Trusting God: How to Say Yes Even When it's Hard — Erica Barthalow
This year I’ve been thinking a lot about three little letters. Y-E-S. Whether we say them timidly or with great conviction and fortitude, they hold the power to radically transform every part of our lives when we say them to the Lord.
It’s such a simple word, yet so profound. It holds within it so many possible bends in our future, if only we have the courage to say it.
This has been on my mind so much because, at the end of last year, my husband and I decided to say one of the biggest yeses of our lives. After ten wonderful years pastoring in a picture postcard community, surrounded by friends that are like family, we felt like the Lord was asking us to leave … with nowhere to go and no other job lined up.
“Saying yes to God has the power to transform our lives”
Our kids are newly minted young adults and this is not the advice we would give them as they’re charting their course into adulthood. And yet … we knew that God was asking us if we would trust him and step into whatever he had next for us instead of choosing the comfortable and beloved home we had grown accustomed to over the past decade.
That one yes snowballed into a million other ones as we walked the path of what felt like mostly blind obedience. We had conversations and pursued things we thought might be next only to discover that the Lord had something else entirely in mind. As only the Lord could do, our church elected their new pastor one week before our final Sunday at our church. And the day after we said goodbye to our church family, the Lord revealed what he had been asking us to say yes to, and my husband stepped into the next chapter that will require a million more yeses as we listen for the Lord’s voice and follow his lead.
We are nearing Christmas and I can’t help but think about the simple yes of a young, engaged, teenager. Saying yes to bearing the Son of God and playing her part in God’s plan to bring salvation to all of humankind. Esther’s yes to speaking up on behalf of the Jewish people. Abraham’s yes to leave everything and everyone he knew to play his part in the birth of a nation. And of course, Jesus’s yes to the cross that gives us the ability to trust his lead even into our own scary yeses.
“Jesus’s yes to the cross gives us the ability to trust his lead, even into our own scary yeses ”
I don’t know the full implication of this yes that we’ve given yet. It has been costly, but good. I’m still living in the middle of a story that’s unfolding day by day, but one thing I do know with every cell in my body, God is not careless with us. And he’s not careless with our yes — or his request for it. One thing I long to do, each and every day that I breathe, is to wake up and give the Lord my yes.
Where is the Lord asking for your yes, today? Perhaps it feels too costly and you can’t see anything good in it. Friend, he’s always asking, and we’re always answering. One way or another. Give him your yes. He is fully trustworthy. It will be the best gift you give this Christmas season.
