TO TRUST OR NOT TO TRUST, THAT IS THE QUESTION

Recently the Lord spoke to me and told me to guard my peace as my greatest treasure.  This is a peace that is not circumstantial but is the peace of God which can only be had through a relationship with Yeshua (Jesus), as many of you reading this already know. And with this peace comes a kind of freedom that can be had in no other way.  If you don't know the peace or freedom I'm speaking of, please keep reading. I have hope to share with you at the end of this article.  

Well, having said that about peace, I have had quite a challenge to my own peace recently. I am sharing this rather personal story with the hope that it will be an incentive to some of you reading this as I feel the issue is an important one. And besides, I believe it's the Lord who wants me to share it for the same reason and after all, it's really His story anyway. So here goes.  

I had to make a financial decision. I felt the Lord was telling me to sell an automobile that was of fairly substantial financial value as well as having emotional value to me because of the way I had obtained the car. But at this point, because of an accident I had which upped the insurance rate on the car it was putting a monthly burden on me. I have had no debt at all for over eleven years but lately I had a few expenses that meant I now had some debt.  Selling the car and purchasing a less expensive one would enable me to get out of debt plus reduce my monthly costs. 

But every voice in my life, family and friends, whomever I spoke with told me wisdom dictated that I keep the car and just pay off my debts over time like everyone else.

What to do?  Was I really hearing from God?  Isn’t there wisdom in the advice of many counselors, as the bible says?  Could the unity in the advice of EVERYONE in my immediate set of close friends and family really be God speaking to me rather than what I thought He was saying to me?  I spent  much time wrestling with this issue and the more I wrestled, the more my stomach hurt. That peace I was talking about – gone!  Or at least seriously misplaced. What a struggle. 

A few days ago I was told by yet one more of my “advisors” that I needed some counseling to deal with my emotions because I wasn’t seeing things clearly having a fear of being in debt and that debt was what everyone deals with. Well, I had once also been in debt and I know the difference between debt and no debt. Being in debt feels like a loss of freedom to me.  As I held this before the Lord, what came to me is that God doesn’t owe anyone anything. The Bible tells us that, “The heart of the borrower is in the hand of the lender.”  That’s how it felt, as if my heart was not entirely my own. Someone else had a hold of it. Though it wasn't what might be considered by some to be a great deal of money, I was surely not at peace about owing it. The Bible also says to “Owe no man anything but to love him.”  That's the only kind of owing I prefer.  

That sounds ridiculous in this day and age, but the debt of this nation and the debt of this culture we live in today is not normal or safe. I’ve heard more than a few prophetic preachers saying “Get out of debt as soon as you can.”  Some have stated that they see a financial crises coming – even this year.  Well, I’ve heard that before but I must admit I have the same inkling. Some concern has been linked perhaps to Passover (4/3-11) or Sukkot (9/27-10/4).  I was recently called “Chicken Little” and accused of fearing that the sky would fall, when I told someone my thoughts in this regard. I'm not fearful, but I guess time will tell whether it happens or not.

After being in this conflict much too long, I came to the Lord this week and made a decision.  I would rather put my trust in Him and what I believe He was saying to me than disregard what I felt was what He was telling me to do and choose everyone else’s advice instead. After all, everyone else was in debt themselves in some way.  Perhaps my wanting so badly to be free of debt made them uncomfortable with their own debt, though if the truth be told, I bet everyone who is in debt feels the stress of it in some way.  But the reason I made that decision is that I opted to obey God. I chose to trust in God. I would go with what I believed He had been telling me even though it meant going against what people thought.  Part of the struggle, I admit, was having to disregard what people I’m close to thought of me. I decided I cared more what God thought than what they did.

