Trusting God is an act of my will

This post was first published on Monday 16th March 2015 on the blog for the Association of Christian Writers, More than Writers, for which I am a regular contributor. 

Trying to stop feeling fear

What does trusting God feel like? I used to think I wasn't trusting Him because I felt fearful in the face of difficulties. I thought I was a failure. I would read the Bible and pray, waiting for the fear to go and for the trust to arrive. I tried to metaphorically grit my teeth and work up a feeling of faith. But that never really worked. It simply left me feeling even worse, more of a failure and wondering what I had done wrong. 

This week I read Psalm 55. I have read it before but this time it hit me right between the eyes. Especially verses 4 and 5 - "My heart pounds in my chest...fear and trembling overwhelm me, and I can't stop shaking". King David, Israel's greatest King, the man after God's own heart was shaking with fear due to the situation in which he found himself. He wanted to fly away from the situation. He wanted to run away. 

Trust is a choice

It was a revelation to me. I knew the psalms were full of emotion but somehow the day I read this psalm that truth fell the 12 inches from my head into my heart. I read on to see what David would say next. Verses 16 -18, 22  contain these words, 

But I will call on God,

and the Lord will rescue me.

Morning, noon, and night

I cry out in my distress,

and the Lord hears my voice.

Give your burdens to the Lord,

and he will take care of you. 

If you had asked me before this week, I would have told you that trusting God is an act of our will but somehow this week that truth dropped down into my heart. My eyes were opened. I'm not letting God down by feeling fearful at first sight of any difficulties. He is waiting to see what I will do despite my fear. He is waiting for me to chose faith, to choose trust. 

And the amazing thing is that once I have chosen to trust Him the fearful feelings often go, or at least they lessen. The mistake I made before was trying to stop the fear first and then to trust. It doesn't work that way. I know now I need to trust God as an act of my will whilst feeling scared. Then the fear often does go. Like the priests of Israel carrying the arc of the covenant across the River Jordan into the Promised Land. The river did not part until they had stepped into the water. 

Are you facing a difficult situation? Do as a shaking, fearful David did. Chose to trust God as an act of your will, to give Him your situation whilst still feeling afraid and wait to see what God will do for you. 

Temptations

Don't Fall

It is so easy to forget that we depend on Jesus, and the power of his Holy Spirit living within us to overcome the sin in our lives. Sometimes we start to be full of pride. We think we can do it on our own. Or worse we think we overcame the sin all by ourselves in the first place.

This last two weeks I have come as close to bingeing again as I have in the last two years - since God set me free from food addiction. Fortunately for me, I remembered the warning of St Paul from 1 Corinthians 10:12-13 about temptation and to be careful if we think we are strong - we could be headed for a fall. I realised where I was headed and sought the Lord again. I told Him straight what I was feeling. I told him exactly what I was thinking. I asked Him to help me. And He did. 

And I didn't have to screw up my eyes and work up the strength not to binge again. The strength came when I looked to Father God and was totally honest with Him about what was going on. I came to Him as I was. 

Lying to God

Sometimes it is not just ourselves we are lying to by saying we are strong when really it is God who is strong within us. It is God. We may not even know we are not being honest with God. We believe our own propaganda. We act in front of God as we wish we were rather than what we really are. We 'pretend' in the sight of God that we are strong and not tempted to sin again. But Father God is not fooled. He knows we are weak with human frailty "For he knows how weak we are; he remembers we are only dust." Psalm 103:14. Don't lie to God. He knows what is really going on deep down in our hearts. 

Openness with God

I have found that my greatest freedom comes when I come to God as I am, acknowledging all that is wrong with me. I come open handed and say I have nothing and need Him. I look to Him and allow Him to love me. It is all too easy to come to Him, tell Him we are sorry and then continue to try to break the sin in our own strength. For me the freedom comes when I surrender and yield myself to God - to allow His love to change me. His love changes us if we but allow Him to love us as we are. I spent many years trying to make myself worthy of His love. It doesn't work. You can not make yourself worthy of His love. You can only receive it. And it is in the receiving of His love that we are changed. 

