Trust Me

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart…” Proverbs 3:5

 

When times are hard and life appears to be uncertain in the midst of your current circumstance, being told to trust and hold on to faith, just seems easier said than done. But why then if it is so difficult to trust in trying times, are we called to do so with even greater faith and motivation? I suppose the more appropriate question is, if we are to trust during the dry seasons of our lives.....how are we supposed to do it and what does fully trusting look like?

Lets take a look at what it really means to trust and then dig deeper and look at what God really means when He asks us to trust Him.

According to Webster’s dictionary Trust is defined as:

Assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something or one in which confidence is placed.

So what does God mean when He asks us to trust Him? Essentially, if we use the definition above, God is asking us to rely on His character, His ability, His strength and His truth to bring us through whatever circumstance we are finding ourselves in.

What do we know to be true about God’s Character? According to John W. Ritenbaugh author of The Covenants, Grace and Law (Part 20),  “God is not merely eternal. He is supreme in every quality of goodness, and in Him absolutely no evil dwells. In the Bible, this goodness is called holiness, which is transcendent purity. It permeates every aspect, every attribute, of God-life. God's character is holy, and it flows out from Him in acts of love, making it impossible for Him to do anything evil. This is the state towards which He is drawing us.”

Read more: http://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Topical.show/RTD/cgg/ID/3388/Character-Gods.htm#ixzz1Pw2FIV51

Here we learned that God’s character is holy and it flows out from Him in acts of love. What about God’s ability? What do we know to be true about God’s ability?

Paul in his letter to the Church in Ephesus writes this about God’s ability, “ Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all the generations, forever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21.  God is God. He has no bounds or limits, He can do all things. Lets look at some specific things that have been noted in the Bible that God is able to do:

God is able to turn bad news into good news as he did for Mary and Martha when their brother Lazarus died.  Jesus came and said to Martha, “Your brother will rise again” (John 11:23).  God is able to turn disappointments into divine appointments as He did with Mary Magdalene when Jesus appeared to her in the garden where Mary came to grieve the loss of Jesus who had been crucified three days before (John 20:11-18). God is able to turn nothing into something or little into plenty as He did with the two fish and the loaf of bread when Jesus used that to feed the 5,000 men and their families (John chapter 6).  When times seem hopeless and there seems to be no help, God is able to heal and bring hope just as He did when Jesus healed the bleeding sick woman that touched his cloak (Matthew 9:18-26).  God is able to transform our lives if we allow Him. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). God is able to make us able to do and handle all things. “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength” (Phillipians 3:14).

It appears that God’s ability is not the issue at hand, rather, the issue lies in the mere fact that many of us have faith and believe God was able in the “biblical times,” but for some reason we find it difficult to believe this very truth in the present day. Faith is what puts God’s ability to work in our lives.

This then brings us to what we have found thus far: God’s character is holy and it flows out from Him in acts of love and He is able to do all things as He has no bounds outside of our free will and can even move and work through us if we have the Faith that allows Him to do so. What about His strength? What do we know about His strength and how does it pertain to putting our trust in Him?

According to gotquestions.org  “The word “strength” and its derivatives are mentioned over 360 times in the Bible, applying to both natural and supernatural strength. The Greek word katei means power, strength, might. Paul tells us to “be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power” (Ephesians 6:10). Paul is telling us that the unlimited power and strength of Christ is the source of strength for those who belong to Him.” This then means that the strength we have seen exemplified in the New Testaments through the life of Christ Jesus is the same strength we who believe and belong to Him attain within us! Now that is a powerful revelation!

Lets recap once more, God’s character is holy and it flows out from Him in acts of love. He is able to do all things and can even move and work through us if we have the faith that allows Him to do so. God is strong and powerful and we who belong to Him attain this same source of strength because of Christ who lives within us! This now brings us to His truth. What do we need truth for in terms of trusting?

In John 8:21-32 Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Later in the book of John, John records the time that Jesus comforted his disciples prior to His crucifixion and he tells them, “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).  So here we gather that Jesus is the truth and we get to the Father through Him and truth sets us free. Jesus sets us free. He sets us free from the bondage of our circumstances, He sets us free from the bondage of our sin, He sets us free from the troubles we are in, He sets us free from the patterns we often repeat. Why, how you ask? Because He can do all things and He has already given us the strength to endure all things and all of this is His way of loving us by giving us the free will to chose to believe that God is who He says He is despite what curve balls life throws our way.

It seems that to fully be able to trust we must first have a better understanding and knowing of who it is that we are trusting or what it is that we are putting our trust into.  So when people tell us the cliché “Trust in the Lord and all will be well,” that may not be so “cliché” anymore now having acquired a better understanding of who God is and what He is asking to put our trust in, which is: His firm never changing, mighty character, His ability to work in our lives, His strength which He freely gives us and in His truth which sets us free from the very thing we are seeking refuge from. Let your hope and your faith rest in this understanding as your trust begins to grow and your troubles begin to fade.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.”- Jesus (John 14:1)

References

Ritenbaugh, J.W. The Covenants, Grace and Law (Part 20),

http://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Topical.show/RTD/cgg/ID/3388/Character-Gods.htm#ixzz1Pw2FIV51

Websters Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/definition 

www.gotquestions.org

Article Written By: Jessica Felix Jager, MSW

 

Emotional Recovery after a Traumatic Brain Injury

“Grieve what you lost…. So you can celebrate what you have.”

