Whenever I fly, the feeling of turbulence frightens me to the core. My first thought is always, “This plane is about to fall out of the sky!” Then, seconds later, it’ i’s back to sailing as smooth as could be, like nothing ever happened. I find myself reacting this exact same way towards God sometimes. I freak out in the hard times, clinging to him, but when everything starts going well again, it’s like he never did anything for me during the tough times I just experienced.
Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.
— Isaiah 26:4
Trusting in the Lord forever seems like a simple enough task for those that believe Jesus came and died for our sins. Of course it’s easy to trust in him forever — we’ll get to spend forever with him in heaven. But what we forget to do is trust in him during this time, our time on earth, when things are going up and down. When life is turbulent.
Being a follower of Jesus doesn’t require being perfect — just ask his 12 closest friends that he trusted during his time here on earth. They were the baddest of the bad guys during their time. One of his own friends, Peter, denied Jesus when times got really rough. How are we supposed to be good at this when a guy that watched him perform miracles every day wasn’t even good at it?
What God wants from us during the bad times, the good times and the great times is to realize that we need a savior, not a partner to come back to every once in awhile when we feel it’s convenient. When we’re engaged in a partnership with God, that allows us to to think we have control over the good situations, and we will just reach for him in the bad. We will put him on the throne of our lives when it’s convenient or beneficial to us.
Randy was preaching at Rockwall on Sunday, and spoke to the cheap substitutes that we run for, the substitutes that we feel can replace the grace and love that Jesus gave us so many years ago. A substitute can look like a lot of different things to each person. It could be an addiction that creeps itself back into your life. It could be relying on your husband or wife to give you true happiness. It could be allowing your children — and all the activities that come along with them — to dictate your day to day. Whatever it is for you, God wants you to trust him with turning that away. Trusting God isn’t going to make life easy, or take away the messy, hurtful times, but it does give you the eternal hope of trusting in the Lord forever.
What is the cheap substitute that you keep running to during the turbulence?
Do you treat God as your savior or just as a partner, running along beside you?
Turbulent times will come and go, but the Lord God is an everlasting rock.