“Who am I, O Sovereign LORD… that you have brought me this far? And now… in addition to everything else, you speak of giving your servant a lasting dynasty! Do you deal with everyone this way…?” (2 Samuel 7:18-19 NLT)
Why is it so hard sometimes to receive God’s blessing… to believe that he loves to shower us with favour? It’s hard in adversity, but it can be just as hard in times of plenty. We know we’re underserving but we also know that God’s affection is unmerited. So why is it so difficult?
Author of the bestseller “The Ragamuffin Gospel”, Brennan Manning records some wise advice he once received.
“Brennan, you don’t need any more insights into the faith,” he observed. “You’ve got enough insights to last you three hundred years. The most urgent need in your life is to trust what you have received.”
This remark from my spiritual director sounded simple enough. But it sparked a searing reexamination of my life, my ministry and the authenticity of my relationship with God … The challenge to actually trust God forced me to deconstruct what I had spent my life constructing, to stop clutching what I was so afraid of losing, to question my personal investment in every word I had ever written or spoken about Jesus Christ and fearlessly to ask myself if I trusted him.
Through countless hours of silence, solitude, soul-searching and prayer, I learned that the act of trust is an utterly ruthless act …
Trust is that rare and priceless treasure that wins us the affection of our heavenly Father. For him it has both charm and fascination.
Among his countless children, who he so greatly loves and on whom he heaps tenderness and favors, there are few indeed, who truly entrusting themselves to him, live as veritable children of God. There are as few who respond to his goodness by a trust at once filial and unshaken.
And so it is that he welcomes with a love of predilection those souls, all too few in number, who in adversity as in joy, in tribulation and consolation, unfalteringly trust in God’s paternal love.”1
1 Excerpt from Day Two of “Ragamuffin Reflections” by Brennan Manning. A daily reading plan currently hosted on YouVersion Bible App.