Placing My Life in God's Hands

In the spiritual realm, God's part is to do the thing we have entrusted to Him, and our part is to trust Him to do it. Trust is total surrender to Him, and often the sermons we hear end there. A cry goes up that this doctrine of faith encourages Christians to sit on the porch in their rocking chairs and wait for God to act on their behalf. This is attacked as being divorced from reality and unproductive; but it is our faith that clears the way for God to work.

There is probably no better example here than the picture we have of the lifeguard who drives in to save a drowning swimmer. The life guard's job is to do, and the drowning person's job is to trust. It is the faith of the drowning one that clears the way for the lifeguard to do his work.

God keeps that which I have committed to Him! I like the way this truth is expressed in the last part of the following verse in 2 Timothy 1:12. "I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day."

God goes to work on behalf of all that I entrust to Him. He completes everything that He begins. My part is clearly to trust. In Proverbs 3:5-6 we read, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight."

People who find faith difficult to understand in the spiritual realm seem oblivious to the fact that we all entrust our lives daily to all sorts of people. We could not live through a single day without faith in others. Often, they are strangers to us, yet we actually place our lives in their hands - Pharmacists, bus drivers, airplane pilots, doctors - the list goes on and on. It is trust that clears the way for these people to help us.

I began to see that my lack of trust stood in God's way. I had taken my problem to Him, but I started every day by affirming my lack of faith, for every morning I begged God to help me. "Dear God, please help me today. Please be with me. Please give me strength and wisdom. Please. Please! Please!" By "praying" in that way I was voicing my unbelief. I simply did not believe that He was answering my earlier prayers. If I kept begging, maybe He would!

However, in the meantime, God was using everything to conform me to the image of His Son; circumstances, blessings and difficulties, financial pressure and a pregnancy that left me and James with three children under four years of age. It was becoming clear to me that the sanctification of my life was going to involve surrender and trust on my side, and acts of development on God's side. In faith, I could place my life in God's hands. Then, through a gradual process I could begin to "grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ."