Ruthless Trust

Right now I'm reading Ruthless Trust by Brennan Manning (same author who wrote Raggamuffin Gospel) and its been awesome! I loved Raggamuffin Gospel but I might like this book even more. Here are two excerpts that I really like:

When the brilliant ethicist John Kavanaugh went to work for three months at the "house of the dying" in Calcutta, he was seeking a clear answer as to how to best spend the rest of his life. On the first morning there he met Mother Teresa. She asked, "What can I do for you?" Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him. "What do you want me to pray for?" He voiced the request that he had borne thousands of miles from the United States: "Pray that I will have clarity." She said firmly, "No, I will not do that." When he asked her why, she said, "Clarity is the last thing that you are clinging to and must let go of." When Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have clarity he longed for, she laughed and said, "I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God."

"Craving clarity, we attempt to eliminate risk of trusting God. Fear of the unknown path stretching ahead of us destroys childlike trust in the Father's active goodness and unrestricted love."

This book has been really convicting to me because so often I find myself praying for clarity or understanding in a situation. And when I think God has answered my prayer what I mean is that He has answered it according to my own desire. I know that sometimes I can't see how the thing granted is at all what I desire. And yet it is. For, after all, what the deepest part of me truly desires is not my will, but the will of the Father. It is not clarity that I need, it is trust. The challenge to actually trust God forces me to deconstruct what I have spent my life constructing, to stop clutching whatever it is I am so afraid of losing. Jim Cymbala says this in Fresh Faith, "The great battle of our spiritual lives is 'Will you believe?' It is not 'Will you try harder?' or 'Can you make yourself worthy?' It is squarely a matter of believing that God will do what only He can do...He's looking for faith so strong that it will anchor on His Word and wait for Him, the One who makes everything beautiful in its time."

I read stories in the Old Testament and marvel at Israel's terrible infidelity and direct disobedience to God. I see how quickly Israel runs to idols and think I would never bow down and worship a golden statue. Yet I do. Every single day. I worship convenience and comfort. I bow down to ease. I make an idol out of God's blessings. Yet the crazy thing that still blows my mind every day is that He still loves me! How amazing is this- God loves me KNOWING my future. This idea is hard to grasp until we personalize it. Would I love anyone with such fervor and unrestrained selflessness if I knew that person would betray me in just a few short days, months, or years? How could I love somebody if I know that love will be taken for granted, forgotten, rejected, and even scorned? Would I marry a man if I absolutely knew all his flaws, if I knew that he would live adulterously, that he would divorce me and marry another, that he wasn't completely committed and wouldn't love me in return? Yet, here God is, loving us DESPITE our future. His love is so deep it really is incomprehensible. How could you not want to know a God like that?!