In April of 2015 I was asked to serve as the pastor for the Awakening which is the Lafayette Great Banquets weekend for teenage boys. It was a wonderful experience and I got to share a message about salvation that included my testimony of how I came to believe in Jesus Christ as Savior. After the message I was overwhelmed with God’s presence as I had seldom had been before. It was as if God was speaking to me directly and the message was simple ……… “Do You Trust Me”? Keep in mind at that point of my life I was working at Faith Christian School teaching JH Boys Bible, 7th Grade Boys PE, Coaching High School Baseball and serving as Athletic Director. Also, I was helping to pastor a struggling church plant that we had recently merged our church plant with in Lafayette. I was overwhelmed when the question “Do You Trust Me” came clearly from God that day. It was like God you know I trust you after all the things we have been through recently.
I did not fully understand the message and wouldn’t for several months, however in the next two weeks to three months there would be two things happen that would define the reason for the overwhelming message of God of “Do You Trust Me”? First, I was diagnosed with a case of Bells palsy that required a very risky surgery and then 3 months later my wife lost her job and ½ of our income was gone.
Through those things I think I can safely say that my wife Pam and I learned to trust God in ways we had never had to before.
Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”
Pastor and Writer John Ortberg said this:
There was once a writer and priest named Henri Nouwen who became fascinated, in the last years of his life, with a group of trapeze artists called the Flying Rodleigh’s. There was something about their courage, soaring, trusting, and their dependence on one another that inspired him—like a parable for life with God.
One day, I was sitting with Rodleigh, the leader of the troupe, talking about flying. He said, “As a flyer, I must have complete trust in my catcher. The public might think that I am the great star of the trapeze, but the real star is Joe, my catcher. He has to be there for me with split-second precision and grab me out of the air as I come to him in the long jump.” “How does it work?” I asked. “The secret,” Rodleigh said, “is that the flyer does nothing and the catcher does everything. When I fly to Joe, I have simply to stretch out my arms and hands and wait for him to catch me and pull me safely over the apron behind the catch bar.” “You do nothing!” I said, surprised. “Nothing,” Rodleigh repeated. “The worst thing the flyer can do is to try to catch the catcher. I am not supposed to catch Joe. It’s Joe’s task to catch me. If I grabbed Joe’s wrists, I might break them, or he might break mine, and that would be the end for both of us. A flyer must fly, and a catcher must catch, and the flyer must trust, with outstretched arms, that his catcher will be there for him.”
The “Do You Trust Me” message that I received at The Awakening was a similar message. My part was to trust the all-knowing and sovereign God of this universe with my future and honestly at that time of my life I was not doing that. I needed to be trusting God as Rodleigh trusted his catcher Joe. I needed to surrender myself to God in that way. That I would trust Him in no matter what the outcome of future events.