I often listen to music as I drift to sleep at night. Recently I’ve been playing the song, “Oceans”, by Hillsong United. When I woke this morning, the lyrics were stuck in my head. In particular the line, “Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders”, kept impressing itself upon me. I started to think about what that looks like in our lives. What would I do if my trust in God had no borders, no limits? It’s easy to confess our faith in God, particularly for those of us who grew up in the Church. It is much harder to proclaim your faith without putting any limitations on it whatsoever.
We trust God with our children as long as He doesn’t take them from us. We trust Him with our finances as long as we have enough to get by. In our day to day activities, we trust that He’ll bless us but spend our time and money on things that help us bless ourselves. Convinced we have some modicum of control over every situation, we handle what we can and say we leave the rest to God. It even sounds a bit spiritual to say it. The truth is we have borders around our trust. We don’t fully trust Him.
Given the choice, wouldn’t you rather the all-powerful, all-wise Creator of the Universe take control of your life? No matter how hard we try to convince ourselves otherwise, there will always be things outside of our control. Not so with God; nothing is beyond His reach. Yet we still put up our border fences, keeping God away from certain aspects of our lives because we don’t believe He is trustworthy in those areas.
We like what we have and don’t want to lose it so we put a border around those things and tell God He’ll need to steer clear. Or perhaps we don’t especially like our lives and ask God to change our circumstances. We’re comfortable with that as long as He doesn’t try to change us along the way. We’re fine. The border is established. Just fix all the stuff around me, and I’ll take care of myself.
What we fail to understand is that we are limiting the power of God in our lives by filling it with anything other than Him. If we would relinquish control and get rid of our fear of the unknown, we would see things we never knew were possible. Once the borders are torn down, God can divulge all His power into our lives.
What could we accomplish for Jesus if we weren’t afraid to move forward? How many lives could we touch if we relinquished our money and possessions, giving them to the poor instead? Who might we become if we had trust with no borders? My guess is we would look just like Jesus. And that, after all, is the goal. What’s holding back the power of God in your life today? Ask Him to give you trust without borders and to consume your life with His.