And I think that, and I hope that the lessons that God has been showing me will be equally as profound for you.

Also, I actually just recorded this entire episode. And when I went into my system ⁓ to listen back to it to make sure the sound was okay, the only thing that was in there was, hello friend. And then nothing. So the entire message was erased. The entire podcast was erased. so clearly the enemy doesn't want me to this out. So I'm excited to share this with you.

So let's just dive right in. I have always considered myself a person of strong faith. Ever since I was a child, I've always believed in God and I always enjoyed going to church ⁓ and different things. And so I've always considered myself a person of strong faith. But recently, because of something I've been studying, I've been asking myself the question, do I unconditionally trust God?

Now, the reason I have been thinking that is because of a study that I've been doing in Esther that I think I've mentioned to you before. And it's because of this study that I want to, in this episode, explore the difference between faith and trust and what it means to truly rest in God's character, even when life takes unexpected turns. I, again, was in this study of Esther. And this study that I'm doing, comes with a workbook that has a lot of teaching in it as well as questions.

And this particular day, I was in one of the most famous portions of the book of Esther. Of course, we all know the part where Mordecai says to her, how do you know if you were put here in this kingdom for such a time as this? And that is a very famous quote, probably the most famous. But a runner up would be when Esther sent word back to Mordecai that she's asked him to fast for three days. And she says, "I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish." And that just is such a strong and just inspirational quote, right? Like she was completely trusting God for whatever the outcome was going to be. And in the teaching in this workbook, the teacher wrote a couple of things that really hit me.

She said, "The most critical breakthrough of faith you and I could ever experience is to let God bring us to a place where we trust him, period. Our only steadfast defenses against life's certain uncertainty is unconditional trust in a savior who loves us more than he loves his own life." And that phrase, that term unconditional trust really got my wheels spinning. And I was thinking about that, like, well, I trust God, right? And I felt like he was asking me that question, like, do you trust me? And my answer was, yes, question mark. And so I decided that I needed to do a deep dive into faith versus trust. And that's exactly what I did.

I love to get into things. I get nerdy when it comes to the Bible, very heady. I like to look at, you know, words and definitions and things like that. And what I learned is that faith is rooted in biblical truth and promises. It's an eternal perspective and that faith is bound to the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ and the ultimate proof of God's power and assurance of his eternal plan. So it's anchored in the resurrection of Jesus.

Now trust on the other hand is a deep personal reliance upon God's character and his active involvement in your life.

Faith basically centers on believing God's truths, where trust leans upon those truths in real-life situations.

Now, our natural human tendency is to have a list of things that we're fearful of, And they can go from the smallest thing up to like the worst possible scenario we could ever think of. And I think our natural human defense to that is to go before God pleading with him to prevent our fears from coming true. And lest you take me out of context, I'm not saying that we shouldn't ask God for the things that we want or that we don't want. The Bible is clear when it says, let us approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. So petitioning God is very biblical. But what if our greatest breakthrough comes when we trust Him no matter what? That's unconditional trust. Again, that phrase just grabbed me. It just pulled me in and made me want to really dig into this and see what my level of trust is.

So are we trusting God to prevent what we fear or to carry us through it is really the question that I was asking myself. And when I dug into this a little more, what I found is that trust moves beyond an intellectual recognition of truth. It implies a deliberate resting on God in every circumstance. And that is not easy to do, but as we build our relationship with Him, it becomes ⁓ easier and easier over time, right?

So to break it down even more, faith would be like, what do I believe about God and His promises? Where trust would be, how do I live out what I believe, especially when life is challenging, right? So trust is not an intellectual knowledge of and a belief that God's word is true. And what God pointed out to me and reminded me was, it says in James that even the demons believe there is one God. And so my trust in God cannot be just intellectual, just me believing that, yep, everything that the Bible says is true. Like, I believe that. That's not enough. The demons believe that.

Trust, therefore, is an experiential knowing. It's an intimate, connected knowing that in my daily, everyday, practical life, I can take God and His promises at His word. It's basically the difference between head knowledge and heart knowledge. And for someone, as I told you before, I'm not a super emotional person. I'm very interested in head knowledge, very interested in that. And so sometimes it's harder for this knowledge to make that little short journey from my head to my heart. But that is where true trust is found. It's found at the heart level. It's found in the experience with God that you allow to happen as you walk with Him, as you invite Him into your life, into your processes, into your everyday.

So that kind of trust has honestly, it's challenged me personally. And I wanna be honest with you about where I've fallen short. Now I mentioned in one of my other episodes about an abusive relationship I was in, I've actually been in a string of them. again, you can learn more about that over on my other podcast, Tragically Beautiful, where we talk all about abuse and recovering from abuse and the beautiful things that can come from healing after abuse. So definitely check that out if that is something that interests you. But you'll hear more about my story over there.

What I wanted to share is that this last abusive relationship that I was in, I was married to someone who was very narcissistic. And this was someone that I loved deeply and I had loved him all of my life. We met when we were kids. I was so in love with this person or at least who I thought this person was until, you know, the mask started to fall and I started to see who he truly was. And ⁓ so, you know that phrase that, people may not remember what you said, but they'll remember how you made them feel. I want you to remember that, put a pin in that, we're going to come back to it.

But during this time when my world had exploded, which is how I tend to phrase it, I was so close with God. It was a time in my life that I had just, I don't know, I had poured my heart and soul into my relationship with God, even before things got bad I just was really ⁓ spending a lot of time with Him and just the relationship between me and God was very good. It was very strong. It was very solid. And so obviously when all of these things started happening, I spent a ton of time in prayer, spent countless nights in tears on my face on the floor pleading, crying out before God to please fix this situation. I actually wanted nothing more than for this marriage to work out. Like I said, I deeply loved this person. ⁓ I believed that what we were experiencing in the moment was his own personal trauma finally catching up with him and because he had never dealt with it. And I was determined I was going to love him through this. I was going to love him through this.

And so I pleaded with God, please Lord, like Your word says, God hates divorce and I don't want to get divorced. I want to work this out. want things to turn around. And then fast forward, things didn't work out and we didn't stay together. We did end up getting divorced and it was ugly. It was an ugly divorce. And because I had cried out to God and I felt like I had been so close to Him and I felt like I just wanted to honor Him and what He wanted because God hates divorce. I wanted to honor Him. When that didn't happen, I felt very betrayed by God. I felt very betrayed, very unseen, very unheard, very unloved. And I'm not saying that it was right for me to feel those things, but I'm just being brutally honest and raw. That's what I was feeling. yeah, during that time, I'm not proud to say that I walked away from God for a season. And I don't know if walked away is actually even the right phrase. Maybe it is, but basically nothing about what I believe about God changed. I still believed He was absolutely 100%, everything He says that He is. But I came to this point where I was like, "God, I don't understand why this happened. I don't understand why you didn't work things out. I don't understand why this divorce still happened."

And that brought me to a point where I basically said, "God, I need a break from you. I need to step away. I need a break from you." And that break ended up lasting several years. Again, I'm not proud to say it, but I just want to be honest with you. I always want to be honest with you in my own life and share with you the things that I've gone through and am going through.

So the reason I, again, just kind of put God on the shelf for a while was because I felt like I needed to know why. And this was very out of character for me because I've never been that person that's felt like I need to know why something happened or I've never been the person that's ever said, you know, why me?

I think we're foolish if we think we're going to escape this life without any kind of trial or tribulation or challenge or bad thing happening to us. So again, I've never been that person that's asked why, except, you know, until this situation, I felt like I needed to know why because I was trying to do all the right things. I was trying to do everything I thought God would want me to do. And this happened this way and I could not wrap my head around it. I could not grasp it.

Again, fast forward years went by, I went through all of my mental and emotional healing, which I already shared with you, and I did that on my own. I did not invite God into that process because He was still over there sitting on that shelf. And I did that on my own. And had I invited God into that process, I'm sure it would have been easier. It would have been maybe even deeper, better. I don't know. I'll never know. But I did all the healing work ⁓ mentally and emotionally.

A couple of times I kind of looked up at Him sitting on that shelf, you know, figuratively speaking, and, kind of threw that question out, back out at Him again, but from a place of anger, like, "I still don't understand why. Like, I don't understand why. I need to understand why before I can move forward with You." And finally, after a year or so of telling myself, You should just go back to God, just go back, just go back, you know you're going to. Why are you prolonging this and prolonging your misery? Just go back." And it took some time, but one day I finally did return and I, but I came before Him humbly. I asked the same question again, but I came at it from a place of humility, not a place of anger. My heart posture was right this time. And I just said, "God, I want our relationship back the way it was," but I truly - and hear me,that God wants you to be honest with him. He knows what you're feeling anyway. So you can absolutely be 100 % honest with him when you don't understand what's happening or you're angry with him or you're upset. Like just be honest. It helps you. It helps you feel better when you're honest with God. So I said to him, "God, I don't understand why this happened. And I don't understand why I can't get past wanting to understand why this happened. All I know is that I can't move forward until I get some kind of an answer from You as to why this happened."

And it was at that moment when I came to Him in humility, asking that question that He finally dropped the answer into my heart. And what he said is something that will stick with me for the rest of my life.

And what He said was, "The why isn't important. All you need to know is that the way things worked out is the most loving thing I could have allowed to happen."

And those words, friend, blew my mind. It blew my daggum mind because He was, you know, right. And, as I started thinking through it, ⁓ like I said in a previous episode, like I agree with Him now, like I'm so happy things worked out this way. But when those words were dropped into my spirit, I started to think through what would life look like if I had gotten my way back then.

