Choose Love (20 page)

We all have opportunities like this where we can make a decision
to trust God
completely in a potentially worrisome situation, but we must also ask Him to show us how to approach each concern in prayer. In other words, we don’t walk out into the middle of oncoming traffic or jump off a building trusting that He will protect us. Jesus Himself didn’t do that. We don’t dictate the outcome to God. We ask Him how we are to pray and then trust Him to answer in His way and time.

There are many ways to decide you are going to trust God in the situation at hand. Below are just a few of them.

Trust God to Deliver You from Danger

God gives us a secret place to dwell that keeps us hidden from danger. “
He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the L
ORD
, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress; my God, in Him I will trust’” (Psalm 91:1-2). We can hide ourselves in the Lord and trust Him to protect us.

The key here is dwelling every day with the Lord and staying under the umbrella of His protection by living His way. It pleases Him when we diligently obey Him and deliberately trust Him to protect us.

Even in difficult times, God will preserve you because you make Him your dwelling place
.

Can you think of times in your life when angels must have stepped in to protect you? I remember many times like that. One such time was during the first winter after we moved from California to Tennessee. Back then I thought “ice storm” was a metaphor for an especially cold rain. One day I was venturing out for needed groceries. I had not yet learned that when the weatherman predicts an ice storm, you get groceries beforehand for seven to ten days. Four days after the storm things looked melted enough to me, so I ventured forth. As I was driving I did not see a large patch of black ice. I had never even heard of “black ice” before that day, or if I had I probably thought it was some kind of frozen Halloween party drink. I was from California, after all.

As I drove slowly down a small incline, I intended to stop at the intersection where I had the red light. But much to my shock, and certainly the shock of all the other drivers around, instead of stopping I slid right into the intersection and spun out in the busy traffic that was moving in both directions on the cross street in front of me. I had never experienced the sensation of being completely out of control in a car before. Any number of cars could have hit me, but one particular car headed right toward me. That person obviously could not stop either because black ice covered the intersection. I
braced for impact and prayed, “Jesus, help me”—the shortest prayer I knew—and the other driver and I totally missed each other.

I’m sure that driver was as surprised as I was that we didn’t crash. It was truly as if an angel stuck out his hand and kept us apart like an invisible air bag. I could feel the air between us—or lack thereof—that jostled our cars. There was no other explanation for it.

In the Bible, it sounds as though we must have at least two angels who are assigned to protect us because the word for “angel” is plural. It says of God that “
He shall give His angels charge over you
, to keep you in all your ways. In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone” (Psalm 91:11-12). Jesus often referred to multiple angels when He was on earth. I figure that between me and the other driver, we had at least four angels. I don’t know if the other driver was a believer in the Lord or had been a praying person, but I would think he would have become one in that moment. My concept of “fervent prayer” was clarified in that moment as well.

The point is, God knows how to protect us from danger and can do so when we make Him our refuge.

Trust God to Take Away Your Fear

The Bible says you don’t have to live in fear. Not living in fear doesn’t mean being stupidly fearless. There are things you should be afraid of, but you don’t have to be controlled by fear or make it a way of life.

For example, you
should
be afraid to leave the door to your house open all night because of what could happen to you and your family. But you could also trust God that if you accidentally left the door open, He would answer your ongoing prayers for protection and give you grace for that mistake.

The Bible says, “You shall not be afraid of the
terror
by night, nor of the
arrow
that flies by day, nor of the
pestilence
that walks in darkness, nor of the
destruction
that lays waste at noonday” (Psalm 91:5-6). But how do we not be afraid when those kinds of threats are
all around us? The threats of terrorizing acts, of crazy people using weapons against others, of diseases and plagues, and of destructive forces of nature—they are always on our mind. How do we handle those possible threats to our safety?

David trusted God to hear his prayers and give him relief for his troubled mind, soul, and body. He said to God, “
The troubles of my heart have enlarged;
bring me out of my distresses!” (Psalm 25:17). Can it be that some of our heart problems, and the conditions that bring them on, have a lot to do with the way we handle stress in our lives? Stress is a form of fear.

My husband and I had a tiny, long-haired Chihuahua named Sammy who did not handle stress well. Thunder was the most traumatic thing in his life, and at the mere flash of lightning, even before the thunder sounded, he would shake so violently I thought his shaking alone might make his heart stop.

Yet if someone left the gate open in the backyard, he would run out and down the driveway, across the street, and travel block after block, exploring this fascinating world and never looking back. Thank God that in His mercy we or a nice neighbor were always able to get ahold of him before disaster happened.

Sammy was afraid of something he didn’t need to be afraid of but fearless concerning something that was extremely dangerous. He was never in any danger from the storm, even though he remained unconvinced of that. But he would leave the safety of his yard in a heartbeat, even though there were animals out in the world that would eat him for lunch and people in big cars who would not even see him before they ran over him, not to mention unethical people who might steal him.

Sammy developed a heart condition that many of these types of dogs have in later years. His heart kept enlarging until he was about twelve years old. By that time his heart was so big it was pressing against his esophagus, causing him to choke. We gave him special supplements and medicines from the veterinarian, but we could
only slow down the progress of his enlarging heart. We could not stop it.

