Trust

A few weeks ago I was attending the Watoto staff devotion and the pastor’s wife, Jackie, was teaching us.  Jackie is truly an extraordinary woman. She is spunky and charismatic, she fiercely loves her children and husband, she is extraordinarily beautiful and has the voice of an angel.  I am so thankful I had the opportunity to meet her and learn from her.

Jackie shared Jeremiah 17:5-8 “This is what the Lord says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord. He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives. But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

Through this passage God has been teaching me that I am called to not only trust him with my own life and family but I am called to trust him in all things including trusting him to take care of all of his children.  As I have walked around the streets of Gulu and heard one heart wrenching story after another I felt my heart becoming heavier and more burdened.  Though it is okay to feel empathy and a longing to be Christ’s hands and feet to the broken world it is not okay for me to become overwhelmed with despair and a sense of hopelessness because that means that I am not trusting God to take care of his children. As verse 8 says the one who has full confidence in the Lord receives constant nourishment and reassurance from the Lord and therefore is able to overflow and bear fruit (serving the broken).  After hearing this lesson and being convicted I have found that living with this new perspective allows for the joy of the Lord to flow more freely. Furthermore, there is such an extraordinary sense of freedom in trusting God to take care of His children; all of His children.