Dependence

"Our eyes look to the LORD our God, till he shows us his mercy."  (Psa. 123:2)

I've been camping out in Psalms lately.  And tonight, I've been thinking a lot about trust and dependence on God - about letting go and trusting that God will finish what He started.  And that it will be good no matter what.

Think about this: You've asked God something, and you have waited for His answer.  It hasn't come yet, or perhaps it hasn't come in the form you wanted.  The natural human tendency, in such cases, is to think to yourself, "God must want me to work this out on my own."  And you begin crossing that very fine line between expectant faith and willful self-assertion.  When you do, you may get results - some sort of resolution to your problem.  But it won't be God's resolution if it didn't come from Him.

That's a common problem in the life of faith.  We trust God, but when He delays His intervention in our lives, we start making assumptions.  Perhaps He wanted us to fend for ourselves, or perhaps He simply said no to our request and we missed it.  So we act.  We take our eyes off of His provision and put them on whatever we manage ourselves.  It's a subtle shift with dramatic implications.  Soon we're living on our own, only occasionally acknowledging the God we know is up there, though we're not sure where.

Psalm 123 tells us the right attitude.  As a servant looks to his master - for everything, in its time - and as a maid looks to her mistress, so we are to look to God.  Our eyes are to stay on Him.  If He gives us what we expect, we have it.  If He doesn't, we don't.  There are no alternatives, no plan B's, no going back to the drawing board.  If we truly depend on God, we depend only on Him and not on any other.  Not even ourselves.

Trust and dependence are single-minded attitudes.  If we have them, we have pinned all our hopes on this God, and whatever He does for us, that's what we have.  He isn't the first resort before we move on to second, third, and last resorts; He isn't the first bank to which we apply for a loan, or the first school to which we apply for admission, with backup choices waiting just in case.  No, He's it.  All there is.  The trusting heart will wait because it believes there are no other options.  And in the end, that's the heart that will be shown mercy.

"What is more elevating and transporting than the generosity of heart which risks everything on God's Word?"  - John Henry Newman