Do not sin; meditate in your heart upon your bed and be still. Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and trust in the Lord-  Psalm 4:4-5 NASB

In Exodus twelve God gives instructions for the Passover. His instructions are insanely specific. This feast (like all the feasts) was not intended to be a DIY kind of a deal. The main dish was a lamb. The lamb was to be one year old, in perfect condition with zero blemishes or defects. It was to be roasted, no boiled or raw meat allowed. The sides were also precisely dictated. Bitter herbs and unleavened bread were the only options. The meal was to be eaten in community. No one was allowed to eat alone. If there were not enough people in a household to eat a lamb, then they were to invite their neighbors to eat with them. The meal was to be eaten fully clothed. No lazing around shoeless or beltless. EVERYONE had to be ready to hit the road at a moment’s notice.  Then comes the crazy part:

Whatever is left of it until morning, you shall completely burn with fire- Exodus 12:10b

When I got to that verse I did a double take. The people of Israel were leaving the country. God knew they were leaving the country. God just spent elven chapters orchestrating their departure. Furthermore, it wasn’t a small group. There were six-hundred-thousand men plus women and children (Exodus 12:37). They would all be leaving Egypt for a destination known only to the Lord, and NO ONE was allowed to pack a lunch. 

What? 

The command feels insanely counter intuitive. Surely,  God would want His people to have a nice lamb sandwich to eat on the road? It just makes sense. But then it occurred to me that God actually does this sort of thing all the time. He tells His people to do something hard and then He makes it harder (Genesis 22, Joshua 1, Jonah 1-3, Matthew 10:5-10). 

It’s all about trust. 

God wants His people to trust Him. Because God has a critically important end goal in mind (more on that later) He almost never makes it easy to do so. This means that at some point in our faith journey we will come up against a situation where it will make zero sense to trust God or do it His way, but we need to do it anyway.  Our crazy situation might be a job loss, marriage troubles, kid troubles, betrayal, or some other horrible loss or trial. Only God knows what it will be, but it will happen. It’s the nature of living in a fallen world. Following are four things to watch out for when the going gets tough and God is asking us to trust Him. The first is:  

Making an Ishmael-

Unless one is a hardcore Calvinist it is hard to argue against the notion that Ishmael (Genesis 16) was anything but the sad byproduct of two people who did not trust God to do what He said He would do. Abraham and Sarah’s hasty decision nearly broke Hagar, damaged poor Ismael and caused geopolitical complications the world still feels today. Anyone can make an Ismael (metaphorically speaking). An Ismael is always the byproduct of running ahead of God in a fit of mistrust and “taking care” of situations in our own understanding and wisdom (Proverbs 3:6-7). This sort of thing happens frequently in the realm of marriage. Someone prays for a godly spouse and when the prayer isn’t answered quickly, they find someone, anyone who is willing marry them. In these situations, the marriage often becomes an Ismael: a source of pain and complication in the person’s life. The good news is God will use the messiest, most messed-up Ismael we can make to grow us and shape us into the image of Jesus (Romans 8:28). It’s just never the preferred route. 

Fear- 

Fear is more than just a feeling we experience when life gets hard or scary. Fear is an indicator. Our fears tell us what (or who) we trust to give us security, peace and a sense of belonging and purpose (job, reputation, financial security, relationships, possessions). This means that whatever we most fear losing is probably the very thing God most wants us to learn to trust Him with (Psalm 20:7, Jeremiah 17:5-9, Isaiah 49:10, Joshua 1:9).  

A bitter root-

Anytime we are called to trust God there is always a danger of a bitter root developing in our hearts (Hebrews 12:15). This is because there always comes a God time where it looks like God is either doing nothing to help us; or conversely it looks like He’s doing the exact opposite of what needs to be done to keep disaster at bay. When this happens, all we can do is believe God is good (Psalm 34:8, Psalm 100:5, Isaiah 41:10, Jeremiah 29:11, Philippians 4:19, James 1:17). Then we wait for the storm to pass and the blessings to be revealed. 

And finally, we must make sure:

We don’t miss the end goal- 

The end goal of trusting God is not trusting God, nor is it obedience simply for the sake of obedience. The end goal of our learning to trust God is for us to become people God can use for His glory and the good of others (James 1:2-3, 1st Peter 1:3-9). Learning to trust Him is how He gets us to that place.  It was true in Exodus. God wanted the Hebrews to trust Him because trusting God with hard things would mold them into a nation that would reveal His glory (and the Messiah) to the whole world.  Unfortunately, it took them forty years to become those people. Don’t be like the Israelites (James 1:6-7).