Too Easily Pleased

                “If you love me, you will obey what I command." (John 14:15) 

          Several weeks ago, I shared with some women in a Bible study my struggle with the idea of trust. It's not that I don't trust, it's that I don't trust that I trust. As with so many other abstract (not physical) things, if you can't put it on a table for me to examine and compare with what I do or have or am, I can't tell you that I do or have or am that thing. The positive aspect of this problem is that because I can't put trust on the table and say, "Yep, I do that," I can't put trust in my list of personal achievements. It cannot become a work on which I base my standing with God. The negative aspect is that I tend to focus my attention on the struggle, instead of on God.

            Yesterday, as I was reading Renovation of the Heart, by Dallas Willard, I came to a line that I had highlighted when I read it before: "Concretely, we intend to live in the kingdom of God by intending to obey the precise example and teachings of Jesus. This is the form that trust in him takes." (p. 87, emphasis in the original!)

          God has put trust on the table. I love when God puts the pieces of the puzzle together. When I shared the fruit of the Spirit in this blog, I described peace as flowing with the river or lining yourself up with God's will, (Price of Peace.) If someone had said then that trust is integral to peace, we'd probably all have said, "Well, yes, of course." Now, I can say, "Of course!" because trust is intending to do precisely what will result in peace.

          In the same study that led me to share my difficulty with trust, yesterday's homework was on broken dreams. It brought to mind a C.S. Lewis quote that ends:

           "Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are  half-hearted creature, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased." (C.S. Lewis, The Weight Of Glory and Other Addresses. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1965), 1-2.)

      These seem to be my lessons for the day: that to love Christ, to have the peace and the greater pleasures, I must fully intend and commit to pursuing the greatest pleasure, which is God, Himself. While we will never achieve perfection in this lifetime, trust, peace, and love on the table is fully intending to obey Christ.