In Anita’s book The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith, Anita underlined this paragraph in chapter six, “Difficulties concerning faith”.
You have trusted Him in a few things, and He has not failed you. Trust Him now for everything, and see if He does not do for you exceeding abundantly, above all that you could ever have asked or even though, not according to your power or capacity, but according to His own mighty power, working in you all the good pleasure of His most blessed will.
For Anita and I – and perhaps every Christian – this is the way of things. When you start to trust God, you give Him one thing and then a few things. The first thing I gave to God was my marriage, because the problems of our early marriage was too much to me to handle alone. (What do two kids know about being married?) In later years, it brought me much comfort to know that God would work things out (of course, that didn’t mean that I didn’t have to put in my own effort!) and led to mental stability.
But even when we give God these things in our life and they work out fine, we still have a hard time giving EVERYTHING to God. Little things seem to creep into my life. Other things I have held on to for so long that I don’t even realize that they are something I am supposed to give to God. I got comfortable with my relationship with God and didn’t think it was something I had to work on every day.
Anita’s death was like an alarm clock set by God. It’s as if God is saying to me, “Greg, you have grown complacent and not sought Me. Now is the time for you to question each things in your life – not matter how small or seemingly insignificant – and give them to Me.”
God doesn’t ask us to do easy things. We do those willingly – because they are easy. But they are rarely the things that build our character, build us into the people that God has designed. Does an athlete hone his skills and muscles without years of dedicated practice? No way. And similaraly, I cannot become the amazing person that God built me to be without effort, heart, sweat, and will power to make the CHOICE to become that person.
While the first step is choose to follow God, the second step is to THINK about every little thing – no matter how small – and give each of those to God.
