Hi Troy,

Great news about becoming a Christian. I reckon the struggle to trust God with life can be a big issue, as you’re finding out. But the thing to remember is that our God is a very big God, and has all things under His control. That includes big things like the financial crisis and the little things like how we live our lives. You might have heard the phrase “let go and let God”. Some people think that this is the way we as Christians ought to understand the Christian life - we give up ourselves and let God control it all. However this is very simplistic and problematic, to say the least.

Rom 12:1-2 is helpful at this point. True worship is to give up our lives for God, that is to live for Him alone. God calls us to lie in obedience to him. That doesn’t involve relinquishing control, but rather letting God’s plans and purposes shape the things we do. Our minds aren’t switched off, but rather transformed and renewed by God, and so we become aware of the new way God wants us to live. This takes self control and action.

True faith is not meandering aimlessly and seeing where “God” would have us drift. Instead true faith is seeing the path God wants us to take, with its dangers and hardships and joys and toil, and deciding to follow that path to please our heavenly father. The Bible speaks very highly, not of a lack of control, but of the great worth of self control. (2 Peter 1:6, Gal 5:23)

In the end Christian living is about changing your focus - rather than living for the world, using all your energies to achieve the things YOU want to achieve, you live for God, having your mind and focus changed day by day so that you (more and more) use all your energies to achieve the things HE wants to achieve. As this process of the “renewing of the mind” continues, so what God wants slowly becomes what you want as well. So becoming a Christian means that we no longer use the control we can exert to promote our own agenda, but God’s agenda: praising Him, sharing His gospel and loving both our brother and our neighbour. (Heb. 13:15, 1 Peter 3:15, Mk 12:29-31)

Now that’s not to say its not a struggle. Our lives will always be a struggle to say “no” to our old way of life and its temptations and setting our hearts and minds on the new way of life. This struggle will not end until we are with him in heaven. But God is there working in you according to his plans and purposes (Phil 2:12-13) - so hang in there!

Ian.