TRUSTING IN THE LORD

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”  (Philippians 4:6-7 ESV)

There are two things which are more utterly incompatible than even oil and water, and these two are trust and worry. Would you call it trust if you should give something into the hands of a friend to attend to for you, and then spend your nights and days in anxious thoughts and worry as to whether it would be rightly and successfully done? And can you call it trust, when you have given the saving and keeping of your soul into the hands of the Lord, if day after day, and night after night you are spending hours of anxious and questioning about the matter? When a believer really trusts anything, he ceases to worry about that thing which he has trusted. And when he worries, it is plain proof he does not trust…

You find no difficulty in trusting in the Lord with the management of the universe, and all the outward creation, and can your case be any more complex or difficult than these, that you need to be anxious or troubled about His management of you? Away with such unworthy doubtings! Take your stand on the power and trustworthiness of your God, and see how quickly all difficulties will vanish before a steadfast determination to believe. Trust in the dark, trust in the light, trust at night and trust in the morning, and you will find that the faith which may begin by mighty effort, will end sooner or later by becoming the easy and natural habit of the soul. 

-- Hannah Whitall Smith in “The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life”

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