Still, was it an emotionally weighted decision?  You bet. But the minute I made the choice to go with God my peace began to return.  I have the sense that my life would go differently if I chose to go the way of what now seemed worldly advice as I doubt any of them had prayed about what they were telling me, rather than go with what I felt the Lord had been telling me. Trust the Lord and He’ll give you more to trust Him with. Doubt He is trustworthy and you’ll miss the opportunities of increased blessings. The whole bible reads like that from Abraham forward: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” Those are the words of King Solomon and he was supposed to be wise, right?  To this to I might add: ...and lean not on the understanding of others, even those who love you.  By not leaning on your own understanding it means not to make decisions only based on how you see things without input from or reliance upon God, but acting independently instead.  I made the decision that I would put my trust in God regardless of what the voices around me were saying.

So here’s what happened.  I put the car on Criaglist.com for a certain price. No calls. The second day I felt to reduce the price and continued to pray that God would send just the right buyer.  That evening I got a call from a gentleman asking about it.  It was pouring rain and about 9:30 at night. He wanted to come then to see it. Now?  Now.  Okay.  He liked it, but he’d have to talk to his wife about it. They both came back the next day and decided they would purchase it. 

We wound up spending a good bit of the day together and after he finally had to go off to work, the wife and I went and had lunch together. We had become immediate friends.  As it turned out, they had given – that is GIVEN – away a car of almost exactly like this one for the same amount of money to someone when God had told them to. Obviously they had been in a position to do it but still, it was quite an act of obedience. The woman to whom they had given it to said that she was feeling suicidal as she didn’t believe God even knew who she was anymore or cared what she was going through. This made such a difference in her life. It had given her hope. 

Now, here, sometime later, God had not only somewhat supernaturally provided the cash to purchase this car without financing it but here I was selling it for the same amount that they had paid for the car they had given away in obedience to the Lord. 

Add to this that the Lord had told this couple to get entirely out of debt by this winter. They had purposed to do so. They had obediently sold an even more expensive automobile. The tenant of a rental property they owned called and said he wanted to buy the house without their having advertised it. They sold their high end large home by the time winter had come, officially December 21st of this year, and had moved south to another city, to where they felt God was leading them, which happened to be my city. They had downsized to where they owed nothing including no mortgages and were now renting a nice home. The car they had purchased from me was not a frivolity but a necessity and they were able to pay cash for it. We were clear confirmation to one another that God had said the same thing to both of us - get out of debt to the best of your ability - now!

[Note: Everyone of us is in a different situation and we each need to know what God is saying specifically to us in regard to debt, or mortgages, or possibly downsizing.]

As the wife and I had lunch together, she turned out to have an interest in the Jewish roots of Christianity and the Feasts of Israel, all those kinds of things that my life is all about. So we felt that God had put us together as kindred souls. Plus they had prayed that the Lord would lead them to the right car to purchase just as I had prayed He would bring whom He wanted to have it.  This was more than a transaction for a car, the whole thing had the Lord all over it. There were so many confirmations that not only was I to have sold it but that it was this very couple who was to purchase it. The Lord had arranged the whole thing. I love when those kinds of things happen that prove how involved God is with our individual lives. My peace was entirely restored and so was my amazement once again at how “God works all things together for those who love Him.” If ever I had a set of lessons on always trusting the Lord, this was it.

So I leave you with these thoughts:  The Lord is worthy of your trust, even when logic and even your own emotions may say otherwise if that’s how you feel He’s leading you, or what you’ve heard Him say to you either directly or through His word.  Protect your God-given peace.  Value it beyond anything else, for in it is the wisdom from above – where God is, that He can see the down the road and knows what’s best for each of us.

Secondly, I share with you what I have heard from Him, to be careful what you put great value on, because many things that are considered of value today may cease to have the same value. That which is of the greatest value is peace with God.  He will take care of you and provide for you. That means put what you own in proper perspective. Let your treasure be in heaven, that is to say, value your relationship with Yeshua (Jesus) beyond whatever is in the here and now and over what people may think of you. What we have today will last only for a time, but what we have with Him lasts forever.  This life on earth will be ours for just so long but peace with God carries with it an eternal weight of glory!   

