Book #2 - Ruthless Trust

This was a powerful book. This is my first time reading Brennan Manning. His writing was deep and honest, and at times I had to stop and reflect on how what I read made me rethink what I thought about many things. This book challenged my faith in God and is changing me from a self-admitted 'control freak' (I have always said that I can deal with just about anything as long as I know what it is, does this make me a control freak?) into a happy little 'ragamuffin' who is beginning to understand what it means to trust God and let go. Though I am coming know what it means, hopefully I will remember what it means, and when I learn this, I will truly learn how to trust ruthlessly.

The basic premise of biblical trust is the conviction that God wants us to grow, to unfold, and to experience fullness of life. However, this kind of trust is acquired only gradually and most often through a series of crises and trials. Is my Christian life combining faith and hope and growing into trust?

There can be no faith without doubt, no hope without anxiety, and no trust without worry. Ruthless trust gives definition to our lives, reveals what is life-giving within us, shapes the decisions we make and the words we speak, prods our consciousness, nurtures our spirit, impacts our interaction with others, and sustains our will to meaning in life.

A good quote from the book that is actually from Henri Nouwen: "To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives- the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections- that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for. Let's not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God."

This book was exactly what I needed to read right now. I am facing difficult decisions, and above all I want to go where God leads me, but it's scary and takes risk. Ruthless Trust reminded me not only how much risk is involved in trust, but was also very encouraging at the same time. Following God is not easy by any means. It requires a lot of sacrifice, but it is the adventure of a lifetime and, though I'm scared, I'm excited to see where life and God takes me.

I want to pray “Father, into your hands I entrust my body, mind, and spirit and this entire day—morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Whatever you want of me, I want of me, falling into you and trusting in you in the midst of my life. Into your heart I entrust my feeble, distracted, insecure, uncertain. Father, unto you I abandon myself in Jesus our Lord. Amen.”