Psalm 103 is a good Psalm to read - read it and come close to the God who loves you all the way to the cross of calvary.

Without Vision...

What is Vision? 

Keep your eyes on God, like a child
looking up at the heavens in wonder. 

I've been thinking about vision recently. What does it mean to have vision? How does having vision affect my life?  

According to Dictionary.com Vision is "the act or power of anticipating that which will or may come to be".

One of the questions I have had since Jesus freed me from food addiction is 'Why me?' Why did I find freedom? I am not more worthy than anyone else who would seek it. I am loved by my  heavenly Father but not more than anyone else than anyone else is loved by Him.

I think vision may be one reason. From early on in my search I could envisage a future where I was free one day.  I read the Scriptures and in particular the Gospels and I saw in them the descriptions of how Jesus set people free when he was on earth. I kept telling myself that if he could do it then he could do it now. After all are we not told by the writer of the letter to the Hebrews (Chap13 v8) 

"Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. "

Stubbornness

There was a part of me that did not want to let go of the vision of Jesus being a healer. My dad often told me I was bloody-minded and stubborn when I refused to change my ideas and views. Maybe it is this quality that kept me seeking the freedom of God. If he healed then he could heal now. If Jesus really was God incarnate then setting me free of food addiction was well within his capabilities!  I didn't know how to find the freedom but I believed it was possible. I stubbornly kept on looking. I wasn't going to give up. 

I had vision. I could see that Jesus would do it one day and that made me keep on keeping on with my search when I was tempted to give up. I kept looking up to Jesus. I kept my eyes on Father God and who He is. 

Keeping on despite failure

Well, most of the time I did. I fell frequently and would start to look down at my own abilities and that was when I would fall over and fail. At one point I stopped looking at God completely. I stopped believing in Him for over a year. There were many reasons why that happened but once I came back to God I searched for Him. I put aside all else until I found Him. I was not prepared to let go of what I could see in my mind - that I would be free one day from the food addiction that had enslaved me. In the end freedom came when I searched for God, and God alone. My vision was for HIm alone and not what He could do for me. 

Habakkuk had vision. 

The verses in the picture at the top of the page from chapter 2 of Habakkuk  tell of him watching and waiting for God to fulfil the vision. He kept waiting and watching. And like Habakkuk I kept watching and waiting (in between my many falls) for God to act. 

Free at last

God did set me free. One day I finally trusted God enough to surrender the food addiction to Him. I trusted Him enough to be the comfort to me that food had been previously. 

I urge you to keep your eyes on God, on His Word. Keep your focus on Him and His relentless love. He loves you beyond what you can imagine. Keep looking up to Him. Keep seeking Him. Keep the vision alive in your mind and  heart. 

"But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you" Matthew 6:33

True Freedom

I've been thinking for the last few weeks about freedom. How can I be truly free? What is it I am seeking freedom from?  Am I sabotaging my own efforts to be free?

In that last question I reveal a deep flaw in my thinking. And I have learned this before and still fall into the same trap. I am trying to be free from so many things. I am trying to be free from..

Fear of the future
Fear of my own success.
Fear of leaving behind the familiar.

But as  Christian I believe that Christ already won freedom for me by his death on the cross. So why am I still trying to be free? Have I missed something? How come I am still fighting for something that He already did?

I already knew the answer to this in my head but now I am trying to let the answer sink further down into the depth of my being.

I realised today that I am STILL trying to earn my freedom, I am still trying to earn blessings from God. But that is not how it works. All I have to do is to believe in the freedom I already have. I am free in Christ. If only I would stop trying to be free in my own strength. If I only would stop trying to earn it.
The verse to the left is one written by St Paul centuries ago. He was frustrated that the Galatian Church was trying earn their salvation. 2000 years later I am still doing the same thing!

God needs so much patience with me!

