Unorthodox Trust

            For Christmas, a friend of mine just gave me a beautiful picture that simply says “Trust in the Lord.”  She made me hang it within eye-shot from where I work every morning.

            My friend knows me so well.  From the moment I take my first sip of coffee and begin my quiet time, she wants “Trust in the Lord” to stare me down..

            Why?  Because I am the queen of waffling. When I receive repeated messages from the Holy Spirit, but circumstances contradict the messages, I began to doubt what I heard. Sometimes I run in the opposite direction.  Do you do that?  Rather than trust and have faith, I become disheartened and conclude I heard God wrong or that what I thought was a message of God was really birthed from my own personal desire.

            However doesn’t the Word say, Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding? That means we shouldn’t over analyze a situation and should relax and trust that God will put a scenario together. Many times God wants us to wait on him and grow spiritually during the process.

I’ve had more trouble trusting my most recent message than ever before because it is unorthodox. God answered that by reminding me his ways don’t always fit in my neat little box.  Unorthodox, he asked me?  Didn’t Joseph marry a pregnant woman?

And why did Joseph proceed with this socially unacceptable path after he originally decided to divorce her quietly? Because he trusted the message from the angel of the Lord who said, Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as our wife because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.

            God used Joseph’s trust to add to the validity of the Christmas story because it was unorthodox! Only a man who’d seen an angel would proceed into the most unusual of arrangements.

Ultimately, God often times uses the unbelievable, the far-fetched and the impossible for his glory. If you’ve received multiple messages from the Lord about something, it’s important to trust, live your life for God and let the Lord work the details out in his own timing.

What about you? Have you ever been asked to trust God in the strangest of scenarios?