Trust and Trucks

What does trusting God look like?

I look at it like that scene from The Bourne Ultimatum with Jason Bourne and Simon Ross (the newspaper reporter with inside information). Ross is being followed by several hit men while he's on the phone with Bourne. Since Bourne has been trained to be a hit man also, he knows how to get Ross out of this potentially fatal situation.

You can watch the clip HERE. [Warning: There is violence and some language in this clip.]

At one point, to get Ross out of the line of fire, Bourne tells Ross to "tie his shoe." Ross obeys, and stays safe. Later in the scene, however, and a part not shown in this clip, Ross fails to do what Bourne tells him to do. As a result, Ross gets shot and killed.

When God tells us to do something, we need to trust Him and obey what He has to say. We may not understand why God impresses upon us to do a certain thing, but we need to do it. We need to be sensitive to it and yield our hearts to what He has to say to us.

Like Jason Bourne in the above clip, God sees more than what we can see. He exists outside of time, and He is omniscient. Pretty reliable, wouldn't you say?

[A FEW CAVEATS: I am not promoting the idea of taking an emotional trip. I am not discussing doing something that violates God's Word. We need to be vigilant to evaluate our motives, taking matters before God in prayer, and often asking others to pray with us over a specific matter.]

If you would like a personal example as proof, here is a story from our lives. Around mid-December, God started revealing some poor practices we had developed with our money. After much consideration, I bought a planner to write down all of our bill due dates and amounts. I also worked on a spreadsheet in Excel to evaluate how much we were spending versus how much money we take in. I do this from time to time, but I had not really evaluated our finances since September.

This is my planner. (I know. I'm such a girl. lol)

Beginning in January, after we took all of this into account, we cut out extras like our weekly lunch at McDonald's (yes, that dollar menu adds up, y'all). We weekly put small increments of money into savings. We took several other steps to start saving money here and there. We thought we were doing pretty good.

Then, it happened.

Wednesday this week, our only vehicle wouldn't start. My husband came home from work. He changed clothes, and when we went back outside to run some errands around town in the truck... nothing. Nada. It wouldn't turn over.

He tried replacing one fairly inexpensive thing that he hoped it might be (chiefly due to it's cheapness), but to no avail. The truck wouldn't start. It had to be towed.

[Sing it with me, Sinatra fans! "It had to be towed. It had to be towed. We tried to repair, but to our despair it died in the road..."]

However, because we started watching our spending, because of the way things worked out with the garage (i.e. we found and bought a cheaper part for them to put in), because it happened close to payday, we have the money to fix the truck. Praise be unto God!

Now, I'm not saying the current situation is "all I've ever dreamed for." My take on trusting God is not a message of the prosperity gospel (i.e. a "do this and you'll be rich" kind of thing). And I'm not saying I always trust God like I should.

Would I rather have kept the money in the bank instead of giving it away? You bet!  Is it still going to be a tight couple of weeks as a result of this situation? Absolutely! Do I know exactly how we're going to "bounce back" and pay for everything this month? Nope! I sure don't! We will have to trust God with all of that.

But here, by no coincidence, are the first words that I read in my Bible today:

"O LORD my God, in thee do I put my trust." (Ps. 7:1a)

>>What are you trusting God with today?