Believe

"Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God; and believe also in me."
John 14:1

How many times my heart has been troubled, that I have been in a place of pain or sorrow or anxiety over this last year?  How many times I have allowed the circumstances of where I am at, those around me, my work to cause me to suffer and be in a place that lacked joy or was full of stress? How many times have I let my troubles cause me to stand alone?

As I look back those our hard times and difficult to get through.  In the beginning it was almost devistating to me.  The first three days in Afghanistan I will remember for every as some of the hardest days of my life.  Several times over the year the same feeling coming, the lonliness, anxiety, hoplessness.  Thanksgiving without the family sent me a million miles away from them, almost trapped without any options. 

All of these times I can remember was a time when I was depending on the external, standing alone, losing focus on God and not trusting Him more then myself.  He was there but I would move from Him selfishly, wanting my own destiny my own outcomes and not what He had planned. 

I know however that each of those times I became stronger as I worked back to Him.  When I realized that I could not do it alone turned my trust in His plans, in what He had for me.  I became stronger as I stopped being me and gave myself to Him. Not that the circumstance would ever change but that my anxiety left, the loniliness left, the weakness left, and my heart found joy. Each time He was there, accepting the Protical Son back home, offering grace to me.

This verse is so simple.  The instruction clear.  Don't worry, just believe!  Believe in God and believe in His Son, Jesus Christ, who spoke these words.  Believe what God has written.  Believe what God has spoken through His Son and believe the Son.  Believe!

This is foolishness to those that do not beleive.  It was at times almost foolishness to me as I moved away from this belief and my world fell apart.  It is foolishness as it is way to simple when compared to todays self help mentallity full of extravigant how to's.  Just believe?  That is it?  But the God that created everything uses only this to offer us everything we could ever hope for, freedom from death, from sin, from the world that wants to destroy us by simple grace through faith.

We want our God to be so big sometimes that we can not rationalize this kind of simplicity.  Ask with your lips, set it in your heart, love God and accept His Son and you will be saved.  Believe, and all is yours and you will seee His glory in your life.  You will live as a child of God an hier to His thrown, in His grace in His way.

As I released my troubles to Him he has always been faithful.  As Catherine has done the same in her life, He has been faithful.  When all release themselves to Him He has been faithful.  Since the beginning of time and from the approved time of His Son, He has been faithful to all that remain faithful to Him.

I have come so far this year, but have so far to go.  It will not end until the end and I am sure the worst is yet to come.  But even now as I work through this in my head I gain strength, I gain belief and I gain more fully Him so that next time, I will be even more prepared.

Find God, find Jesus Christ and believe, your life will, as I can attest, never be the same again.

Lord Jesus, Father God, Abba set in the hearts that read this just a mustard seed of belief.  Let them see your glory and be drawn towards it so strongly that they have no choice but to fall to their knees and cry out to you.  For those that do already believe, let their yeast grow and spread throughout their soles, and to the soles of those around them. May their belief become a rock, a foundation that they may always hold to, even in times of trouble and a building block for their further strength.  Amen.