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As I review this past year, I marvel at how God has directed every detail. He has been so gra-cious, daily teaching me and mold-ing me into the Image of Christ. As I look over this past year, review-ing in my mind the major events that took place, and as I search among them for just one lesson that God has tried to teach me through all of them, I come to the conclusion that I have been learning to trust my Heavenly Father.As I review this past year, I marvel at how God has directed every detail. He has been so gra-cious, daily teaching me and mold-ing me into the Image of Christ. As I look over this past year, review-ing in my mind the major events that took place, and as I search among them for just one lesson that God has tried to teach me through all of them, I come to the conclusion that I have been learning to trust my Heavenly Father. One of the ways in which I have had to trust the Almighty this year has been in the arrangement of details concerning my travels this past summer. I think that the hardest things for me to accept were the unknowns. Decid-ing to test me, the Lord denied me the privilege of immedi-ately knowing what I was going to do, and even if I was going to get to go. Peace did not come until I had fully surrendered my plans to the Lord. Still, the Father stretched, pulled, tested, and changed things around until everything was in compliance with His will. At the time, I very much wished that everything could be set in concrete. Looking back, however, I am glad that God arranged thing exactly the way that He did. As a result of the details that He arranged in His time and in His order, I am able to honestly say that I know for sure that I was where God wanted me this summer. To be able to serve and learn during each of the various opportunities with the confidence that I was in the center of God’s will was well worth all the tests that God used to get me there. A second area of trust has been in discovering the Father’s calling on my life. I am frequently asked what I am going to do when I finish with our family’s home-school (Mom says that I shall never be finished, as there will always be something new for me to learn). I do not sense the Lord leading me in the direction of college, yet I struggled to find an answer that would explain to others just what I was going to do with my life. In recent months, however, I have become confident that God Almighty has called me to minister specifically with children. The Father has confirmed this both through the direction of my parents and through various children’s ministry opportunities that he has opened for me. It has been a great blessing for me to have this sense of direction and purpose and I have been excited to see how the Lord is working through my life in this area. The extent of my lack of trust was limitless and was further exposed in my fear of man. This was a paralyz-ing fear, a severe weak point in which the enemy would attack when I was most vulnerable. I was scared teach Children’s Church because of the fear that would bombard me each Sunday. I would worry that my lesson wasn’t quite good enough, or that the children would reject the lesson or me, or both. As I have come to complete reliance on the Lord for His strength I have been able to have victory over this fear, continually strengthened by the times that I have stayed strong in the Lord. Of all the lessons in trust that I have been learning this year, one of the hardest has been related to the authority of my parents. It has been a decided challenge for me to remain under the God-given protection of authority in my parents, yet it is this one area, which, when heeded to, has brought me the greatest blessing. It is when I am under my parents authority, putting their requirements and requests ahead of my own plans, that I am able to do the things that I desired to do, with peace in my heart and the blessing of my parents. This is an area that I continually struggle in and repeatedly work to correct. All of this has further confirmed to me the truth of Ephesians 6:1,2:” Children, obey.. . That it may be well with thee.” Throughout this whole year, Psalm 37:5 has be-come a theme of sorts, a scripture that has come to mean much to me. “Delight thyself in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” Above all, I have discovered that as I have truly made Christ preeminent in my life, I have received the desires of my heart. Blessings, both material and spiritual, have come as a result of delighting in the Lord and loving Him with my whole heart. Soli Deo Gloria!
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