Trust God's Heart

When trials arise, and circumstances in life are less than favorable, I don’t doubt how tempting it is question God’s heart of love. We just want to know that someone truly cares, is looking out for our best interest, and has good in store for us, right?

But, difficulties quickly produce doubts. And, as I am learning in my own walk with Jesus, the more I strive to see God’s seemingly hidden hand and “understand” what’s happening, the more I can tend to distrust His heart. I want to know the reasons behind His allowances, as if in the “knowing,” I will somehow feel more in control and at ease about my future. Or, when God shows me love by giving me the “gifts” I want, whatever that may be, I tend to feel more secure that His heart really is to bless me.

Yet, as Charles Spurgeon says, “When we cannot trace God’s hand, we must trust His heart.”

This saying is beautiful, right? A nugget of wisdom and truth that really is true when we stop to contemplate it. Nevertheless, hard to apply.

I think the problem this nugget of wisdom is hard to apply is because we tend to associate and limit the evidence of God’s love strictly with PROVISION, and not WITHHOLDINGS.

H.E. Manning fleshes out this concept in the Feb 21 daily reading from the book, “Daily Strength for Daily Needs” by Mary W. Tileston.

“Whatsoever we ask which is not for our good, He will keep it back from us. And surely in this there is no less love than in the granting what we desire as we ought. Will not the same love which prompts you to give a good, prompt you to keep back an evil, thing? If, in our blindness, not knowing what we ask, we pray for things which would turn in our hands to sorrow and death, will not our Father, out of His very love, deny us? How awful would be our lot, if our wishes should straightway pass into realities; if we were endowed with a power to bring about all that we desire; if the inclinations of our will were followed by fulfilment of our hasty wishes, and sudden longings were always granted. One day we shall bless Him, not more for what he has granted than for what He has denied.”

Sometimes, love IS being denied. Love DOES withhold. It DOES keep back. Love CAN say “no.”

This is such a foreign concept to many cultures today. A mother refuses her child the third cookie, and the child throws a temper tantrum. Why? Because being “denied” something, however good it may be, means “you don’t love me.”

But, “good” doesn’t equal “harmless” or what’s “best.” And, this is where I am realizing that sometimes, the very things that look so good and pure and beneficial may very well NOT be God’s best for me. Therefore, what Manning says about there being “no less love” in God’s withholding something from us is entirely biblical and true. Our heavenly Father sees the big picture, the beginning and the end, and He may very well be protecting us from something that we don’t even realize we need to be protected from!

There are orphans all over our Kijabe community and in the Nairobi slums. To state the obvious, an orphan is a child whose parents have died, and who often feels deprived and starved of love because the tangible, physical evidences of compassion and attention are just not there.

If you are currently struggling to believe that God loves you, and that He WILL provide, and DOES hear the longings and wishes of your soul, then do not live your days feeling like an orphan!

Remember that if you have placed in your trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior who rescued you from your sins against a holy God, then God’s eternal, covenant love has been secured forever just for you. And, nothing shall separate you from the love that is in Christ Jesus, once you have died to self and been hidden in the perfections of Christ.

He may not always give us what we want, exactly when we want it, but that will never mean that His love for us has somehow failed or been removed. As Manning says, “One day we shall bless Him, not more for what he has granted than for what He has denied.”