Trust and rest in times of trouble...

Mom gave me this quote and I find myself reading and re-reading it...

"Nothing influences the quality of our life more than how we respond to trouble." - Erwin Tierman.

She also gave me this bible verse from MARK 4:40: It is the verse when Jesus takes his deciples into a boat and is crossing the sea when a fierce storm came up and was tossing the boat around in the high seas, waves nearly capsizing the boat. The deciples feared He would let them drown, and Jesus calmed the seas. It is then Jesus asked them, "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have so little faith?"

The copy she gave me, was from her devotional book, The One Year at His feet by Chris Tiegreen.   I really liked what it said about being afraid in times of trouble and having faith:

"The life of faith requires us to lean on an invisible source of strength and wisdom. We do not have an unfounded faith, but we learn quickly that it does not rest on our five senses. And as we trust God, we find that very real and visable storms war against our belief in the invisable God. Sooner or later,. a greater test will come and we will have to choose: Trust God or trust ourselves. We cannot do both.

At some point in this walk of faith, we must learn to detach from the things that so greatly concern us and cast them wholly on God. This feels irresponsible at first, but it is actually irresponsible not to do so. We must stop thinking of ourselves as the source of deliverance in a difficult situation. It is not up to us to save. We may be useful tools of God, but not everything is riding on us. Usually, we approach crises as though God is depending on us to do the work while He supports us in the background. We need to turn that around. We must depend on God to do the work while we are behind the scenes believing in Him. When He says to act, we must act. But most of us act far too quickly and believe much too slowly. We must be quick to believe and hesitant to interfere in God's work. By this we can keep our hearts from being so troubled, if we will really trust in Him.

How do you react in a crisis? Do you feel responsible to step in and intervene? Perhaps God will require you to do so, but rarely until you have first trusted Him with a calm heart, sought His will diligently, made yourself fully available, and waited for His timing.

When we pray and ask for God's will to be done in a given situation, we must believe that His will is, in fact, very good, and that He is quite able to accomplish it. Any asking that maintains an internal sense of panic is not genuine trust. It reveals a hidden belief that we are perhaps more critical to the situation than God is. But to trust is to rest, and the heart that is calm has learned that Jesus is above the storm."

I really like those words and take great comfort in them this weekend...