I’ve been realizing over the last few weeks that I’ve been living under a shattered sense of
security. It’s something that creeps up and builds and builds before it’s too late, before you realize that something incredibly vital has been lost.
Upon realizing how much my security had been shaken, a conversion of sorts has taken place… A conversion of the heart from “mistrust to trust” as Brennan Manning says in
Ruthless Trust. I picked up my favorite book again at Barnes and Noble after loaning it to a friend overseas, as I realized that my deepest need was trust, as I was seeing how the poison of distrust was slowly spreading to more and more areas of my soul.
As Manning says, “The supreme need in most of our lives is often the most overlooked—namely, the need for an uncompromising trust in the love of God.”
This lack of trust, coupled with the depth of my need and the insidious manner in which this cancer was destroying so many areas of my life called me, forced me to change.
More chains are being broken in my life and he is calling me into deeper communion with Him, where He alone can rebuild and restore my shaken soul.
Part of the frustration was that nothing going on currently has brought upon this reign of distrust. Many of the wounds were long ago, or even a few years ago, when seeds of distrust where sown, and now, in a season of a lot of transition, change and new, and having very little tangible security or anything familiar to cling to, this distrust has resurfaced in the face of new risks in my life Jesus has been inviting me into. This distrust has seeped into nearly every area of my life, it affected by ability to trust in many of my relationships, it affected my perspective, my ability to trust in and have hope for my future, it affected my trust in God, my Lord and Savior.
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“THE DECISIVE (OR WHAT I CALL SECOND) CONVERSION from mistrust to trust—a conversion that must be renewed daily—is the moment of sovereign deliverance from the warehouse of worry. So life-changing is this ultimate act of confidence in the acceptance of Jesus Christ that is can properly be called the hour of salvation. So often what is notoriously missing from the external, mechanized concept of salvation is self-acceptance, an experience that is internally personalized and rooted in the acceptance of Jesus Christ.
It bids good riddance to unhealthy guilt, shame, remorse, and self-hatred. Anything less—self-rejection in any form—is a manifest sign of a lack of trust in the total sufficiency of Jesus’ saving work. Has he set me free from fear of the Father and dislike of myself, or has he not?
The grace-laden act of trust is the landmark decision of life outside of which nothing has value and inside which every relationship and achievement, every success and failure derives its final meaning. Unbounded trust in the merciful love of the redeeming God deals a mortal blow to skepticism, cynicism, self-condemnation, and despair.
It is our decisive YES to Christ’s command, “Trust in God and trust also in me.”- Excerpt from Ruthless Trust, Brennan Manning
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This book is one I owe single-handedly a deep shift in my theology from the first time I read it several years ago. Picking it up a week ago and re-reading it, it is like reading it for the first time.
Jesus has been bringing me more and more into the reality that I am secure. I am safe. I am seen. Held. Known and loved. That I do have security and that my security is found in Christ alone. In the face of demands, pressures, change, stress, transition, and everything being new and unfamiliar, our foundations are either strengthened or shaken.
Tonight something powerful took place. With one issue of trust recently, I haven’t been able to find a logical explanation for why it has been such a struggle. Tonight, a profound breakthrough took place where God brought a memory to me in the face of conflict where I could see how I was reacting out of the fear of an event years ago. A time when I cursed myself for being naïve enough to think that everything was alright, a time where things felt almost too good to be true and a time where the security rug had been ripped out from underneath my feet.
Leaving me abandoned, shaking and alone.
The intensity of those feelings has been controlling me the last few weeks but I had no idea until tonight where they were coming from.
He is faithful. He is setting me free and he desires nothing more than my trust.
My goal each day has been simply to trust that I am loved. As Manning says,
"for I have not said in my heart, 'God exists,' until I have said, 'I trust you.' The first assertion is rational, abstract, a matter perhaps of natural theology laboring at its logic. The second is 'communion, bread on the tongue from an unseen hand.' " :::
“Trust is our gift back to God, and he finds it so enchanting that Jesus died for love of it.”
- Brennan Manning
Amen.
These little ones have totally stolen my heart, they bring me more joy than they could ever know, it's been a pleasure watching them grow up! Last week Ben and I got to spend some time with my favorite kiddos, who also happen to be some of his. It's kinda funny now that we are dating because how we actually got to know each other, apart from being in the same campus church for the last seven years, was both of us were both the only non-parent's at all the birthday parties of the Ingalls kids over the years. Ben has been close to Cannon and the family for several years and independantly I have been close to Korrin and the Ingalls family and consider their house one of my second homes. Now we "fight" for the kids attention, namely baby Brennan who happens to like Ben more than me - what is this world coming to! He will actually reach for Ben when I'm holding him, it's tragic :).
The girls had to see my new nail color.
Paige and Brennan at the end of the hall, regulating the game "What time is it Mrs. Fox?"
