my path. Psalm 119:105
Through the Holy Spirit
However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. John 16:13
Through Prayer (this is one verse that I lean on constantly…):
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7
Through Godly Counsel:
Where there is no counsel, the people fall;
But in the multitude of counselors there is safety. Proverbs 11:14
Let’s take a look at examples of God’s guidance throughout scripture. (You can look up these scriptures on your own.)
In Genesis 12:1-4, God instructs Abraham to where He wants him to go.
In Exodus 3:1-10, God instructs Moses to go to Pharoah to demand His people be let go.
In Acts 16:6-10, God through the Holy Spirit keeps Paul from going to various places, but then in a vision, Paul was instructed to go to Macedonia to preach the gospel.
The benefits of “letting go and letting God” can be tremendous.
You will keep him in perfect peace,
Whose mind is stayed on You,
Because he trusts in You. Isaiah 26:3
Perfect peace is a wonderful promise of God. In Hebrew the term perfect peace is actually shalom shalom. The repetition communicates intensity. You’ll get peace and confidence and it’s continuous when we keep our minds on Him.
But to have the perfect peace all the time, our minds cannot occasionally seek the Lord, but it must be stayed. The Hebrew word for “stayed” is sawmak. It comes from the root “to prop,” and has the idea “to lean upon or take hold of, to stand fast”.
He is the source of that perfect peace. There can be no other.
The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside the still waters.
He restores my soul;
He leads me in the paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake. Psalm 23:1-3
When David wrote this Psalm, he thought of the God of Israel and his personal relastionship with God and made an analogy of a shepherd (God) and his sheep (David… and us). Psalm 28:9, Psalm 80:1, Ecclesistes 12:11, Isaiah 40:11, Micah 7:14. All of these verses speak to God as being a shepherd to His people. In John 10:11 and John 10:14, Jesus clearly spoke of Himself as the good shepherd. And in Zechariah 13:7, the verse is prophetic speaking of how the Messiah as the Shepherd will be struck and the sheep scattered. That verse is quoted in Matthew 26:31.
We often see photos or images of Jesus with a lamb carried across His shoulders. In ancient times, a shepherd was considered one of the lowest of all works. Often, the job fell to the youngest son. David was the youngest son, and he spent an inordinate amount of time in the fields guarding the sheep, so he was very familiar with the special relationship between a shepherd and his sheep. The shepherd guided his sheep, but he was also their protector and their physician.
For David (and for us), the verse, I shall not want, is both a decision and a declaration that all of his needs will be supplied by the Lord. When we trust in Him, He gives us protection and provision.
Waiting on the Lord can be the hardest part of all of this and it doesn’t always go the way we think it should. But circling back to the fact that He knows the beginning from the end in our lives, we can clearly see how advantageous it is to allow Him to take the helm.
There are practical steps we can take to allow God to guide us:
Too often our priorities are skewed with “fitting” God into our schedule. He needs to be first. It’s often inconvenient and it’s often something we don’t want to do. (I’ll admit that I don’t always put God first. It’s really difficult to do in this day and age where there are so many distractions. But putting forth the effort has to mean something in God’s eyes, doesn’t it? I don’t know… but I pray He knows my heart.)
Finding what God’s will is for your life (and mine) is challenging. When you do, commit to it with all your heart. It took me years to figure it out and I still am not one hundred percent sure I’m doing His will. I just take a step and see if God leads me or closes that proverbial door in my face.
But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Matthew 6:33
In the Old Testament, obedience to God’s law meant success for Israel, so it was extremely important for the ancient Israelites to know and value the Word of God. Joshua not only read it, but it was on his lips, in his mind, and he had to be obedient to it… and so do we.
This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Joshua 1:8
But most of all, be sensitive to the Holy Spirit speaking to you as you study the word and as you pray. I cannot describe what it feels like other than to say it is a still small voice that speaks to your heart. Some might call it a gut feeling. I prefer a still small voice.
Finally, I want to encourage you to trust in God’s guidance. He only wants the best for you. Always. Be committed to follow His lead.
We cannot possibly know the mind of God. His thoughts are so far above… at least above my puny brain. But He gives us hope in His word to give us peace.
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11
And…
Commit your way to the LORD,
Trust also in Him,
And He shall bring it to pass. Psalm 37:5
The Hebrew for commit is literally ‘roll’. Think of it as rolling away your burdens. They can snowball into huge boulders if we don’t give everything to the Lord. God will see you through. He doesn’t promise that we will get everything we want in the way of material things, but the true desires of our hearts will be handled in God’s timing.
First published in Seralynn Lewis’ Red Hearts Newsletter,Volume 24-20.