Striving or Trusting
What do you wrestle with? What keeps you up at night? What steals your peace and floods you with worry? Is it your family, finances, thoughts of the future, memories of the past? These things can consume us! It’s hard not to allow these things to come in and tell us who we are. What if your identity isn’t connected to anything you can attain?
When I was young and newly married, my husband and I worked hard to start building our future - we were full of hope and excited for the years to come. We bought our first home, had decent jobs, things were good. But then one phone call changed everything. I lost my job, a while later my car’s engine died, and as the months passed with no change in sight, we realized we were living on borrowed time and borrowed money. This wasn’t sustainable. Together we decided to sell the house and move into an apartment to prevent us from losing everything.
This was a huge blow, everything we set out to build was failing...I was failing. In those years, living in our little apartment, God began to do a work in us, guiding us, building our faith and our family. He was providing for us, sometimes in miraculous ways. I can remember one month we were $200 short on rent, and we didn’t know how we were going to make the difference. With a new baby and everything that goes along with that we were stretched thin! One morning I went down to our foyer to grab the daily mail and when I opened the mailbox there was cash laying on the top of the pile of bills and newspapers - it was exactly $200!
God has done this before. In scripture we read how He cared for the Israelites as they escaped from Egypt and traveled in the wilderness. They were guided by God, kept by God, and their value was in God. They were in need of nothing because He met all their needs. God gave them water from a rock, manna every day for food, victory over enemy nations, and He called them His. Over and over in the scriptures we can find testament to His care and provision for His people. He can be trusted.
If you come at life seeking to find your value, your identity in what you can achieve, you will always come out lacking in some area. It’s never good enough. All you need to do is look at the cross. God saw fit to place all your failures, sin, and shame onto Himself. He took your unregenerate spirit and crucified you with Him so that He could give you resurrected life, a whole new identity! In Christ, fear has no power, anxiety has no hold, and shame has no voice. You are God’s and He says who you are and what you’re worth. Now every need is met and any circumstance, good or bad, you face with Jesus, knowing He is your strength, hope, and life.
Trudy Hiebert
