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Last Tuesday was a shocker! Whether your candidate or preferred party won or not, one thing we can all agree on is a ton of us voted, and the campaign ads are over!! Thank you Jesus ... but, now what?
With the midterm election over, half of the country is happy while the other half is pissed off (and that is putting it lightly). I watched the election results come in, like most years, with my family. We really get into politics so we ordered pizza, had pie and ice cream, watched the results come in and even dove into each states local campaign, country by county on our laptops and phones. Basically, we had a party (all while yelling at the T.V. and each other). While this is a family tradition, that probably most people don't do, it is something that I look forward to every election cycle and last Tuesday was no different.
With that said though, I've noticed a big shift within me and something I think most people might benefit from. Somewhere along the way, I started re-prioritizing where I put my hope. I stopped putting my hope in elected politicians and started putting it in a crucified Savior. I used to get way into politics. I would argue with anyone that I came into contact with and, honestly, have seriously thought about what a life in politics would look like if I pursued that. All of that changed when I started to see the ugliness of what winning actually looked like in politics. Instead of working together to form a more perfect union, winning in politics means trashing and destroying your political 'opponent.' Facebook has a really nice way of reminding me of this. Almost everyday around election cycles, FB reminds me of past events, posts, and arguments that I have had over politics with people that I used to go to school and even church with. I do not like the man looking back at me from the screen. I want to be better and I think most of us do as well.
I was putting my trust in another human-being, instead of the Creator of all of us. Let's be really honest for a moment, the politicians that were elected last Tuesday and the one's that lost are NOT our Savior! They are simply like you and me - flawed human-beings, who are simply trying to do their best, according to whatever standard that may be for them. They are NOT our Savior, they never will be, we should never expect them to be, and we need to stop seeing them that way. We need to stop putting our trust, our hopes, and our dreams in the hands of elected politicians and start putting it into the nail-pierced hands of the one who died for you, Jesus.
The writer of the book of Psalms puts it perfectly for us today in Psalm 62:8-10,
People, always put your trust in God! Tell him all your problems. God is our place of safety. Selah People cannot really help. You cannot depend on them. Compared to God, they are nothing— no more than a gentle puff of air! Don’t trust in your power to take things by force. Don’t think you will gain anything by stealing. And if you become wealthy, don’t put your trust in riches.
This is so important for all of us to remember. People will fail you. Politicians will fail you. Presidents will fail you. Political parties will fail you. Possessions will fail you. Property will fail you. Everything in this life will fail you, other than the one who made you. God will not fail you. He will never leave you. He will never abandon you. You can put your trust in Him, because he is the only one that can actually bring about solutions for your life.
Putting your trust in God has a much higher ROI than continuing to put your trust in politics. God is the only one that can actually enact change in your life, offer solutions to your suffering, and make you into an entirely new person so that you can start living your best life today. No politician, political party, or policy can ever do that.
So, how do you begin to trust in God?
1. Put Your Trust in God by Having a Conversation with Him
Prayer is simply a conversation between you and God. You don't need any magical words or really follow a set format, if you don't want too. While prayer is easy and should simply be a natural conversation between you and God, much like you would have with your biological father or someone else; prayer is also extremely humbling.
When you pray, you are basically saying, "Help, I can't figure out my stuff." When you pray you are showing yourself that you are not in complete control because you are deferring to God's ability to solve your mess. Yes, you have a huge part to play in all of this, but when you pray you are absolutely putting your trust in God and not some inferior savior that can never solve your situations (including yourself).
In Matthew 6:5-15, we see Jesus teaching his followers how to pray and he starts his training off by giving them an overview of how prayer re-prioritizes our preferences. He said the following:
“This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.'
Do you see it? Do you see the order of Jesus' prayer?
Jesus puts God the Father first and foremost, before anyone or anything. Jesus places God on top, which reformat's our preferences because we always want to place ourselves first. When you pray, you change that by placing God first in your life, which enables you to start trusting in Him.
To start living your best life now, you have to reform your preferences by placing God first. Prayer makes this happen because you are acknowledging your limitations and God's superiority.
2. Put Your Trust in God by Dying to Yourself
That may seem pretty harsh, but that is exactly what you need to do in order to start living your best life today. Seriously, you cannot fix yourself. You cannot fix other people. The fear that motivated your vote Tuesday is chocking you from the inside and the only way to defeat it is by dying to yourself and start loving those around you.
Jesus put it this way in Luke 9:23-24, which says:
And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it..."
It is totally fine to have opinions. It is totally fine to be political active and interested. But if we keep fighting for our preferences the way we have been lately, like lobbing straight venom on Facebook to those with different thoughts and preferences, then you will not be living your best life at all. Instead, our hopes, our dreams, and our fears will tied to ever shifting sand that will inevitable fail you.
So, to start living your best life now, you have to reform your preferences by placing God first through prayer and be dying to yourself. By doing this, it will reformat your entire life.
3. Put Your Trust in God by Reformatting Your Daily Life
Like we saw above when we were talking about prayer, we desperately need to reformat our lives so that we can start living our best life today. The only way to do this is by purposefully reformatting how you live your life every single day. We see the writer of Proverbs say exactly that:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. - Prov. 3:5-6
You can not do this on your own. Stop trying. Seriously. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome, so stop being insane, Felicia! What you have been doing in your life so far will continue to produce the outcomes that you have already seen. So, going forward, if you want to stop that, then you are going to have to start living differently.
This might sound crazy, but in order to stop putting your trust in others and start putting it in God, then you might have to turn FOX off. You might have to turn MSNBC off. CNN might have to go dark, so that you can reconnect with your Creator. You might have to unfollow certain people on Facebook because they have become triggers for you and keep you stuck in your current patterns of trusting others and not your Savior.
You might have to reformat your daily life to look like the following:
1. Read your Bible first; instead of your Twitter feed or News notifications that piss you off.
2. Pray to God; instead of just isolating yourself and trying to figure your stuff out yourself.
3. Die to Yourself; instead of trying to build your own little empire, allow God to build His in and through you.
4. Repeat.
So, now that the midterms are over, you might be asking yourself, 'Now What?' Well, I hope this article has given you some tangible ways to start living your best life going forward because when you start putting your trust in God, everything else falls into its proper place.
What are some ways you can start putting your trust in God?
Let me know in the comments below.
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