Trusting God This New Year
It happens to most, if not all of us. The new year comes along and we set out to make resolutions about what we hope to see and achieve as the year unfolds. We are often full of hope and anxiety asking, “What’s going to happen? How am I going to achieve my resolutions? Will things work out the way I want them to?” Some of us will go to God with our plans; some confidently (dare I say arrogantly) “decreeing and declaring” that our plans shall come to pass. However, we may pray, many of us will seek His favour in all we hope to undertake, but there is usually a feeling of uncertainty at the pit of our stomachs.
Where should our hope and confidence be as we look ahead to the new year? I recently read the following line, “going somewhere, in God’s grace, according to plan”. It made me stop and consider if I could really say the same thing about my life. Did I really trust God that deeply – that even though I didn’t know where I was going, I would trust His grace to sustain me because He knows what’s going to happen[1] ?
What we think of as uncertain, that which fills us with much anxiety, is only unclear to us. Before God, the whole plan was laid out from before the beginning! In His eyes, everything is known and will work out according to His intended purpose. We strain ourselves with the desire to know how things will go and work out our own desires, without thinking if that is actually the best thing for us. The Christian standpoint should be that we trust the Lord to lead us in His grace, according to His good plan to get us to where He wants us.
Recently, my friend and I were thinking about our futures and spoke about how great it would be to have a sneak peek at the blueprints of our lives that God has. In light of the line I’ve read I wonder, what would change about the plan if we saw it. Hollywood posits that if we knew the future we would likely change it. We want this most when life feels hard – when things don’t seem to be going the way we would like them to. I am most tempted to glance at the plan when I am in a season of suffering. My love for self-preservation desires to avoid all that “character development” that God has planned for me through the pain that I am enduring.
We tend to think having a look at the plans will give us greater confidence to trust what is in them. We think, “If I just knew what all this was for, I’d be more patient, more willing to learn the lesson . . . I’d be more trusting”. What we do not realize is that this is an insult to who God is. He is the most trustworthy being! He is goodness itself[2] – working all things out for our good and his glory. His glory is the highest good we could ever hope to be achieved because he is holy and good. If we really appreciated who God is, we would have no need to even want to look at the blueprints. We would simply give ourselves to his plan because we can truly and fully trust him.
But sin and its consequences means that we are well trained in doubting and distrusting God. As the serpent did in Genesis 3, we are geared to ask, “Did God really say. . .?” We approach His word with doubt and suspicion. We come to God with mistrust of His intentions, thinking what we want is really what is best. We fail to remember that He is the One who made us and who therefore knows what is best for us as His creatures. We fail to remember that He has revealed Himself to be holy and all-good and therefore cannot act against Himself in evil. We fail to remember that He is ultimately the One in charge, all-powerful and mighty, whose will alone will be done. We fail to remember that He is the One who says and does exactly what He says He will do.
This is what I am like. A doubting, disbelieving, distrusting sinner. When God speaks to me through his word to trust him, I am full of mistrust and self-exaltation. I believe the lie of my ‘greatness’ and God’s ‘untrustworthiness’. Unless God helps me, this is what I remain. But thanks be to God that He is abundant in grace! He gives me his Spirit as well as His Word. He calls me to trust and gives me the power to truly put my confidence in His word and plan.
While I might fail many times, I pray for the grace to trust God this year and beyond. I join the hymn writer Louisa Stead in repeating the final part of the refrain to Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus, “Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus! O for grace to trust him more!” Lord, may I trust you enough to say that I am “going somewhere, in God’s grace, according to plan”.
