Naked Trust

PAUSE

As I enter prayer now, I pause to be still; to breathe slowly, to recenter my scattered senses upon the presence of God.

(pause)

I pray Psalm 31:9–10, repeating the words slowly, several times:

“Be merciful to me, LORD, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and body with grief. My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak.”

REFLECT

Bible: As long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. (2 Cor. 5:6–9)

Book passage: Brennan Manning writes (in chapter 10) that “The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some pre-determined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out of discernment of God acting in . . . the present moment. The reality of naked trust is the life of a pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered his presence and his promise.”^*

ASK

Ask myself: Boredom can be one of the hidden consequences of a long-term problem such as a chronic illness. Instead of living our lives to the full with “naked trust,” we merely survive from day to day.

Have I become a little risk-averse? What might it look like for me to “live by faith, not sight” today?

Ask the Lord: I ask the Holy Spirit now to disturb any complacency that may have crept into my life. To take me on new adventures (however small!). To give me the kind of courage that comes from having an eternal perspective.

YIELD

A prayer for disruption by M. K. W. Heicher:^*

Disturb me, Lord, when I am too well pleased with myself,
When my dreams have come true because I have dreamed too little,
When I arrived safely because I sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb me, Lord, when with the abundance of things I possess I have lost my thirst for the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life, I have ceased to dream of eternity And in my efforts to build a new earth, I have allowed my vision of the new heaven to dim.

Disturb me, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land, I shall find the stars.
I ask You to push back the horizons of my hopes;
And to push into the future in strength, courage, hope, and love.

Amen.