Devotionals for the Heart: Trust

Trust Without Borders
A devotional by Julia Wilson

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” 

–Proverbs 3:5 (NIV)

As I write this devotional on March 25, the world is held in the grip of the Coronavirus pandemic. People are naturally fearful because we have never been here before. But there is One who knows the end from the beginning. We can trust Him with all our heart. In fact we must trust Him with all our heart.

As The Passion Translation of The Holy Bible says in Proverbs 3:5, “Trust in God completely … with all your heart rely on Him to guide you and He will lead you wherever you go.” Whatever we face in life, whatever surprises us, we can trust God because nothing surprises Him and He always has our back.

For us as a family, we have had a situation that has required us to lean fully on God and to trust Him completely. The situation was completely out of our hands. We had nowhere else to go but to trust and to turn to God in prayer. James 5:16 (TPT) says, “For tremendous power is released through the passionate, heartfelt prayer of a godly believer.”

And believe me, we have pressed into God, believing that He would hear us and that He would answer. I have trusted with all my heart and as I write this, God has answered and performed many miraculous signs. But there is still a way to go, and so I hold on to Him, trusting for that light at the end of the dark tunnel.

We all trust in something … We trust that a chair will hold us up, we trust that gravity will keep our feet firmly planted, we trust that Australia exists. Why? Simply because we have been told or we have experience of these things. So why do we find it so hard to trust God for our family, our finances, our jobs etc.?

We have been told of our faithful God over and over again in the Bible. I think we like to be in control but there are times when we simply have no control. It is in these times that we turn to God and we trust Him completely because there really is nowhere else to go.

What would our lives look like if we trusted God always? God urges us to “pray continually” (1 Thessalonians 5:17 NIV). As we pray, we join with God. When we pray, we must not worry, for if we worry it would be like saying to God that we did not trust Him to move. Prayer goes hand in hand with trust, not worry.

When I was a child I trusted (and I still do) my Dad completely. He said he was always there for me and he was. (I do realize that some will not be as lucky as I was). God says “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5 NIV) and yet we do not always believe Him. The promises God makes, God keeps, so why do we not trust Him always?

I absolutely love the worship song “Oceans” by Hillsong. It is a song that I have been singing a lot in recent weeks.

Allow me to paraphrase some of my favourite lyrics from the song that I love: The singer asks God’s Holy Spirit to lead her to a place where her trust in God is without borders. She asks God to help her walk upon the water (like Peter did in a Bible story). She asks God to help her trust Him to lead her and that she will answer His call and follow Him. She asks God to take her deep into her faith journey with Him. She trusts God to take her places that are greater than her wildest imagination. She asks God to strengthen her faith as she walks with Him. She feels blessed by the presence of her Savior (Jesus Christ).

Let’s Pray: Dear God, in these turbulent times, help us to learn to trust You completely. Please bless us with a trust that is without borders. In Jesus’s Name I pray, Amen.

~*~
Author Bio:

My name is Julia Wilson but I also go by Christian Bookaholic.

I live with my husband and five cats in a small town in Worcestershire on the banks of the River Severn (England). We have four grown up children and three granddaughters.

I have always loved reading and have always been surrounded by books. I used to work as a teaching assistant for special needs in the local high school. Ill health forced me to stop working in December 2015. I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (known as M.E.) and fibromyalgia. I now have plenty of time to read and review books!

Our eldest son set up my Christian Bookaholic blog. I review every book I read. I read over 300 books a year. I read Christian and mass market. I prefer stories set from 1850 onwards. My favourite type of books to read is stories set in WWI and WWII, and Russia under Czar Nicholas II.

I am a historian, having a Combined Humanities degree where I majored in History and minored in English. I also love swimming. I only learned how to swim in 2017 and go swimming four mornings a week for 90 minutes before breakfast, it keeps my joints going.

I am also a crazy cat lady. I absolutely love my cats. I have grown up with cats and cannot imagine life without them. My dream is to own an old fashioned seal point Siamese … but not while we have our young rescue cat as she hates other cats!

I love God and love going to a large lively church called Lifecentral. I cannot imagine life without God. He gives a peace even when life does not. He guides my life. He is my Rock.