Every thunderstorm brought more and more terror to him, even though there was no way we would ever allow him to be hurt by it. I held him through many storms, but he could not be consoled. The noise was overwhelmingly frightening for him, and he never stopped shaking violently. The doctor gave us medicine to calm him, but he became too weak to take it.

One night I tried to hold him through a thunderstorm, but it went on for hours and he was so sick I knew that to give him a tranquilizer would surely kill him. I had to be up early and trying to calm him did nothing, so I let him stay in our large closet where he liked to go during storms because there are no windows and he couldn’t see the lightning or hear the thunder as well. The closet was connected to the bathroom, where I left his bowl of water because he panted so hard and long that I knew he would be thirsty once the thunder stopped.

When my husband and I woke up in the morning, we found that Sammy had died in his sleep during the night in the same position he always liked to curl up in during storms—in the farthest corner where he could get away from the door and hide under some clothes that hung down to the floor. We were so sad that we cried for months over his loss. He had been a loving and faithful friend and family member, and quite a threatening chief of our security detail.

I wonder how many of us shorten our lives a little every day, like Sammy, as we run headlong into what we need to fear most but are terrified to the point of incapacitation over what we don’t need to fear at all. We take on stress in our lives that we don’t need instead of taking our stress to the Lord and releasing it to His hands. And how many times do we move without hesitation into something dangerous for us without looking once to see what God thinks about it?

We knew our precious little Sammy was in no danger from the storm, but he could never understand that. Some of us are like that
too. How many of us take medicine to calm our fears when God wants us to trust Him to protect us? I am not saying that taking medicine is bad, or that people should never take medicine to calm their fears, or that people should immediately get off the medicine they are taking. I am saying that God wants to calm our fears, and we must trust Him enough to let Him do that—even if it begins one small step at a time.

The Bible says, “A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but it shall not come near you…
Because you have made the L
ORD
, who is my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place,
no evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling” (Psalm 91:7,9-10).

The key to finding freedom from fear is making God your dwelling place
.

If you make God the One in whom you put your total trust—and you take all your cares and needs to Him, walk closely with Him every day, and seek Him constantly—then He will give you a place of shelter in Him. The closer you draw to Him and His kingdom, the more you move into a place of safety from the storm under the umbrella of His protection.

Trust God to Hear and Answer Your Prayers

Every time you pray you demonstrate your love for God by declaring your humble dependence on Him.

Jesus said, “When you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door,
pray to your Father who is in the secret place
; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly” (Matthew 6:6).

As we
wait on God for His answer to our prayers,
He takes us out of our shaky situation and establishes us on a rock. He puts a song of praise in our heart, and when people see that, they are drawn to Him because of it. David said, “
I waited patiently for the L
ORD
; and He inclined to me, and heard my cry. He also brought me up out of a
horrible pit,
out of the miry clay,
and set my feet upon a rock
, and
established my steps
. He has put a new song in my mouth—praise to our God; many will see it and fear, and will trust in the L
ORD
” (Psalm 40:1-3).

Waiting on the Lord after we have prayed is another way we show love for God
.

In adoption some places take away the old birth certificate and give the orphan a new one with their new father’s and mother’s names on it. God does that for us too. When you are born again, your name is written in the book of life in heaven. God becomes your heavenly Father. You have a new life. A new identity. You are not the same old you. So don’t keep thinking of yourself as having the same old identity.

When we don’t understand that with God a process is going on as we pray, then we don’t have patience to wait for the process. We jump to conclusions about whether God is answering our prayers or not. That shows a lack of trust in His ability to do a new thing in us.

I am not the same person who never got her prayers answered; I am a new creation in Christ. I’m not the same person who made stupid choices; I am a person who has the Spirit of wisdom in me. I am not the same person who had everything go wrong in her life; I am a new person who serves the God who makes all things right.

Trust God that He can change anything—including you
.

Waiting on God means we are putting our total faith in Him. It means when we pray we are trusting that He hears us and will answer in His way and time. It means we are looking to Him and not losing heart. The Bible says, “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the L
ORD
in the land of the living.
Wait on the L
ORD
; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart;
wait, I say, on the L
ORD
!” (Psalm 27:13-14).

When you are tormented with doubt about whether God is who He says He is, or if He really cares about you, or will He really hear your prayers, or does He love you enough to rescue and protect you,
it reveals a lack of trust in Him. But when you decide to trust Him at all times, He gives you strength in your heart and the ability to wait on Him in the process.

The Bible says that it is
because
you love God that He hears you when you pray. “
Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him
; I will set him on high, because he has known My name.
He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him
” (Psalm 91:14-15).

God doesn’t say we will never have problems. He says He will be with us to lift us up and protect us when we go through difficulties
because we love Him
.

You express your love for God when you trust Him in all things. Thinking you don’t need Him except in an emergency or crisis does not please Him. You show love for God when you recognize your own weakness and dependence upon Him. It tells God that you don’t want to even try to make it through a day without Him. Declaring your dependence upon God, and your love for Him, sets your priorities straight and makes them clear—not only to God, but also to you.