Last fall, I was shopping at a store where they sell everything in bulk. I can never think rationally in those types of stores.\u00a0 \u201cWhy buy one jar of mayonnaise, when I can buy ten?\u201d I ask myself.\u00a0 The reasonable answer is because our family of three cannot possibly consume ten jars of mayonnaise before they expire.\u00a0 Yet invariably, I will buy ten jars of mayonnaise.<\/p>\n
As I entered the store that day, immediately in front of me were bags of flower bulbs. They had bags of 25, 50 and 90 bulbs.\u00a0 You wouldn\u2019t believe it, but the bag of 90 bulbs cost only $15.\u00a0 I could not pass up that deal.\u00a0 When I got home, my husband said to me, \u201cThat\u2019s great, but now you have to plant all those bulbs.\u201d\u00a0 Admittedly, that hadn\u2019t factored into my thinking when I bought the bulbs.<\/p>\n
Four backbreaking hours later, I had planted 90 tulip bulbs. And then I waited. \u00a0For months.\u00a0 Every so often, I would look outside and ask my husband, \u201cDo you think they are going to come up in the spring?\u201d\u00a0 He would answer, \u201cOf course.\u00a0 That is what bulbs do.\u201d\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t really believe him.<\/p>\n
Then one morning this March, my husband said, \u201cCome with me. I have a surprise for you.\u201d\u00a0 Lo and behold, little tulip shoots were coming out of the ground.\u00a0 I rarely have been so excited (we obviously live very simple lives).\u00a0 Now my front yard looks like Holland in the springtime.<\/p>\n
Why didn\u2019t I simply expect the tulips to come up out of the ground? I spent the entire winter questioning something that science already has determined will happen.\u00a0 You put a bulb in the ground, and a plant inevitably will grow.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t expect the bulbs to grow, for the same reason that many of us don\u2019t expect God to be good to us. We hope that God will be good to us, but we don\u2019t expect<\/em> it.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have faith that God will take care of us.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 I think faith is hard because we don\u2019t want to be disappointed.\u00a0 So we give God 50% faith.\u00a0 Our attitude is, \u201cWell, it would be nice if God takes care of me and my family, but if He doesn\u2019t, that’s OK too.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019ve all had disappointments in life. Some of them may have been big \u2013 perhaps a divorce or the death of a loved one.\u00a0 Others may have been small \u2013 not getting a job or failing at a test.\u00a0 But once you\u2019ve gotten some disappointments under your belt, you develop ways of protecting yourself from the feelings of hurt and sadness that come along with that.<\/p>\n Faith demands that we don\u2019t protect ourselves. Faith demands that we stand completely naked and defenseless before God, and say, \u201cI give you my life.\u00a0 I trust you to take care of me.\u00a0 I believe you will make sure that my life is blessed with good things.\u201d\u00a0 And you say all that to God without reservation.\u00a0 Faith means that you don\u2019t doubt God, like I doubted my tulip bulbs.<\/p>\n Letting go of all the ways that we protect ourselves and trusting God is hard. We protect ourselves by trying to control our children instead of letting God take care of them.\u00a0 We protect ourselves by worrying about our finances or our health instead of being faithful that God will resolve all matters for our good.\u00a0 We protect ourselves by giving up on the dreams that God has placed in our hearts, instead of giving God the time to make those dreams come to pass.<\/p>\n But when we are truly faithful, when we submit our lives to God, He can make our lives something incredible. If we act as He would like us to act, and if we try to be the type of person He asks us to be, doors open, and opportunities arise that are beyond our wildest dreams.\u00a0 But that takes complete faith.<\/p>\n This week, think about the areas in your life where you may have doubts. Are there areas where you doubt God\u2019s goodness?\u00a0 Pray that God might give you the faith to know<\/em> that He will take care of you.\u00a0 Believe that He is blessing you constantly throughout the day.\u00a0 Be on the lookout for the good things that He is trying to do for you.\u00a0 Like my tulips, those good things will come up when you least expect them to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last fall, I was shopping at a store where they sell everything in bulk. I can never think rationally in those types of stores.\u00a0 \u201cWhy buy one jar of mayonnaise, when I can buy ten?\u201d I ask myself.\u00a0 The reasonable answer is because our family of three cannot possibly consume ten jars of mayonnaise before…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":593,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n