ruthless trust

“Every authentic spiritual experience is an experience of unrestricted, unconditional being in love.”

Each new faith journey is borne out of the victory of the last. This time it’s different. An overwhelming sense of being in love and feeling delighted in from the One who created me is everything I need to move forward.

There are few words that have stuck with me more than these from a book I read about Mother Teresa’s life, this time last year…

The more I’ve been studying the life of Mother Teresa, as I just finished her book, No Greater Love, the more I begin to understand her secret.

There may have been a lot of things Mother Teresa didn’t know. Like myself. There may have been a lot of things Mother Teresa didn’t understand. Like myself. But Mother Teresa KNEW God’s love for her. Not Mother Teresa knew God’s love, as God loves the whole world, no, it was intensely personal, intensely real to her. She knew God loved her. Period. And from this place came her strength, came the grace to trust Him no matter what…

For whatever reason, these words always enter my mind as if I’m reading them for the first time, they struck me then and have come to me in the midst of many times I’m tempted to believe what my circumstances are screaming for me to believe OVER what I know to be true. What I know of God’s character, what I know of God’s promises to me in His word, what I know to be true of His love for me… Yet our circumstances will always fight for our heart’s attention… I find this secret profound yet again and this always stops me dead in my tracks…

“Mother Teresa was not afraid to make such a serious commitment, though this implied renouncing her own will at each moment. She knew that God loved her and she trusted that His will for her would always be an expression of that unfailing love, however difficult or even impossible it might be at times to fathom His designs.” - Come Be My Light

This kills me every time. For whatever reason this quote always pops in my head at the most critical times…

In every situation, in every circumstance, she could rest… Why? Because no matter what was going on, she knew that His will for her in ANY given situation was always an expression of His unfailing love for her.

Wow.

I prayed last year that I would know the reality of her words, and each time this quote enters my mind in a situation, I find I know just a fraction more but cannot even fully comprehend the amount of ruthless trust she possessed. But I am a work in progress. Exactly where He wants me. Learning how to trust. Learning how to live loved.

“Our story is paradigm for every trusting disciple. The way of trust is a movement into obscurity into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out a discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment. The reality of naked trust is the life of a pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and promise.”

- Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust