"The Most Urgent Need in Your Life is to Trust"

It has been a while since my soul really spilled out. The uncomfortable conjestion bothered me, but I could not put my finger on why I seemed so...ill. I think I have stumbled upon the answer in the words of Brennan Manning.

I began peeling through the pages of "Ruthless Trust;" the title didn't just appeal to me, it screamed out to me. Within the first few pages Brennan begins to describe that his spiritual director issued a GOD-smacking statement to him: "Brennan, you don't need any more insights into the faith. You've got enough insights to last you three hundred years. The most urgent need in your life is to trust what you have recieved." I can imagine how this must have hit Brennan; that point resonated within me before my eyes crossed the last word. Personally, myfaith began like research: carefully articulating my new emotional awareness of GOD, choreographing HIS presence in my life in retrospect, and developing intelligent explanations for GOD in my life. I read the bible regularly, dove into powerful authors, and made sure to surround myself with seasoned veterans on the straight and narrow.
But...somewhere along the way I got bored with faith. The questions and answers that once grabbed my mind no longer seemed addicting, and I found myself developing "Plan Bs." What's worse is that I also justified these things to myself and others all the while knowing it wasn't the best decision. My sense of security became more and more rooted in these "back up plans," and although I was never satisfied I couldn't seem to stop formulating them.
"When the brilliant ethicist John Kavanaugh went to for for three months at 'the house of the dying' in Calcutta, he was seeking a clear answer to how best to spend the rest of his life. On the first morning there he met Mother Teresa. She asked, 'And what can I do for you?' Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him.
'What do you want me to pray for?' she asked. He voiced the request that he had borne thousands of miles from the United States, 'Pray that I have clarity.'
She said firmly, 'No, I will not do that.' When he asked her why, she said, 'Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.' When Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have the 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.'
I remember praying to GOD, as Kavanaugh did, asking for clarity; my rational was that if I could clearly see where GOD was going or understand what HE wanted from me then perhaps the passion, addiction, and awe would come back into my faith. But Mother Teresa's words awaken a DEEP sense within me that I have COMPLETELY MISSED the point.
Francis Chan, in "Crazy Love," points out that many Christians don't have to trust GOD because they have savings accounts and IRAs. And as much as I would love to smile, nod, and think of other people...I AM THAT PERSON. I don't need insight, the most urgent thing in my life is TRUST. Clarity has become the last thing I am clinging to and MUST let go to.
"Craving clarity, we attempt to eliminate the 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. We often presume that trust will dispel the confusion, illuminate the darkness, vanquish the uncertainty, and redeem the times. But the crowd of witnesses in the Hebrews 11 testifies that this is not the case. Our trust does not bring final clarity on this earth. It does not still the chaos or dull the pain or provide a crutch. When all else is unclear, the heart of the trust says, as Jesus did on the cross, 'Into your hands I commit my spirit' (Luke 23:46).
And that is my prayer, the song on my lips these days: that I would commit my soul into GOD's hands and TRUST HIM. As in Proverbs 3:5: TRUST in the LORD with all your heart and lean NOT on your own understanding. This sense within me hints that I have been missing the point, after all "as Marcus Borg has noted, 'The first (faith) is a matter of the head, the second (trust) is a matter of the heart. the first can leave us unchanged, the second intrinsically brings change."