It hasn’t been a very hot summer in our part of Texas this year. We’ve only had twelve days where the temperature has reached or exceeded one hundred degrees, as opposed to twice that many days (or more!). Nonetheless, there have been enough hot days that the kids and I have gotten to go to the water park at our local YMCA several times.
The kids love the water park, especially Jessica and Lindsey. (Ellie and Kenny prefer playing inside in the Youth Zone, where they can play video games for a couple hours; Timmy stays in the nursery.) I actually love it, too. It’s fun to watch Lindsey perform swimming feats for me or to take Jessica into the deep end and play with her there.
When we go into the deep end, Jessica wears a life jacket. That way, she can do some “swimming” on her own (with me right next to her) and not be afraid she’ll sink. She wasn’t always so confident, though.
At first, even with a life jacket, Jessica wouldn’t allow me to take my hands off of her. I explained to her multiple times that with the life jacket on and Mommy right next to her, it was impossible for her to drown.
Jessica tried to have courage. “Let go,” she would say, and so I’d release her from my arms. Almost immediately, she would panic and reach for me again, relaxing only when she felt my arms around her.
She knew in her head that the life jacket would keep her afloat, but she still didn’t really trust it.
We’re like that with God, too, sometimes, aren’t we? We know in our heads that He’ll take care of us, but we still don’t really trust Him. Even though we have God within us, just as Jessica had the life jacket all around her, when we panic, we still reach for other things to provide the reassurance and security that we crave.
We don’t trust Him to be enough.
It’s not that there’s anything wrong with receiving comfort from friends and family when we’re in need. The problem comes in when we rely more on them than we do on God. When we trust people to do a better job of sustaining us in our troubles than God will.
The only thing is that in order to learn to rely on God, you have to practice. Just as Jessica had to keep practicing with the help of the life jacket alone, so we need to keep practicing relying on God so that we can learn by experience that He will, indeed, keep us afloat. That’s why so many people don’t have a soul-deep trust in God: they’ve never cast themselves completely upon Him. They’ve never given Him the chance to prove that He can—and will!—bear them up. They’ve left that job primarily to other people, things, or situations. Then, when their troubles pass, their relationship with God isn’t much deeper than it was before, because He hasn’t done much for them (or so they think).
Trusting can be scary—at first. It’s not easy to trust something or someone new. But when you learn that that person or thing really is trustworthy, it’s not scary at all.
I told you earlier that Jessica no longer has a fear of letting go of me, as long as she is wearing the life jacket. That’s because she’s had enough experience with it that she trusts it. Her believe that it would support her became not just something she assented to in her head because Mommy said so, but something she has lived.
Are you living with God supporting you today? Am I? Or are we relying more on other people or things? Our trust in God will never grow as long as we look primarily to other things to comfort or sustain us.
The only way to grow our trust in God is to practice trusting Him. That means letting Him bear more of the “weight” of our troubles and watching Him handle it well.
Are you willing to cast yourself completely upon Him, spiritually speaking, and let Him support you? I don’t know the details of your situation, but I do know God, so I can guarantee you this: You won’t be disappointed.
Psalm 91:4—He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. (ESV)