Father God prefers to deal with 100% trust. The world says, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. The idea is so that if anything happens and the basket drops, they don’t all get broken and you lose everything in one go. Father God’s ways are different. He is mighty to save and defend us. He teaches us to put all our eggs in one basket and then hand the basket over to the Him. Our eggs are all safe in His Hands and nothing bad happens to anything we place in the Lord’s Hand.
The Lord’s ways are different from the ways of the world.( Isaiah 55 v 8 – 9).
Jesus’s life on earth, modelled how to trust God completely.

Reading the story in Mark 2 v 1 – 12 about the paralytic whose four friends had to bring to Jesus, brings to mind something about ‘distrust’. It’s always great to ask the Holy Spirit for more insight on the Word. I will not be concentrating on the healing, much as I love healing, but rather the behaviour of the scribes and why their hearts resisted transformation inspite of all the miracles they saw Jesus perform.

There are some of us who have a problem coming fully to embrace Jesus because of our doubts, inability to trust Him fully, fears and questions. We may not speak about these doubts openly but we know and Jesus knows they are there. Also we are apprehensive about who He says He is and what He does. Sometimes who He says He is, doesn’t quite match up with our experience of Him. Some of us may be leaders in the church but still struggle in this area. I suggest that doing NOTHING about this should no longer be an option. The enemy continues to use these areas of distrust as ground in our lives to create havoc.

Rather than bring this distrust into the open, we tend to hold negative dialogue with ourselves as we see the scribes doing in Mark 2. We argue with ourselves, and reason out why Father God can’t be all He says He is. We hold up our experience as the standard rather than using the infallible word of God as the standard.

This is an area where satan enters into and draws us into self talk, making us walk in unbelief.

In our Bible reading, the scribes were questioning Jesus’s authority to claim to be God’s Son.

Sometimes when we allow distrust to fester in our minds, we are in other words questioning His authority to be God’s Son. Distrust is a big area where the enemy enters in and builds a stronghold (topos). We thus have a topos in our lives that the enemy rules in. Distrust is often built on unbelief and doubt. Remember in Genesis, all the enemy had to do was create doubt in Eve about God’s intention for them. This allowed the enemy access to their hearts, it bred distrust and they sinned.

The behaviour of the disciples in the story in Mark 4 v 35 – 41 about Jesus sleeping in the boat during a storm had its roots in distrust. Jesus had said that they were going to the other side (Gerasenes) so He trusted His Father to get them there, and went to sleep peacefully. The disciples were very frightened at the ferociousness of the storm, and woke Jesus up accusing Him that He didn’t care. In other words, how could He be sleeping at such a perilous time. However, Jesus trusted His Father 100% so could sleep as the responsibility to get them to the other side was His Father’s. When Jesus awoke and rebuked the storm, He rebuked their fear and lack of faith. All these actions are associated with inability to trust completely.

The most dangerous bit about distrust is the fact that it hinders greatly our ability to be obedient. Sometimes it makes us slow to obey, which I always say is also termed disobedience.

Many of us know the song ; ‘Trust and Obey…for there’s no other way; to be happy in Jesus; but to trust and obey’.

Let us learn to recognise distrust and deal with it. We can deal with it by taking it to Father God. We tell Him who or what we are struggling with, and where we are hurting. We can sometimes ask Him who we should forgive for this hurt. We can then go on to forgive the person and as we forgive, we renounce that He would do a similar thing. We can then ask Him for the truth, and for His love to fill us. If we feel, it’s Father God we are upset with, its alright to tell Him that too. Remember that He is a good good Father.

Sometimes you may feel that you have to forgive Him too. It’s not that He has done anything wrong, but it’s your perception of the event. Your ability to release blaming Him will release you into some level of freedom. Then ask Him what He wants to tell or give you in return, and ask Him to love on you. This will help repair trust issues between you and Father God again.

Let’s learn to have simple faith. Let’s discern the times and let’s allow the Holy Spirit to lead us. Let’s not desire to figure things out or to resort to reasoning, when we have in hand what Father God has spoken.

May our Heavenly Father draw our hearts closer, so we trust Him fully, as modelled by Jesus Christ.

Amen.

God bless us all.
Mina.