A Decision to Trust
By Jessica Brodie
You know those personality assessments where you have to answer a ton of questions and then they generate your type? Like, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or others like it. I’ve always loved these, because they help me understand who I am better, and how I can get along with others. As a Christian, I know my identity as a child of God is my most important, but my personality, the unique way I look at and react to the world, how I behave, what motivates me, the work I’m drawn to, even the kinds of books I read and friends I make, impacts much of my daily living, too.
I tend to waffle back and forth between whether I’m an introvert or extravert (I like to call myself an introvert with heavy extravert tendencies… or maybe I’m just a really sensitive extravert who needs tons of solitude). But I digress, because the real stumper is where I fall in the thinking vs. feeling column.
See, I’m a very emotional and passionate person. I cry at commercials, and when I finish a good book or film. But I’m also extraordinarily logical, practical, organized, and rational. I actually scored higher in math on my college entrance exams than English (no joke!), even though I’ve always made my living in writing.
Still, let’s face it: when it comes to matters of the heart, most of us don’t fall in love with our minds. It’s our soul connection, that perfect kinship of emotion and feeling and everything wrapped into one.
It’s that way with faith, too. It’s one thing to read the Bible cover-to-cover, pay attention to that sermon in church every Sunday, or do every Bible study that comes your way. The real transformation happens when we give over our hearts to Christ, when we allow the Holy Spirit to swoop and soar with all His glory, when we acknowledge Him as Lord of our life and turn from our old way of living to embrace the new.
It's allowing God to permeate every inch of our existence, heart, mind, and soul, holding nothing back.
Recently, my friend loaned me a copy of her favorite book, Appointment in Jerusalem, which is an autobiography of Lydia Christensen Prince, a young Danish schoolteacher. In the 1920s, Lydia had a life-changing encounter with the Holy Spirit, gave up everything she had, and moved alone to Jerusalem because she felt God calling her to do so—only she didn’t know why. There, she ended up starting orphanage for girls in Ramallah, north of Jerusalem, and adopting eight children before she met and married her husband, Derek Prince, in 1946.
The book is filled with underline-worthy nuggets of wisdom, and what strikes me most is Lydia’s approach to faith. She felt God nudge her, she gave everything over in prayer, and then she did as God told her, no matter how difficult or bizarre it seemed to be.
At one point during a devastating time in Jerusalem, Lydia confides in an Arab Christian, Nijmeh, who tells Lydia, “Trusting God is not a feeling; it’s a decision.”
Later, Lydia reflects how she came to understand, “My own plans and feelings were on a human level, fluctuating and changeful. But God‘s purpose was on another level, and it remained unchanged. My place was in Jerusalem!”
Sometimes how we feel in life can seem like a rollercoaster. So many things bombard us, and they happen so fast. We might spend years in a job only to get laid off out of nowhere, or think a love relationship is “secure,” only to discover it most decidedly is not. Fashion trends, music trends, economic and political trends, all these things of the world are constantly in motion, a chaotic swirl of change.
And our feelings, too—they change. This is normal. (This is why I believe the best marriages and friendships are built on heart and mind so they can weather the fluctuations.)
Nijmeh’s words above to Lydia are wise. We must decide to trust God, and then give ourselves over. It’s a decision we must make. We choose—to follow God, to repent, to believe, to pray, to walk in faith, to share the Gospel, to love others in the name of Christ.
We have free will. And I choose God. I choose faith. I choose to point my emotions, no matter how wavy and tenuous and slippery, to the One.
