TRUST/OBEY

Blossoms spent, leaves wilted--winter coming

I felt spent…depleted…confused. Someone for whom I’ve prayed for years—that they’d make a U-turn from abusive actions and words and toward righteous and gracious behavior—made a very negative decision.  I’ll leave it at that. But I know my disappointment was almost physical: that deep-down ache inside of a soul in grief. As I wrapped up winterizing chores several weeks ago and noticed this wilted hydrangea plant, I thought, “Yes, this is a picture of me.”

Sometimes God answers my “why” questions through simple words, and this time it was “trust and obey.”  I recalled an interview with Christian author Elisabeth Elliot in which she was asked the secret to walking with Christ. Those three words—made famous by an old hymn—were her answer. Elliot, whose first husband was missionary martyr Jim Elliot, died in 2015 at age 88. But throughout the six decades of her very public life as a writer and speaker, she lived out those three words. In her website, www.reviveourhearts.com, author Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth remembered her this way:

Elizabeth steadfastly demonstrated what it meant to simply “trust and obey.” Because she viewed God as being altogether sovereign, faithful, wise and good, even when she could not fathom His plan or His purposes, she knew He could be trusted. The appropriate response was to obey Him.

Observing that today’s typical view of God is as a “cosmic dispenser of their comfort, wishes and needs,” Wolgemuth contrasted Elisabeth Elliot’s message: that “God doesn’t exist to meet our needs.  Ultimately, He is God; He is worthy of our obedience, our worship, and our surrender to Him as Lord.”(1)

Beautiful blue bloom from another year

HYMNED
It’s a profound concept, yet simple enough for a new believer. The hymn, “Trust and Obey,” in fact, came from something said by someone who’d recently become a Christian. It happened back in 1886, at a crusade where D.L. Moody was preaching. His song leader, Daniel Towner, asked people to share how they had been saved.  One young man stood and said, “I am not quite sure, but I am going to trust, and I am going to obey.” That statement moved Towner, who wrote a friend, John Sammis, who had left the business world to train for the ministry. Sammis wrote the hymn text, Towner came up with a tune.  Millions have sung:
When we walk with the Lord in the light of His Word,
What a glory He sheds on our way!
While we do His good will, He abides with us still,
And with all who will trust and obey.
Trust and obey, for there’s no other way,
To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.


(1) https://www.reviveourhearts.com/true-woman/blog/she-trusted-and-she-obeyed-a-tribute-to-elisabeth-/