I am scared to have the freedom because I am scared that further down the line God will say I am not good enough to have it and take it away. But that is such a distortion of the true Gospel of Jesus Christ.


I am trying to be free when I am already free. I have freedom in Christ. All I need to do is believe it!

It's as simple and hard as that! Simple but just so hard to do. Jesus told us that if we followed Him and His teaching we would know the truth and the truth would set us free. But so often we follow our own teaching.

I am a failure
I can't stop doing this..
I will always have this problem...

These are lies that come from the father of lies and do not come from God. We must start to believe the truth if we want it to take root in our lives.

Change your mind. Believe God's truth about yourself. I have started listening to the Father's Love Letter recently. Time and time again I listen to it and gradually it is sinking in.
Watch it and take in the truth.





What do you do to help yourself believe the truth? Maybe you have tips that you can share?

Who will help me?

Thoughts on Psalm 121  (KJV)

I painted this after a time of prayer when
 a friend said she could see me as a little
girl gazing up  in wonder  at the sky at night. 

1 I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

2 My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

3 He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.

4 Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.

6 The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.

7 The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.

8 The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

It is so easy to lose sight of the Lord when hard times come upon us. It is almost natural for us to turn to someone or something that we can see, smell, touch or hear. I find I often seek the Lord as a last resort, when my own resources have run out. It then becomes a prayer of desperation, rather than an attitude of trust. 

How different my life would be if I could learn to do what we read in this Psalm. It speaks to me of total trust in a Father in heaven who is looking out for us. It speaks of a child-like trust, like that of a child looking up in wonder at the stars in the sky at night. This Psalm speaks to me of security and hope that God is in control of all that happens. 

Verse 7 speaks of God preserving our souls. It is not just what happens here on earth, but what happens for all eternity that is at the heart of how God deals with us. It is also not just about Him preserving our souls but also the souls of all that look to Him. Looking into the sky at night reminds me to keep a divine perspective on things that happen to me, to trust as a child trust a good parent. 

"Father God I ask that you help me turn to you, to your infinite grace and compassion, not just in times of need, but daily, and minute by minute. I want to learn to lean totally on your help. "

Gratitude

I have had a busy week this week and have been worn out. I am tired emotionally and physically. But I got a real lift this evening as I dragged my way around the supermarket to get something for my evening meal. Before God set me free from food addiction I would have been craving certain food types and would have gone straight for the chocolate or ice cream or cakes etc.

 Today as I walked around I realised I was indeed craving something...a mozzarella and bacon salad. I did buy some of those ice creams on a stick covered in chocolate but didn't fancy one when I got home. I was yearning a large salad. Amazing. So amazing. I am FREE!!! I feel so grateful to God that I am no longer addicted to food. I am free! The way my life has turned around is incredible and I give Him thanks and praise indeed.

I watched a TV programme a while back called 'Weight loss ward' on ITV 1. It followed various patients from Sunderland who are being treated for obesity and food addiction. It really made me grateful as well for my freedom. I knew not long before I was set free that I was on my way to that kind of morbid obesity and an early death. I praise God indeed for His work in my life. If it wasn't for Him I would have gone on getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

My freedom came when I surrendered every thing to God. When I allowed Him to be the comfort to me that food had been previously. It took years to trust Him enough, to look to Him and say 'You are my everything' and to mean that with all my heart. But it was doing this that set me on the road to freedom. I walked towards the light of Christ. I just looked to Him and no-one else. I got to a point where I said "Lord, I just want to know you. If I am fat and a food addict for the rest of my life I don't care. I just want to know more of You." And I  meant it. That is what finally started me walking to the light instead of just talking about the light.

Look to Him, walk to the light and believe that He will bring freedom. Jesus died to enable you to be set free.

