a trusting heart

It's Friday already! Weeks manage to entire fly by and here we are, halfway through August, doing new student interviews, preparing for new year meetings, and getting ready for our students to start showing up with their backpacks and Bibles in a two weeks!

There have been some major blessings this week, like the return of several fellow missionaries...our field director, the dean of the seminary, and a missionary kid teacher. The Bundy kids are back, always bringing a lot of joy into our lives. They are immensely excited about our new baby, and never greet either of us before first giving a hearty hello and a pat to my stomach.

It has also been a really difficult week. Small difficulties, like continued electrical issues, intense temperatures and rat infestations have added to larger difficulties, like major issues in Haiti, continued price increases and an ever transitioning field. EASY things, like turning on your lights, checking your email, making a copy, receiving your mail, buying a loaf of bread...all these things are difficult here. Being good communicators, being a unified body of Christ, knowing when and how and where to serve and act and when and how and where to stay out of...all these things are difficult, well, everywhere :)

Our "exciting" transition back into Haiti has proved to be far more challenging than fun, and we are praying that the Lord be using all of this to be teaching, growing and deepening us.

One thing He has really been working with me on, in particular, is on what it means to TRUST Him. With this new school year and new year of ministry and new baby, I have a lot of things I am apt to be concerned about, and He's stretching my heart about what a trusting heart really looks like...what my life should look like if I truly live in complete trust in Him.

I've been studying this in the Word all week, and am assured that there are several things that aren't all that comforting about trust. Trusting the Lord does NOT mean that I trust Him to take care of everything the way I want it to. It doesn't seem to mean having confidence that God will work all things out in my way, even the very very GOOD things that I want.

For example, whenever my mother was sick, if I put my trust in the fact that God WOULD heal her of leukemia and hand her back to us, either 1) He would have since betrayed my trust, or 2) I had my trust in an outcome that I wanted, NOT in the Lord. I do have enough confidence to say that the Lord has never betrayed my trust WHEN it was truly put in Him.

So what DOES trust in the Lord, not in good things, look like? How can God be MY God AS HE IS and not my "genie in the bottle" or my "wish granter." How can I trust Him, regardless of the circumstances that often come with being humans in a human world?

So far, 2 Kings has given me the most vivid images of a man that puts His trust in God through King Hezekiah. It also exemplifies what a two-sided, give and take relationship TRUST is. This is what 2 Kings 18 says of Hezekiah.

He did what was right in the sight of God.
He removed places of sin in his life and in his peoples lives.
He removed points of sin that even godly men before him had left.
He Trusted in the Lord.
He clung to the Lord.
He did not depart from Him.
He kept His commandments.
He did not serve men, but God.

And so, it says, there were none like him, and the Lord went with him wherever he went, and whatever he did, prospered.

This all intrigues me...It never says "Hezekiah was highly and unwaveringly optimistic that God would help him and serve him. He trusted God." (my common misconception of trust: being unwaveringly optimistic).

NO. It says that "NO MATTER WHAT, Hezekiah clung to the Lord, and did all that he should do, and obeyed God and served God...He trusted in the Lord, and SO the Lord was with him.

Ultimately, that is all I really want. Don't get me wrong. I want everything to be blissfully perfect: a happy, heathy, flawless 8 pound baby delivered in under two hours with her father there right on time...a ridiculously fruitful and easy year at the seminary this upcoming year...effortlessly beautiful relationships with everyone around us...cool breezes, dead mosquitos, Edy's ice cream.

But after studying Scripture, I'm realizing that all it is that I REALLY WANT is what Hezekiah had...I want to obey Him, serve Him, CLING to Him, and I want the Lord to be with me.

Looking back on all of the struggles this past year has brought, I can see so clearly that Lord has in a million ways merited every ounce of our trust. If I can say ONE thing about the past year, it is that God has truly been WITH us, and that HE and HE alone has prospered SO MANY of our efforts, so many of our feeble attempts at service.

We want the Lord to go with us wherever we go...not because "He's God, that is His job", but because we are so busy CLINGING to Him, so occupied with removing sin and keeping His commandments and serving Him with all our hearts.

After all my study this week (and I only made it through to Psalms), this is what I have found a Trusting Heart to look like...This is what we want to look like...

A trusting heart...
rejoices
cries out to God
is non-wavering
declares all His deeds
sings Praises
does right in His sight
obliterates sin in our lives
clings to the Lord
never departs from Him
keeps His commands
doesn't serve men, but God
is poured out to God
acts as if HE carries ME, not vice versa
does good
cultivates faithfulness
is committed
waits upon His name.

And ultimately, as Psalm 135:18 said about those who lifted up idols instead of the Lord, "Those who MAKE them will be LIKE them, and so will all who TRUST in them." Whatever I put my true trust in will BE what I am like. We become like what we trust in!

What an exciting and scary idea! If I trust in everything going my way, I will become all about MY WAY. If I trust in man, or promises, or buildings, or money, I will become like those things (Deut. 25:52 "the walls in which you trusted will come down.")

More than I want my way, or want perfect things, I want to look like Him...We want to exemplify trusting hearts in every aspect of our social, ministry, prayer, thought, daily lives...

Please keep praying for our brothers and sisters in Haiti, missionary and Haitian. Please keep praying for our students as they prepare to return, for our hearts and minds as we prepare to teach them, and for our hearts for the Lord, that they might be ever more trusting!