can God trust us?

As I was working through my homework for Beth Moore's study on Daniel, I found myself struck by and unable to stop thinking about a question she asked. She was talking about Daniel 10:12 which says: "Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them." (NIV). Beth Moore then spoke about a few different phrases in this verse, all of which were challenging and encouraging (and I'm not going to talk about them in this post), although it's the last phrase she spoke about that was what caused me to stop and reflect on my life.

Part of the verse says: "... to humble yourself before your God ..." Humility. I've heard it talked about often in Christian circles. And it something we should have in our lives as followers of Christ. In her words on this phrase, Beth Moore asked a question that stopped me and made me reflect for a while. She had this to say:

We often talk about whether we can trust God, but our concluding question is, Can God trust us? Can He trust us with power, insight, and influence as He did Daniel? Or will our pride get in the way? (Beth Moore, Daniel, page 204)

I've bee a part of lots of conversations about trusting God and wrestled with that question in my own life many times. But having the question turned around on me was something that caught me a little off guard . . . in a good way. I'd never asked myself or thought about that question before.

Can God trust me? Can He use me in great ways? Can He teach me and show me new things? Or will I get caught up in my own pride does those things for and through me? Can God trust me to be able to use me to reflect His glory to the world around me? Or do things God uses me for quickly become things I use for my own glory?

Tough question. Challenging to think about.

Pride is one of those things I think we all struggle with at various points in our lives. It is easy to lose focus of being humble before God. We learn something new through study. We hear something great form God. God allows us to be part of something great that He is doing. And we become proud. Maybe not intentionally, but we become proud nonetheless. Proud of our knowledge. Proud of our ability to hear God. Proud of what we did, instead of what God did. And in the process we answer the question of whether God can trust us the way we don't want to. The answer to that questions becomes, "no, God can't trust us - our pride has gotten in the way."

But, thankfully, we can push the reset button on humility in our lives when that happens. We get on our knees before God and declare, again, our dependence on Him for all of that we do. And then we move forward in humility, praying that we can continue to live in a way that God can trust us. And, quite probably, the cycle continues to repeat itself to some degree or another for the rest of our lives. But each time it becomes easier for us to humble ourselves before God because we know that is truly the best way to live and the time between our turns back to pride grow longer and longer.

There is grace when we fail and continue to struggle with pride. There are second chances for that. But,we need to make humbling ourselves before God a lifestyle, as Daniel did. And when we do that, we can know that God can trust us with power, insight, and influence.

So, I leave you with one question to reflect on: Can God trust you?

hearing God's voice

In the last few months I've been part of conversations that have turned to what it sounds like to hear God's voice. It seems that in Christian circles we often use the words "God told me" when talking about why we're making a certain decision. I've used it often myself. But, lately I've been wondering what I actually mean when I say that.

What do I mean when I say that Gold told me to do something different? What do I mean when I say God told me not to do something?

When I say that, I'm saying that I heard God's voice in some way in my life. But, often I couldn't explain it anymore than that. I can't often tell someone how exactly I heard God's voice, but I know I have. It would be easy if hearing God's voice was like hearing someone sitting across the table from you telling you something. But, it's not. Hearing God's voice is something inside. Most often it's something personal. And that can be hard to explain to another person.

What I do know is that to learn to recognize God's voice speaking in our lives we have to take the time to develop a relationship with Him. We have to make it a priority so we can learn to hear God's voice. The same way through spending time with them we learn to recognize the voices of our family and friends, is what we have to do God if we want to learn to hear and recognize God's voice when He speaks.

shelter

When I wrote a post about community a little over a month ago, I had a line from a chorus of a song I had heard just a couple weeks before that running through my head. The line has been stuck in my head since I first heard the song. It's from the Jars of Clay song "Shelter" and says "In the shelter of each other, we will live, we will live."

When I stopped to listen to the lyrics of the entire song, I realized that they so clearly described what I was talking about in the post I wrote on community. It's about becoming known to and living in community with those around us.

"Shelter" by Jars of Clay



There is so much truth in the words to the line in the chorus that has been stuck in my head for a couple months now: "In the shelter of each other, we will live, we will live." That is the way we are meant to live - in community with each other, where we care for, love, protect each other.