Child’s Recovery From Brain Injury is Emotional as well as Physical.

If your child or teen has experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI), you may be aware of their struggle with emotions. Emotional recovery is very important after a brain injury and should not be overlooked.

There are five levels of emotional development. In some cases, people with a traumatic brain injury will go back to the very first level and start all over again in their emotional development. The ability to connect on an emotional level in a healthy relationship is the long term goal of emotional recovery.

When our son was fifteen, he suffered a TBI. We were not really sure what to expect as he came out of a forty day coma. He began to awake only to discover he was, in a sense, a “six foot infant.” He had to start all over, like a new born, slowly learning how to do everything.

Stage One of Emotional Development:

Stage one of emotional development is the ability to receive love. For a child or teenager with a TBI, it is vitally important for both parents and siblings to be present during this stage. They should be interactive so their child’s spirit is awakened through nurturing. Physical touch such as holding your child for extended periods of time daily is most effective. In our son’s recovery, it was very obvious that physical touch activated the blood flow and drew his spirit to life. If holding your child is not possible, you might hold a hand, rub arms and legs, or kiss a forehead or cheek.

In our son’s case, the right side of his brain was injured. While he was in the coma, we gently rubbed his head on the right side to activate more blood flow, which proved to be very effective as he regained more and more movement in his left side. We could actually see the difference in alertness after his cheek was kissed and gently rubbed.

I believe that lack of nurture in early stages of recovery:

• Causes the spirit to remain in a slumber.
• Causes the child or teen to feel unloved, leading to insecurity and the need for constant reassurance of love later in life.
• Causes emotional growth and development to be stunted.
• Creates a void in the foundation stage of emotional development. If the foundation has a void, something is missing.

Stage Two of Emotional Development:

Stage two is “Independence.” Each child or teen is uniquely created by God as an individual. During the second stage of emotional development, a child will begin to explore their independence. We as a family observed that as our son felt secure and loved, he progressed quickly into this stage. He wanted to venture out in his own uniqueness. During this stage, a child or teen will test his parents’ love with acts of independence. For emotional development purposes, these acts of independence need to be handled correctly.

I believe it is important for parents to be careful to correct their child without crushing his or her spirit. Proper discipline is very important at this stage. A child needs to experience unconditional love. Even when a child is disobedient, love is still there for the child to receive. During this stage, a child will test a parent’s love in many ways. One way is by expressing their own desires, which may be different from their parents’ desires. Children need to feel secure enough in their parents’ love to say “No” without the fear of being cut off, shut down, or rejected.

Parents must allow their child opportunities to say “No” when it is appropriate in order to express their independence. Parents should give their children choices so they can learn to determine what they like or don’t like and feel the freedom to exercise choice. This continues to build trust in the parent/child relationship and prepares them to say “No” in adulthood. The adult person who has not learned how to say “No” can very easily be controlled and even abused by others.

Many times parents want their child to be just like them, but God created each child as a unique individual. Children need to have a loving and safe environment to discover who God created them to be. As they discover that they are unique, they need to feel that it is all right to be different from their parents.

Recovery After Brain Injury:

This is also true in the recovery process. There is a time when the survivor begins to realize and embrace the reality of being different from who they were before the brain injury. It is important for parents to support their child who is learning to embrace a new self. Parents can give emotional support as their child learns to say, “Yes, this is what I believe and what I choose” or, “No, this is not me.” By encouraging new preferences, the child starts to build a new identity after the brain injury.

Our son Will loved to ride horses and wear western jeans and shirts before our car accident. However, as his uniqueness was being developed after the accident, he didn’t want anything to do with western wear and our family had to accept the new him. We allowed him the choice and when he said no we respected this new choice. This was especially hard for my husband because he and Will rode horses together and now his “new son” didn’t like horses at all.

The Role of a Parent in this Stage of a Child’s Emotional Development is to:

• Affirm who they are and their differences
• Allow the child to make choices with safe boundaries
• Provide accountability to stay within boundaries
• Set and encourage attainable goals
• Carry out appropriate disciplinary consequences when behavior is unacceptable (see Proverbs 22:6, Proverbs13:1, Proverbs19:18)
• Encourage unique gifting, abilities, and interests

Caregiving after Brain Injury

Now, if you are the caregiver of a child who has had a brain injury, go back over the role of a parent and recognize that this is also your role as a caregiver. A caregiver who does not take this role – to monitor and encourage emotional development – will see the effects in years to come.

The brain can be re-trained, just as a child is trained in right from wrong. A child who is not taught right from wrong and how to choose what is right will become rebellious and will not respect authority. A survivor of a TBI who has not been taught how to make the right choices will flounder in life. They will also have a greater chance of getting into trouble and rebelling against authority later on as they get older. They may try to gain independence in the wrong ways by finding fault with the family as a reason to separate and individuate from them. The right way to gain independence is to have a solid and secure foundation, knowing one is loved and accepted and therefore having a strong self-worth regardless of disabilities.

Article Written By: Denise Boggs