Valerie Rae Hanneman
Jeremiah 17:7 “But blessed are those who trust in the LORD and have made the LORD their hope and confidence.” (NLT)
Matthew 6:27 (Jesus speaking) "Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life”(NIV)
I like games that rely on both skill and chance. I like them because even if you have all the skill necessary to win - there is that element of chance that can put a new spin on the game. I love to play poker because of the chance factor. I am fairly skilled at it - not to the point where I will ever make the World Championship of Poker - but I can hold my own. (Although I used to play for money, my stakes these days are matchsticks) One night I was in a high stakes game - each of us had bought in at $50.00! (That is high stakes for a single mother!) I was not having a good night, I was down about $20.00. We were playing 7 card stud and I got a terrific hand. As best as I could tell nobody else at the table could beat it. When my turn to bet came up I took a big breath, pushed all my chips into the center and bet everything I had on the turn of a card.
My daughter, Fawn, bought a brand new Aveo last month. It is the cutest sunshine yellow car. Because Fawn was a paid tutor over at her college we knew that her payments would be tight - but do-able. Imagine my dismayed shock when Fawn came home two weeks after she bought the car to tell me that, because of a technicality in the federal program she was paid through, they had laid her off, effective that Thursday. Nobody at the local college office or the corporate headquarters had ever given her any type of indication that this would happen to her. Suddenly I am looking at an additional $300.00 a month in car payments. I simply cannot afford this additional burden on a budget stretched so thin you can see though it. My mom suggested that maybe we should cut down to one meal a day but anybody who looks at me knows that skipping meals is not on my “willing to do” list. (She was joking anyway) That night while with Father, I cried. I told Him I didn’t know how I was going to get us out of this mess, I couldn’t let the car be repossessed - but I couldn’t pay for it either, I was facing disaster! What was I going to do? Then I heard His soft, still voice speak to me in the midst of my despair. “Quit worrying and trust in Me.” And so I took a big breath, wiped my eyes, and did what He asked me to do.
These two stories don’t seem to have much in common do they? And yet there are great similarities in them. Both of them required a certain amount of confidence. I had confidence in my skill as a poker player, I had confidence in my cards when compared to what was around the table. With my financial problem I have confidence in His promise that He will never leave me or forsake me and in the many times that He has kept that promise. . In both I am not in control of how the situation will resolve itself. In the card game, once I pushed all my chips in the center, I could no longer control what happened in the game. I just had to wait and see. In this car situation I have given control of the situation to Father when I gave Him my worry and my trust. Now all I can do is wait and see how He will work. In the poker game I was trusting that my instincts about the cards and the turn of that next card. In my situation today, I am trusting in an eternal God Who loves me. The last thing that these two situations have in common is probably the greatest one. They were both “all or nothing” commitments. I committed all of my money to that one hand of cards. I held nothing back. In placing all my faith and trust in Father, I have committed my whole life to Him. I hold nothing back.
Problems are going to come at us. Anybody who pastes their “sweet Jesus” smile on their face and tells you with a straight face that they don’t have any problems need to have their meds adjusted. We all face problems. Father never promised us a rose garden life, in fact He warned us that powers would come against us. What He did promise us was that if we put our trust in Him, He would see us through. All that we need to do is have confidence in His promises, we need to release our control into His powerful hands, and we need to trust in His great love for us. But most important of all, we need to make an “all or nothing” commitment to Him holding nothing in our lives back from Him. And when we have put all our trust in Him and given Him all our hope and confidence then He will bless us.
When I put all my trust - and money - on my cards the odds were with me that I would win. But I lost. And even as I bet everything I knew that there was a chance that I would lose. I put my trust in the finite and mortal things. I am not going to lose in the financial problems I now face. There is absolutely no chance of it. I may go through some rough times, but in the end I will stand victorious over this situation because my trust is in my infinite and immortal God. And He will not fail me.
Father God, thank You for the promises You have given me. Because of them, I know that I can trust You to hold on to me, regardless of the storms that swirl around me.
Contact Valerie or subscribe to the e-ministry of Fresno First Baptist at valerie@fresnofirst.org
Posted by Valerie at August 5, 2005 08:21 PM