Trusting God is enough

Do you ever set a word for the year or a verse for the year? As 2019 drew to a close I felt like my word for 2020 needed to be TRUST. I looked up Bible verses around the theme of trust and was pulled to Jeremiah 17: 7-8 ESV:

“Blessed is the man (or woman) who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He (or she) is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes for its leaves remain green and is not anxious in the year of drought for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

I wanted to anchor myself in that verse. I printed it out and put it on my desk to be encouraged by it every day.

I would never have imagined the difficult things to come in 2020. Did any of us? I know we all had our own flavour of hard that year, whether it was a physical illness, job insecurity, mental illness, the repeated disappointment of cancelled events … the list of loss goes on. When I’d picked that verse, though, I was focused on the word trust and the promise that there would always be water and green and fruit. There was no way I wanted to walk through the unexpected and unbearable challenges which 2020 brought. As each day came, it seemed a new shock, disappointment, or insurmountable mountain presented itself. I was doing my best to trust in God, but I didn’t see the green leaves or the fruit. Instead, fear and anxiety were close.

What do we do when the promises of this verse (green leaves, fruit, no fear or anxiety) don’t feel real or possible?

Contained in this verse is the recognition that we will have drought, we will have heat, pressure, exhaustion, difficulty. In my time with therapists over the last few years, there’s one principle I really struggled with: the principle of acceptance. When one therapist said to me, “Life is hard. It always will be. We can’t change that. We can only change how we view it and how we respond to it,” I railed against this. I didn’t want to accept that this was my life right now. It wasn’t the life I’d expected. But, being the second therapist to repeat this to me, I knew I had to take a look at this principle.

There’s a passage in Isaiah with a very similar picture:

“The Lord will guide you always; He will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.” Isaiah 58:11 NIV.

When we read these verses, God confirms the same reality: we will have suffering. We will have periods of time with sun-scorched land. We will have seasons when the heat comes; we will experience drought. At the same time, these verses promise me I will have enough strength, water, life and fruit. Many, many days last year, I went to bed feeling drained. It seemed my strength wasn’t enough; it didn’t feel like there was even a drop of water left, let alone a spring. I struggled to see much greenery in my life.

Something that helped me reconcile my reality to the promise in these verses was realizing it didn’t depend on me or my perception of enough. Who is doing the action in the first half of Isaiah 58:11? Is it my praying or Bible reading or quoting Scriptures in the dark moments (even though these are excellent disciplines)? No, it says the Lord will guide me. He will satisfy me. He will strengthen me. That was a major turning point for me. My part is to trust, to plant myself by the source of water: God. To seek out and soak in God’s presence and truth.

I can have days where I feel exhausted. I can have days where I feel dried up. But this verse reminds me of the truth that even a tiny amount of strength, a tiny drop of water, is enough in the hands of God. I bet the little boy who came to Jesus with a few loaves and a few fish didn’t feel like he had enough.

There are still many days when I don’t feel like a well-watered garden. I rarely feel like a spring whose waters never fail. I don’t always see green leaves and fruit. And you know what? That might even be the reality from a human perspective. But God sees things differently. On those days, trust looks like choosing to believe that the small amount of strength or water I have will be enough because God says so.

Will you pray with me?

Father, I feel exhausted. I feel dried out. I don’t have anything left. You promise to be my guide. I know You are a good shepherd who satisfies my needs. I choose to trust that Your promises are yes and Amen in Jesus. I ask that You would strengthen my frame today. I pray that I would see the water of Your spirit flowing in my life. Whatever You have in store for me, I trust You have what I need. Amen.