What Trust Looks Like

Just a little something that happened the other day.

So like I mentioned in a recent post, since reading the book Hearing God, by Dallas Willard, I've been trying to listen more carefully for God's voice even in the casual, humdrum areas of life. One way I've been practicing lately is by going on aimless bike rides and asking him to guide my route - just simple stuff, exploring the city, doing some light shopping, whatever, and I'll pray for guidance on finding interesting spots or things I've been looking for.

The other day, I was biking near the beach around lunchtime, and I asked him to direct me to a good place to have lunch. Instead of him leading me to a restaurant, I just wound up at a 7-eleven, picking up some onigiri to eat somewhere scenic. Since I was so near the beach already, I started heading to the beach, but there was some construction going on, the road was a little funny, and I wound up passing the beach.

I prayed and asked if I should turn around, and felt God encouraging me to keep going - he had a cool spot up ahead for me. So I did keep going, and very quickly everything was like... I passed a literal garbage facility. Things were industrial and gross and smelled bad and I was suddenly convinced that I hadn't heard God, maybe I'd never heard God, I'd been making it all up and it was all in my head and what am I supposed to do about that because my instinct is to pray for guidance but how would I know if he was guiding me and-

And then I got to the ferry dock, and there was a wonderful spot out on the pier where I was surrounded by the bay with a view of mountains in every direction and it was just great!

I think it was just such a great example of so many of my interactions with God, especially in the last couple years. I am growing a lot, I am hearing him more, but so often I will clearly hear the plan, I will set out on the plan, and then I very quickly convince myself there is no plan and I made it all up and if he doesn't reassure me immediately then I spiral and I panic and then, oh look! Everything is fine and it turns out there had been a plan all along, just like I'd originally thought.

Pastor Kyle in Virginia gave a great sermon before we left about trusting God; one of the parts that stuck with me the most was when he said (and I'm paraphrasing heavily here), "We tell God we'll trust him if he explains everything to us, but that wouldn't be trust anymore - it'd just be agreement." I think I always thought of myself as more trusting of God than I actually have been, because I've so heavily misunderstood what trust is and looks like.

Maybe another anecdote can help explain what I'm getting at. So we recently bought a Switch 2, and on one of my bike rides I was buying a new game for it. We have no income and our savings are dwindling as the months pass, so it took a lot of trust to even buy the Switch 2 in the first place, but I really did feel like it was something he wanted me to do - maybe as an exercise in trust, maybe just for fun because he likes me.

But so as I'm looking at dropping the $50 or so on a game, I was praying, like, "God, is this really okay? I trust you to provide for me, but like, I don't need this - is buying this me being trusting, or is it me making a mistake?"

I was, obviously, expecting a binary response - either "This is you trusting" or "This is a mistake," but instead he responded with a question - "Suppose it is a mistake. Do you really think making a mistake would in any way stop me from providing for you? That it'd make me less capable or less willing? Stop worrying about it either way."

There's a great part in God's Smuggler, by Brother Andrew, where someone chastises Brother Andrew for being too frugal, saying in effect, "You claim that you're trusting God to provide for you, but you're actually trusting in your own scrimping and saving." That really landed for me. I think most of my life I trusted God to provide the opportunity for provision, but that he expected or even required me to contribute by making the most of each opportunity. But recently I've been realizing it's... that's not 100% wrong, but it's definintely way closer to 100% than it is to 0%, or even 50%.

God wants good things for us, and often that includes teaching us how to take care of ourselves and the people around us. He doesn't want us to be lazy or careless, and he will often teach us lessons to that effect. But there's a big difference between him wanting us to be active and him expecting us to provide for ourselves. I think that in God's kingdom, activity and productivity don't really have any correlation to prosperity or provision, and we're doing him and ourselves a disservice when he connect them too tightly. We're not told to seek to be good stewards and then he'll provide for us, we're told to seek his kingdom and then he'll provide for us. Sometimes those two things look similar - he does want us to be good stewards of the gifts he's given us! But I think "good stewardship" looks very different in God's eyes than it does in ours, and misunderstanding that ends with us taking on a lot of burdens that God has no intention of us bearing.

Like Pastor Kyle also said before we left: "Just try to trust God too much." You can't do it!