Why Not Try God?

“The ship of heaven guides itself and will not accept a wooden rudder.”

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are some that flatly refuse all notions of God, let alone Divine help. But God often sets himself upon these to make the case irrepressibly compelling.

Many have come to salvation through exhaustion to pigheadedness; then they found the Lord not only utterly tolerable, they asked “How did I win such a reprieve?” and “How did I ever live beforehand without this Lord?”

They are back-washed in an oblivion of gratitude for the winning of a definitive peace that defies rational understanding. Suddenly, they know something that made no sense beforehand—faith in God—now means life without it, itself, makes no sense.

They have experienced a dipolar transformation.

Trusting In The One That Purifies Hearts And Transforms Minds

All that this faith caper is about is trust.

But perhaps we need to enlist a fresh understanding of what trust is about so far as faith is concerned. Rather than being a passive thing, where we might simply believe in someone or something, this trust in the One that purifies hearts and transforms minds is action-oriented.

What could be bewildering, though, is such an action-orientation is to be built from inaction rather than action—without confusing matters, the action of surrender; the giving over of our will for God’s will. That is, deciding to consider God in our responses of life; having faith that good direction will come; knowing we don’t have to ‘try hard’ anymore.

That’s all that is involved in trying God out; not that such an action of surrender—trusting God—will feel good or seem to work every time.

But God does strange things through our trust—out of such obedience God will turn circumstances to the direction of heaven’s destiny.

Where we once had our staunch and stubborn wooden rudder, and we sought to shift the bearing of life, we may have been blessed to come to a tired end.

A Time-Backed Guarantee

I once belonged to a kindly fellowship—one of the anonymous variety—where people would frequently say, words to the effect, “Try this program, and an unconditional faith in God, and give it three months solid work—you’ll not go back to the old way.”

And it was true; time and again I saw different souls with different personalities and different backgrounds apply the same tried and tested formula of faithful application. This thing about faith in God worked.

That’s all that anybody could ever ask—that it works.

This is what millions have found: faith in God works—in diminishing problems to manageable levels. Somehow, anyhow, the impossible is made possible, but that cannot be explained; just experienced.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.