Sunday School lesson

How will He not also?

Chapter 8

“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“God and I have long had trust issues.” Pg 141

Have any of you experienced this?  If so have you gotten past this? How?

“Anxiety has been my natural posture, my default stiffness. The way I curl my toes up, tight retreat.  How I angle my jaw, braced, chisel the brow with the lines of distrust.  How I don’t fold my hands in prayer…weld them into tight fists of control.  Always control----pseudopower from the pit.” “Worry is the façade of taking action when prayer really is.  And stressed, this pitched word that punctuates every conversation, is it really my attempt to prove how indispensable I am?  Or is it more?  Maybe disguising my deep fears as stress seems braver somehow?” Pg 143

“Fear is like this piano wire cutting round the wrists, life shackled, cutting deep, and the hands spasm, fists of control.  Fear keeps a life small.  The music dies and the joy drains.  I’ve lived the strangle.” Pg 145

What are your deep fears?  Are you disguising them?  Can you share?

“Stress isn’t only a joy stealer. The way we respond to it can be sin.” Pg 146

John 14:1, Psalm 40:4

“Can trust be conjured up simply by sheer will, on command?  I’ve got to get this thing, what is means to trust, to gut-believe in the good touch of God toward me, because it’s true: I can’t fill with joy until I learn how to trust.” Pg 146

Romans 15:13

“How can I trust when a troubled, joy-shriveled heart has pumped fear through the stiff veins of all my years?”

“If I believe, then I must let go and trust.” “What is saving belief if it isn’t the radical dare to wholly trust?”  Pg 146

“Belief is a verb, something that you do. Then the truth is that authentic, saving belief must be also? Then a true saving faith is a faith that gives thanks, a faith that sees God, a faith that deeply trusts?” Pg 147

“Without trust in the good news of Jesus, without trust in the good news of God’s saving work even in this moment, without an active, moment-by-moment trust in the good news of an all-sovereign, all-good God, how can we claim to fully believe?  This is the trust I lack: to know that if disaster strikes, He carries me even there.”  Pg 148

“Much of the worry in my own life has been a failure to believe…a wariness to thank and trust the love hand of God.” Pg 149

So back to the first question: Do you trust? Do you struggle to trust?

Challenge: This week I challenge you to trust God, the love hand of God, in the good and the bad!  If you could journal this or blog your experience, even if you did not trust.  I hope that this will open us up more to what God really has for us, rather than to heap more worry and stress on us.  Even when we mess up and don’t trust, hopefully because we are trying to trust, we will be able to see where we went wrong and fix the problem, rather than go on with the worry and let it build in us.  God bless and have a Merry Christmas!