A Faithful Pour

I am not a very trusting person.  You can blame it on the number of ways and times people, and life in general, have let me down - I do.  I keep people at arms length because I don't inherently trust.  In new environments I rarely talk, and if I do it is about those things I feel are worthy of discussion.  To be honest, even if I know you for a long time, there is still a part of me that doesn't trust you.  Not that you are secretly plotting to do ill towards me, but because I don't even want to give you a chance to.  Call it what you will, I call it self preservation. It's an ugly beast of a thing that lives in my head. It causes me to destroy friendships before they get off the ground and alienate myself in many social settings (my social anxiety does a lot of this too...so it is hard sometimes to tell which beast is gaining ground).

I find the older I get, the more introverted I become.  I don't know if it is from my general need to declutter my day and get home where I feel safest, or if it is something altogether more bothersome.  Either way, I long to not be this person. I would very much like to be bolder, more outgoing, and more trusting of others. But for now, we will call my desire and who I am a work in progress!

Then today happened. I love Sundays - for a number of reasons but mostly because of church. We had a wonderful service today.  Perhaps it was because today we had a guest Pastor who brought the message and the gospel to life like all the messages I had heard growing up.  He kicked it old school and it was exactly what my heart and ears needed to hear. There's just something about going to church and hearing an older pastor preach that makes you feel like a kid again, like you have your whole life ahead of you to do what it is you are called to do.

After the service I took time to talk with our Pastor and catch him up (in roughly 3.2 minutes) on the outcome of the past 16 months of our lives. It was a hurried conversation, to get all the words out that needed to get out and not press on and monopolize all his time (I can do that when I trust someone). I got the highlights covered. I also shed a couple tears, which I do each time I recount the outcome because I am still amazed at how God worked out the details. Pastor gave me a perspective on this and I paraphrase, "if you had been told 16 months ago this was going to be the end, would you have managed the situation the same way?" I don't recall giving a straight answer at the time, but without a doubt, it would be a NO.

What do all three of these things have to do with each other?  The guest Pastor said something along these lines this morning while giving a story about a Bishop in the Methodist church, "our past times in worship lead to the present shape of our life."  The purpose for this was to say, that sometimes it takes a long while to answer our call - while some know straight away and work it from a young age, others take a longer time to build their shape. (Meaning it takes years of hearing the gospel and learning God's truths.)  It is that shape we go to church to get filled up in order to pour out into the lives of others. But, how do I do that when I don't trust people?  Well, the truth of it is, I have to trust God.

If there is one thing these past 16 months have taught me, and it goes along with what Pastor asked, it is that faithfulness begets trust. It is quite easy to say I trust the Lord, but another thing altogether for me to actually do it. Simply because trust often requires the action of inaction. For each step I tried to take on my own, the more out of shape I became. I would work myself into a hairied mess and reduce myself to an anxious blob of a person. I wonder if that isn't a reason why it took so long?!  God had to teach me to rely on the shape (past messages and teachings) of my upbringing and not try to reshape myself during this situation.  He didn't give me a timeline in the beginning because I needed to get to the point where I gave Him total control.

The thing of it is, once I did, the end came that much sooner. Not in time, but in my not working for it. Throughout the entire process we did the right things. We remained faithful to what the Lord asked us to do.  Not only did we remain honest and truthful, but we prayed continuously - for all involved. In each and every step, even when we didn't know what or even how, we did what needed to be done. And wouldn't you know it?  The more faithful I was/we were the more my trust in God grew!  It had nothing to do with the outcome (afterall we didn't know what or when it would be) but everything to do with how my shape was being filled.

That is just it, people. This entire process was another way God was teaching me to trust Him all the while He was growing and filling my shape. All for the day when I could take this situation and share it with another; so I could pour out the blessings and the truth of what God reveiled to me, to us, through this. It is because of this I challange you, in the face of any trial, to remain faithful and trust God. Continue to do what is right even when it is hard, even when others are telling you otherwise.  You never know, someday it could be you pouring your story into another and filling them up so they can pour theirs into yet another.

In His Name
-M

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