"The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it"  1 Thessalonians 5:24  (NIVUK)

Barriers to intimacy with God

This post is a follow on from my post called Drinking from the Well of Living Water, a couple of weeks ago and is based on a sermon I preached at Coastlands Church on Sunday 25th May 2014. We have been in thinking in our church a lot about what it means to drink from the well of Living Water, about  how we can deepen our relationship with Jesus and with God as Father. This is a subject dear to my heart as seeking that deeper intimacy with Father God is what set me free from food addiction. It was seeking Him alone, and putting everything else to one side that led me to experience the healing from my addiction.

In my chats with people leading up to my sermon last week I began to ask myself what are the barriers to intimacy with God. These thoughts are the start of my thinking in this area. I started by reading about the woman at the well from John 4:1-26 ( Clicking that link will take you to the Biblegateway site where you can read the relevant passage.)

Looking at my own life I saw 3 areas of my life that were barriers to intimacy with God, two of which I see in the woman at the well’s story too.

The barrier of our beliefs

False beliefs about ourselves

The Samaritan woman came to the well when others were not around. Most women would have come earlier in the day. She was hiding from others. I was also hiding. I was hiding from God. When I was ashamed about my faults, my addictive overeating and my other many sins, I tended to take a step away from Him. Why did I do this? Was I scared?

I think I was fearful of being told off by God, of Him being harsh with me. Deep down, I wrongly thought I had to earn the right to have that deep intimate relationship with Him. Oh, I knew the truth on the surface of my thinking, but the more honest I was with what I was really thinking deep down, the more I realised I was hiding from Him in shame at my sin. This is the opposite of what the Gospel tells us to do.

False beliefs about God

As a Samaritan the woman at the well had slightly ‘wrong’ theology. Samaritans were Jews, who some generations before, had intermarried with gentiles and over the years had started changing their beliefs away from true Judaism. Jesus challenged her about her beliefs in John 4:21-24.

What about our theology, our own beliefs about God? What I said I believed with my mouth, and on the surface of my mind was so different from what I really thought deep down. Deep down there was something else going on.

Not only did I think I had to earn the right to have intimacy with Father but I also didn’t really know that He truly loved me.I understood it as a concept but not as a deep life-affirming, life-changing truth.

Do we know He loves us no matter what? Do we truly know the depth of His love for us. He sent His Son to die for us. That is how much He loves us.

The barrier of our sin

Sin is a barrier between God and us. Jesus challenged the woman at the well very gently about her sin. He was not harsh or judgemental with her. She acknowledged it to Him, so it was no longer a barrier.

1 John 1:9-10 “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us”

When God challenges us on our behaviour and our sin, it isn't because He wants to be harsh with us. It is because He wants us to draw closer to Him. He loves us and wants us close to Him.

This goes back to how we see ourselves, what we believe about ourselves. Do we think we are not good enough for intimacy with God? If so we have not truly grasped the truth of the Gospel at a deeper heart level. Jesus died to save us from our sin. He has already died, and risen again to life. His resurrection is the proof that God accepted his sacrifice for our sin. Our sin is no longer a problem if we confess it and take it to God.

Sin is only a barrier to intimacy with God if we don’t acknowledge or confess it

Satan is a barrier

Satan does not want you to be close to God and will distract you in any way he can. He will lie, cheat and deceive in any way he can to stop you truly believing the truth of the Gospel.

1 Peter 5:6-9 “So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honour. Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you. Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your Christian brothers and sisters all over the world are going through the same kind of suffering you are.”

The devil knows your weak areas and will exploit them to get you away from God. But God has already defeated the devil through the cross of Christ.

I have found that looking to God is the best way to resist the devil. If I try to fight sin and satan in my own strength I often fail. The best way for me is to turn to God and come to him in honesty. To say “Lord, I am weak, I am tempted. Please help me”. I look into His face of love and find strength. When I think I have to beat the sin before looking at Jesus I am much more likely to fail as I am trying to do it in my own strength.

If we come to Father God in honesty about who we are, we will find His love welcoming us. He loves us and longs to show us His love.

1 John 4:18 “Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.”

He doesn't want to punish us. He already did that to Jesus. He wants to love us, to remove our sin and cleanse us. Trust Him. He loves you so much.