Trust, Comfort, Contentment

I write the following to give glory to God first and then also that it might be an encouragement to anyone else. Trust, Comfort and Contentment are 3 areas in which the Lord has recently been working on me. First, the trust factor. Coming back from our visit out to Oklahoma in February, I knew it was where the Lord was calling us, but there was still something bothering me. Well, the Holy Spirit revealed it was a lack of trust in my Father who owns the cattle on a thousand hills! He showed me that I was worrying about how bills would get paid and about how we would eat and keep a roof over our heads. The Lord laid on my heart to memorize Matthew 6:25-34 where we are not to worry about such things. The Lord knows all of our needs. A very short sentence in there hit me hard: “You of little faith.” I do not want to be a child of God with little faith! I gave this over to the Lord and told Him He is great and will take care of Joe and I. Well, one or two days later, I was still bothered. I thought maybe I hadn’t really gave over the trust issue to the Lord, but then the Spirit revealed another aspect I needed to ask for forgiveness of: Comfort. Now growing up in a military family, I have moved around quite a bit. And even though I knew I would miss the friends that I had made, I was fine with moving. Now, the longest time I have ever stayed anywhere while growing up in the military had been 4 years. I moved here in 1996 and so I’ve been here for almost 10 years. I had become very comfortable where I was. Now don’t get me wrong. I will indeed miss all the friends I have made here, but the comfortableness of being in one place all these years had gotten in the way of my relationship with the Lord. I am not saying that being comfortable is wrong, but I am saying that if the Lord calls you to go someplace and you tell Him, “well Lord, I am just to comfortable right now, I think here will be just fine”, well, then it becomes a problem and downright sin since you then would be being disobedient to Him. Well, in essence, I had just become so comfortable in where I was at that moving was kind of an inconvienence for me. And lastly: Contentment. Before heading out to visit VOM in Oklahoma, I had already put preconceived notions in my mind as to what VOM would look like, where exactly it would be located, what I would be doing…Notice the “I” and how it was all about what “I” thought it should be. Well, after returning from VOM, nothing was what “I” thought it would be. The place looked different, it was not where “I” expected it to be and “I” was not going to be doing what “I” thought “I” might get a chance to do. While driving one day, the Lord put the word “contentment” in my mind. Now, the previous evening I had attended an on-going women’s Bible study on money and that particular session had to do with contentment. And although I am content with what the Lord has allowed us to have, He showed me that I was not content with doing what He wants me to do. I have to say that I was so saddened that I had all of this in me, BUT I greatly rejoiced also because the precious Holy Spirit had revealed this to me and I was able to give it all over to the Lord and ask for forgiveness. I praise the Lord for what He reveals and the lessons He teaches those that are His. To God be ALL the Glory!!!