Loving God Through Trusting Him

I was watching a movie last night, a Christmas rom-com, which I would not recommend because it was pretty much a waste of time 🙂 However, I did get a lot out of one scene from it that inspired me for today’s Encouragement Thursday.

One of the main characters was trying to figure out if her coworker and best friend loved her, and she asked her father how he knew her mother was the one. He replied that she was willing to face her biggest fear for him. If you are willing to face your fears for someone else, then you love them.

This got me thinking. There are so many verses in the Bible about trusting God, but I don’t think we realize that it’s an act of worship. When we listen to God and do what He tells us to–acting on our faith–we are proving to God that we love Him.

So if we are too afraid to do what God tells us to, then do we truly love Him?

I’ve been thinking about that question a lot over the past couple days. I think we can certainly love God while having doubts. But I think the way to truly show God that we love Him is by doing what He commands. Sometimes God commands us to do things that we don’t want to do, or even worse, that we are afraid to do. But that doesn’t mean we have an excuse not to do them. It just means that we need to call out to God and ask for His peace and strength to overflow within us so that we can do what He asks.

God wants to help us. He wants us to become the people He created us to be. But that requires us to do our part, too. We need to ask God each day to help us listen to Him and to renew our faith. We also need to be willing to stop sitting around questioning whether or not we should do something and instead jump up and just do it.

I know that what I’m suggesting isn’t easy. I have a lot of trouble doing what God tells me to sometimes. But trusting God is vital for our spiritual growth. It helps us develop an even deeper love of God when we trust Him with EVERYTHING. Our relationships, our health, our finances, our future, our everything.

So today, think about something that God has been telling you to do, but you’ve been too afraid to do it. It’s not too late. God is patient and He knows that you may have needed some assurance before taking this leap of faith. Pray about it and allow God’s peace to fill you. Then, go out and do it. 🙂

For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.

1 John 5:3

So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.

James 2:17