Trust – Part 2

Your love is amazing, steady and unchanging. Your love is a mountain, firm beneath my feat. Your love is a mystery, how you gently lift me. When I am surrounded, your love carries me! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Your love makes me sing!

My bad if those lyrics are slightly messed up, because that was just from memory. But those lyrics mean so much to me. God’s love is huge. It is so much more than we will ever be able to comprehend. And we have a direct link to our loving God, through prayer. I think prayer is greatly underestimated. Prayer can literally change lives. In Daniel, as soon as he realized that Israel’s exile in Babylon was soon meant to be over he prayed. The Bible says that the minute Daniel began to pray, God made the decree to start to bring Israel back to their homeland.

I have been praying for a very long time now, daily, that God would give me more time in Turkey. I had been having many issues with trusting God because of the uncertainty. I prayed daily for as long as I can remember having trouble over this issue, my prayer group at my Youth Group had been praying about it for a while now, and countless close friends have told me they had been praying for me. This past Thursday (May 28th) I arrived home from Youth Group like any other fun Thursday after Youth Group. Later that evening my dad came home and came up to my room to talk to me. He told me that he had found out when we would be leaving Turkey, and he asked me if I wanted to know. This scared me, because I wanted to know, but I did not want the news to be bad. Because of this, I was pretty much speechless. Finally, I managed to say ok. He made it very suspenseful, which made me even more nervous, but finally he told me that we would be staying in Turkey until at least the summer of 2011. As soon as he said this, I started to cry. This is one of the few times in my life that I had been happy enough to cry. This is my testimony to prayer: God listens to you, so pray! God knows the desires of you heart, so ask him for them! And best of all, God knows what is best for you, so it is guaranteed that it all all turn out well no matter how bad it may seem at first.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”    ~Proverbs 3:5-6

Think about it. Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, do not lean on your own understanding, but lean on God’s understanding. Do all of this, simply acknowledge God’s sovereignty and he will make your paths straight. God promised to never leave you nor forsake you, so why do we not lean on God? Because he also promised that if we do that he would make our paths straight? And that is something most of us would not mind having. It takes faith, but there is so much around us that can strengthen our faith, and God blesses us so much that I, for one, feel the need to praise him for it! God has made me extremely happy through so many people and so many things.

I want to end by re-stating something that I want to emphasize in this post. Prayer works, so do not doubt it for one second. God always has an open ear, and God listens to persistent, longing people. God knows if you care enough about it, and he knows what is good for you. Pray often. God listens to those who serve him whole-heartedly. God always listens.

Even though this all stands true unconditionally, I want to emphasize putting God above all else. What are we living our lives for? The answer should be God, but chances are that is not 100% true. An easy way to answer this question would to be by asking another question: How do we spend our time? This is so huge, I know that I have major issues with this, so I am definitely not pointing a finger, trying to judge anyone here, but I do want to emphasize this. Also, I want to credit these thoughts and questions to my Bible teacher, Mr. Meyer. He has taught me a lot that I hope never to forget, and God has truly blessed our school with such a great Bible teacher.

Trust

Trust is such a difficult thing. I daily struggle with trusting God, which often leads to mis-trusting others.
Not too long ago my grandad, (we call him Poppy), got in a serious car accident. When I first heard about it I was more scared than anything else. I have never lost a family memeber before, and I certainly was not ready to now. I prayed repeatedly, and I instantly started asking others for prayer, and in the days that followed. My first reaction was to panic, and I knew that I needed to pray. But, I still felt scared, taking my fears to God, but I still had a lack of trust. Not too long after I heard the bad news, I found out that he was going to be ok, even though he was seriously injured. He was driving a big truck in the accident, and a picture appeared in the news. The day after, my mom showed me the picture of his truck. The whole passenger compartment in the front looked completely crushed, and I really did not know how anyone could have survived it. It was surely a miracle from God. I found out he did have many injuries, many teeth knocked out, teeth jammed in his lip, a fractured bone in the knee area, and one of the bones in his vertebrate was broken. Also, we found of that the engine of the truck had fallen back into the passenger seat beside him. If it would have fallen on him it would have killed him.
God really does do miracles, even minor ones in our lives that we tend to ignore.
That has been a lesson of trust for me, that God can do miracles.
Also, I have been having trouble trusting God about my future for what seems like forever now. It's always up and down, thinking I know what God has planned for me, and then going right back into confusion. I am really scared of my future, and I think that is why I am having trust issues with God, yet God has proven to come through so many times, I just do not understand why I am not completely trusting God. It sounds like I should just trust God then, no problemo, ya know?? Well is is certainly not the case. Prayers appriciated. I need to trust God that he'll have me where he needs me. I'm thinking, hoping, and praying that this place God needs me for next year is Turkey. After all, I just got some very exciting news that Sevda is comming back next year!! :) Could this be why God has brought me to Turkey? So many questions with what seems like so little answers. Obviously that is not why God has brought me to Turkey if we must leave this summer. This is what scares me. I do not know exactly why God has brought me here, and placed me in the class that I am in. For a time it may have seemed like Kamelya was my purpose, and for the longest time I felt like a huge purpose in my life was to bring Kamelya to faith. As we can all see, that obviously was not God's plan, especially for that point in time. People mess up all the time, it may have been my mistake, it may have been hers. But one thing I know for sure is that God has a plan, and his purpose will be done. He is a miracle-worker. God has a plan for me, and I know I trust him with that. So from there I just need to grow closer to God. God has given me sooooo much. A great family, amazing friends :), and all types of important people in my life. And I think I have learned something from just about all of them.