Sometimes Trusting God Feels Delusional

Sometimes trusting God feels literally delusional.

I’ve been on a rollercoaster with Him the past four or five years. A lot of ups, a lot of downs, and I’d be lying if I said the lows didn’t sometimes take me all the way down.

Hebrews 11:1 says faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

I don’t know why that’s so hard for me to hold onto, but I forget it almost daily. Amnesia level.

Especially when things are hard.

I wrote most of this in the middle of one of those downs. I had let myself believe a hard thing was finally going to resolve. I’d gotten my hopes up. I’d put everything I had into making it end the easier way, and then I watched it slide in the other direction anyway, the expensive way, the long way, the way I’d been praying to avoid.

And the worst part wasn’t even the fear. It was watching it feel like the wrong side was winning. Like the thing that shouldn’t get traction was getting traction. Like I was standing there going, God, are you seeing this? Are you going to come through here, because I am sweating.

That’s the feeling.

That’s what trusting God can feel like in real time. Not a peaceful little surrender.

More like watching the scoreboard go the wrong way and being asked to believe the game isn’t over.

That’s when I let my circumstances overwhelm me. I let the discouragement win. The negativity wins. I call it dropping my shield of faith, bc somewhere in there I’d started to believe (without ever really admitting it to myself) that there wasn’t a point to trusting God anyway.

And that’s exactly what the enemy wants.

I started to feel crazy for believing He’d come through.

Here’s what I’ve actually learned though.

I can’t manufacture how it all turns out. I never could. But no matter what happens, He’s there with me.

Even when I don’t get the outcome I wanted, I can trust who He is.

So that’s what I keep coming back to. Believing God is who He says He is, even when my feelings and my circumstances and my whole experience are screaming otherwise.

Picking the (metaphorical) shield back up. Trusting that He cares, that He has a plan, that He’ll meet me in it and on the other side of it.

That He’ll Romans 8:28 the whole thing and work it for good.

And sometimes I have to believe Him even when it feels delusional.

So anyways, who can relate? What do you think?