To anyone to whom the peace of God is alien to you, or if you’ve never put your trust in the Lord before, or you find that you’re not sure about where the real value is in your life – talk to Him.  He will listen.  He will hear you. And He will let you know He does.  He cares not only about you, but for you – with a loving heart beyond what you can imagine.  Tell Him the things that are on your heart.  Those things you’re afraid of anyone knowing? He already knows them. He’s just waiting for you to open up your own heart and unburden yourself to Him so He can release you from the weightiness of misplaced values and trusting in your own understanding that turned out not to be wise after all. He is the God of forgiveness and of comfort.  Put your life and all you own in His hands. So is your forever! He can take better care of both much more than you can.

The Voice in The Water

I took a pensive walk with the Lord on the beach yesterday. The day was just crisp enough so that it wasn't hot, not yet anyway. That will come soon enough. I  took off my sandals and rolled up my jeans and waded into the water's edge. The sand, being wet, was packed hard under my feet, not at all like the shifting, sifting sands 15 feet inland. Avoiding stepping on shells or pebbles in my bare feet, the Lord and I began our walk.

"Do you hear My voice in the water?" He asked me. I listened as I kept walking. But no, I wasn't hearing His voice in the water. I kept walking and listening while people-watching. I passed a little boy about four years old who was dancing with his shadow on the wet sands as if he had just discovered that he had a shadow. I was greeted by an enthusiastic Jack Russell Terrier named Molly as I came near her masters' blanket. I made my way around a group of teens comprised of several squealing girls and the guys who were chasing them. I listened as I waded through a wide indentation in the sand filled with sun-warmed sea water, but there was no voice in that water either.

A flock of seagulls strutted the beach on their their toothpick legs always facing the ocean. A  newcomer flew into the flock and almost immediately began an argument with another seagull. I'm guessing the newcomer was not so new and wanted his place of seniority back. A whole lot of squawking at each other went on until the newcomer had won and the other sauntered away, seemingly accepting his defeat. A fisherman stood just out of reach of the water, his red bucket of bait by his side, and cast a far-reaching line out into the sea.. Are there salt water fish this close to land, I wondered.

I continued walking until it was time to head back, surprised when I turned around at how far I had come.  But I was disappointed in my walk. I was hoping for more of an encounter with the Lord. As I was heading toward the end of my walk I told Him so.  And again I heard, "Do you hear My voice in the water?"  No, Lord, I don't, I answered. What I did hear was the crashing of the waves  and then the bubbly sort of commotion as seashell studded waves tumbled over each other in their race toward the boundary God had set at creation, only to have to recede back and try again.

As I stood in the ebbing froth, I wondered where the molecules of waters that now played around my feet had been before and whose feet they had covered elsewhere. I heard the call of seagulls and the nearby breakers, but I heard no voice of God in any of it. "Lord, help me to hear Your voice in the waters," I petitioned Him. The next moment my attention shifted from the busyness of the waves where I stood to the stillness of the water on the horizon, far out at sea. I became aware of the vast and powerfully majestic unfathomable depths of the ocean miles out from where I stood. How deep the ocean is, I thought. How unconquerable. If storms would come and stir up angry waves, even so, they would not have come from the water, but from forces other than the ocean itself. I was struck by the ocean's vastness and the quiet power as compared to the race to the beach of the competing baby waves near the shore.

All the commotion and activity near the shore, He seemed to be saying is like mankind's ways, with much ado and rushing about, competing with one another, tumbling over each another in our attempts to reach a goal that will then require we try again. It became clear to me that the 'almightyness' of the sovereign sea covers the earth in a powerful display of the 'Almightiness' of God, giving testimony to His unfathomable depth, His unchallengeable power, and His absolute sovereignty that covers the earth as the waters cover the sea. Compare this to the ways of men and seagulls where there is often noise and confusion, strife and competition, rushing to get to where you'd have to only rush again soon after. But the closer you get to the deep places in God, and the more unfathomable He becomes in His goodness and wisdom, the quieter you become in your spirit, having let go of things that matter no more, making room for more of God in your heart and your life. Then I knew I had heard His voice ~  in the deep waters.