If we had stayed together and stayed married, what would my life look like? I can truly say I never would have felt truly safe. I never would have felt truly happy. I never would have felt, ⁓ I don't think I ever would have lost that feeling of betrayal. Going back again to that phrase, like you'll never forget how someone made you feel. And he, my ex, made me feel a certain way.

I never would have stopped feeling that way. ⁓ If he was five minutes late from work, I would have wondered where he was. I just never would have felt safe in that relationship and that's just no way to live. So God's "no" to my begging and pleading with Him for this relationship not to end, His "no" was actually mercy. you know, it was a good thing. And like I said, now I'm at this place where I completely agree with Him and I've been in this place for many years now where I completely agree with Him, like, "God, I am so grateful that this worked out that way."

But the very vulnerable admission that I want to make to you is that even knowing this now and agreeing with God that this was the best thing that could have happened, there's that piece of me that still remembers how I felt back then, not just by my ex, but what I perceived as God making me feel. ⁓ Back in that season, I felt like God betrayed me. I felt like God made me feel unloved and unseen and unheard. And again, even though I know and believe to the very core of my being that God is good and loving, He's been showing me lately that I've been holding on to that, "how He made me feel back then." And even though again, I'm on the same page with Him and so grateful that things worked out the way they did, that feeling has been embedded within me and has kept me playing small with God.

Whoa, this was another thing that absolutely blew my mind. And I tied this back to trust. This is why unconditional trust is so hard. It's not a lack of faith. I never stopped believing that God is who He said He is, but it was a fear born from my past experience. I remembered that it was embedded in me that, "God made me feel this way." And so it really hindered my prayer life and the things that I was trusting God with and for because I didn't want to trust Him or ask Him for the big things because I was like, "well, what if You let me down again?" And I still have that embedded in me even though I don't think it was conscious. Like I don't think it was conscious at all. It was just something that was, again, just embedded from all those years ago, but it needed to be dug out. It needed to be rooted out. And this is what God is working in me this week.

I hope that this is resonating with you in some way as well. But true wellness isn't just about what we eat or how we move. It's about whether our souls are at rest. It's holistic. It's mind, body, spirit, emotions. And this conditional trust that we sometimes have with God keeps our bodies and our minds in basically low-level survival mode. And, you know, especially as someone who has lived through several abusive relationships, I know very well what survival mode is and it's something that I'm very, very familiar with. But unconditional trust, first of all, we have to remember that God is not a human being in our life. You know, my ex let me down, he betrayed me, he did all of these things. Yep, it's true. God did not and God never will, even though it felt like it.

And I need to remember that God is God and He loves me unconditionally. And because He loves me unconditionally, I can therefore trust Him unconditionally. And this unconditional trust allows rest, it allows peace, and it allows freedom in the midst of uncertainty and challenging times. So as I get ready to wrap up, I want to share with you that God is so gracious to us and when He's showing us things like this faith versus trust lesson that I've been getting lately He often supplements that with real life situations that serve as lessons and opportunities to have a real life lesson. And that's what God has done with me recently.

So there is a situation that's going on in my own life that is difficult and challenging and don't like it and it sucks and I want it to go away and ⁓ I have no control over it. And it has to do with, someone that I love. I'm not saying that God created this situation, but God brought this situation to my mind and said, "You're learning to trust me. Are you going to trust me in this situation?"

This one sucks. This one is bad. This one is deep. And God is inviting me to trust Him in this because trust is that experiential, intimate connection and knowing that God and His word and His promises are true and that everything in that Bible applies to me. And so will I look at this situation and will I trust Him with it no matter what the outcome? Will I trust Him? Will I use these words, these precious words in His Bible to comfort me and to uphold me as I walk through this with this person? Will I take those words in Romans 8.28 that says, "He works all things together for good to those that love the Lord and are called according to his purpose."? Will I take that and say that is for me? Will I let that be the salve on my own heart as I'm working through this? That is what trust is. Will I trust God that he is working everything out?

I know this may have been a little heavy, but I was so excited to share this with you because like I said, this is real time sanctification for me and I wanted to share it with you. We all are familiar with that verse in the Bible that says that "faith without works is dead." Well, what I'd like to propose to you is that unconditional trust in God is part of the "works." It's part of the demonstration of our faith, right? Unconditional trust doesn't mean that we understand necessarily.It means that we know His character well enough to rest even when we don't. That kind of trust, that's where real peace lives. And that my friend is wellness God's way.

So let me leave you with this reflective question as I like to do to close my podcast episodes. ⁓ You know, I'm still learning and I'm excited to be on this journey with you. And I want to leave you with this question that hopefully you can chew on until we meet again in a week.

And this is the question: Are you trusting God to control your outcomes, treating Him like a genie in a bottle? Or are you trusting Him to carry you through them?

Alright friend, may the Lord bless you and keep you. May He make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. I can't wait to talk to you again in just one week's time. Until then, I hope you have a great week. We'll talk soon. Bye-bye, friend.